How to Make the Most of Your Source-to-Contract Software?

You want to be confident that you have chosen a new product or service that will provide maximum benefits to your organization.  An organization’s contract process often leads to a change in contract management software as a result of inefficiencies.  So, it’s imperative to ensure that your source-to-contract program gets you the highest possible return on investment.

To increase efficiency, reduce contract lifecycle bottlenecks, and mitigate risk, your organization must leverage all the tools available.  The following are five ways to use reputable contract amendment and management software to your advantage.

Workflow Optimization for Contracts

Spreadsheets may have played a role in the previous workflow process in your organization. The traditional source-to-contract cycle requires contract managers to oversee every stage of the process to ensure all parties involved abide by their respective duties.  Keeping teams waiting for task completions is problematic since delayed tasks from any party cause project workflows to stall.

With your newly implemented contract management solution, you can easily manage your contracts with smart workflows.

By providing alerts, notifications, and task reminders, leading software that offers intelligent contract workflows prevents contract lifecycle bottlenecks. There are a variety of contract management capabilities available to you, including user-defined and dynamic fields, audit trails, reporting, and analytics.

By leveraging contract collaboration, negotiation, and reporting tools, your contract management team can track every step of the contract lifecycle.  You can use automated alerts to keep track of key dates and milestones in your organization.  Furthermore, the audit trail history keeps track of all contracts and their modifications.

With centralized contract lifecycle management and an intelligent contract workflow, you can maximize the value of your source to contract software.

Repository Your Contracts in One Place

You may have previously relied on manual methods such as utilizing filing cabinets to store paper documentation and disorganized emails.  These methods make keeping contracts safe, maintaining version control, and meeting deadlines and milestones nearly impossible.

Improve contract performance by reducing risk, improving control, and controlling contracts.  Utilize the newly acquired system for contract management.

Contract management software that offers a secure contract repository can help your team organize documents, control access, apply document version control, find old contracts, monitor contract status, collaborate, and more.

You can maximize the efficiency of your contracts through optimized contract storage.  In turn, this leads to increased productivity, reduced risk, higher revenue, and the achievement of contract management KPIs.

The system tracks and stores sensitive information throughout the contract lifecycle.  Data access restrictions are crucial to ensuring that sensitive data is kept safe.  Your organization will be better able to prevent data breaches and security issues with a proper user permissions system.

A secure contract repository allows you to simplify document management with centralized control, enhanced accountability, and a safekeeping of data.

Track Contracts More Efficiently

In addition to using email and spreadsheets for contract tracking, your organization may have used a manual filing system.  It is not ideal for organizations to use these tools to track contracts because:

  • A tracking system centered on email causes bottlenecks.
  • Versions of contracts are disconnected and disorganized in manual filing systems, resulting in a greater risk of losing them.
  • Using spreadsheets is ineffective for alerts and notifications about contract issues; upsell and discount opportunities; quick approvals and routing for signatures; and centralized version control.

An inaccurate audit trail is a result of a manual tracking system, wasting precious time and causing bottlenecks in the contract lifecycle. Use trusted contract management platforms to track intelligent contracts instead of inefficient tracking tools. 

The Streamlining of Signatures

There may have been a manual signing process employed by your organization previously.  While the signing process is perhaps the most crucial component of a contract lifecycle, the process is slow and outdated.  All parties are hindered by them when it comes to signing.  Wasted time, postage fees, and paper-based processes can result in high costs. 

Software Training for Contract Management 

The number of training resources available to organizations using leading contract management software is growing – such as in-person group training, online group training, and user conferences.

Your organization will get the most value from your software investment with online group training.  Through its source-to-contract suit, Contract Insight®, Cobblestone offers courses for beginners through advanced users.

CobbleStone users can learn how to take full advantage of their system’s features by attending online groups and enacting CLM best practices. 

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