Managing contracts often falls into the category of once it is signed, put it in a file cabinet or maybe add it to a spreadsheet. A contract is a living business instrument and needs to be proactively managed. Otherwise, your organization will suffer as it would with any other aspect of your business that goes unmanaged. Fortunately, there are certain measures that you can put in place to make sure you have all contract related issues under control. You can spend countless hours reading your documents and updating/reviewing spreadsheets or you can leverage contract management software.
Avoid contract inconsistencies
When you take advantage of contract management systems, you will be able to avoid any contract inconsistencies via the standardization of contract types. Most systems provide a mechanism for identifying the Meta data that one wishes to capture regarding different types of agreements. In addition, they often provide a repository for standard contract templates. Using contract type Meta data requirements associated with a contract template assures that you are consistent in your data capture as well as the construction of the actual document. Some system will even allow the auto completion by pulling data out of the repository and complete the contract template for you. You can avoid such issues by simply taking advantage of contract management cloud systems that are reliable.
Meet contract date requirements
In the management of contracts, dates are often critical. Enterprise contract management software delivers mechanisms for triggers alerts and email notifications on a wide range of dates associated with a contract. Some of the more common contract dates include: effective date, expiration date, date of notification for termination, project milestone dates, etc. The system will automatically generate a notification and send it to the appropriate parties based on matching criteria. One example is 90 day notification prior to expiration. There would typically be several notices like 120, 90, 60 and 30 days prior to expiration. This allows you either renegotiate or find another vendor to satisfy your needs without suffering any financial penalties. As you can see, choosing a reliable contract management cloud system can protect your organization and simplify your life.
Tracking of contract and associated documents
It is not unusual to have numerous documents in addition to the final signed document. Typical object types include PDF, Word documents, Excel Spreadsheets, Photos and occasionally video or voice capture.Two very important capabilities should be included in your contract management software.
1.Version control is a system that records changes to a file or set of files over time so that you can recall specific versions later. A good system will perform this automatically for you and it will apply to all documents and not just the final contract. You will also use this feature for performing red-line comparisons.
2.Searching your documents and Meta data is critical. The tool must be both fast and complete.The representation of the results needs to be informative enough for your decide if that is the document you ultimately expecting to locate. Some systems will provide surrounding text to provide you the appropriate context for your search parameter. Typically, one will enter a word or simple phrase. Some systems also provide some more sophisticated searching such as the use of Boolean logics, wild cards, vicinity searches, etc. Perfuming this type of search manually is literally impossible. But you can conveniently and safely do it using contract management .Further, this is also one of the best ways to actually store information about contractors, the contract itself as well as employees conveniently and securely. You can also retrieve any information related to the contract as often as the need arises.
