Increase revenues. Lower costs. Reduce risk. Improve relations with customers and other stakeholders.

We have found, however, that people who have not seen contract management software often cannot envision how exactly it achieves these benefits.

Unfortunately, contracts managed in a fragmented, manual manner work. The errors are often errors of omission or failed prevention. The opportunities lost are lost precisely because they are never noticed. The risks are often hidden in the depths of a contract, or exist as an unintended result in the aggregation of several contacts. We read or hear about the occasional disastrous contract management error, but hope that our current processes will protect us. And the occasional error that does come to light is assumed to be a one-time event, not the indication of a common occurrence.

On the other hand, contract managers are often all too aware that time is being wasted on unnecessary  tasks. They know they have the potential to add much more value to their organization.

So we have prepared a list of examples of how some of our customers have improved their contract management. Clearly not all of these possibilities would apply in any one case, but probably at least one applies to your organization.

We hope our list gives you some ideas. And if the list sparks some ideas and you want to talk to us about them, we will be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Minimize risk of breaching key financial or compliance boundaries

• Monitoring financial exposure aggregated over the enterprise.
• Timing revenue recognition.
• Identifying and applying time-based, volume-based, performance-based discounts.
• Identifying suppliers overcharging.
• Identifying contingent liability exposure.
• Identifying maverick spending by buyers.
• Reconciling payments not just to the invoice, but to the original contract terms.  
• Ensuring regulatory compliance, such as Sarbanes-Oxley.

Minimize risk of missing crucial contract dates

• Renewing contracts on time to reduce the occurrence of continued operation under a lapsed contract.
• Eliminating the risk of deal ends by terminating the contracts on time.
• Eliminating unwanted terminations, and potential loss of investment to a competitor.
• Eliminating slippage, late fees and other penalties.

Improve visibility and dissemination of contract information

• Painting a complete picture of the contract by providing original terms plus modifications to support key decisions.  
• Keeping the enterprise up to date on external events and changes to external contract parties impacting the company. Some contracts have time-constraints on response options to events.

to key information on all types of contracts

• Aggregating contractually significant information across an entire organization.
• Enabling rapid response evaluation of contractual exposures, obligations, alternatives, safe harbors, and opportunities in response to changes in the business environment.
• Simplifying audits and reducing audit costs.

Facilitate creation of contracts, deal memos, RFx and other documents

• Assembling legal documents from pre-drawn, pre-approved clause library.
• Comparing final contract terms to original deal memo; identifying non-standard terms to those managing the business relationship.
• Distributing and enforcing contract management best practices.
• Enabling on-line negotiation, and supporting face-to-face or telephone negotiations with version control and workflow management.

Automate, analyze, and optimize the various workflow processes

• Approval process.
• Renewal process.
• Incorporation of statistical analytics tools to benchmark and improve processes on a continuous basis, including measuring the key performance metrics that drive the business.

Contract Analysis

• Creating reports quickly, consistently, and easily, saving hours of time required for manual assembly.
• Identify lost revenue opportunities.
• Performing contract due diligence.

Store contract information in a standard corporate database, facilitating data transfer to and from other systems.

Save cost of developing a contract system from scratch.

Our commitment to your success doesn’t end when your software is up and running. We are here to make sure that your solutions keep delivering maximum results throughout the life of the system. Our proactive and highly responsive help-desk services, online monitoring, remote maintenance, and on-site assistance ensure that you’ll continue to receive the right technical assistance year after year.