In today's evolving work landscape, organizations are embracing a flexible
work environment that accommodates both
remote and in-office work are toolkit arrangements. This modern approach to
work requires a harmonious blend of internal
support from management and teams, flexibility, and resilient internal
processes
Having a set of best practices with a contract
management tool is far
more relevant now in this new culture than what it used to be earlier.
Business organizations now firmly believe
that CLM platforms are here to stay for the reasons of efficiency &
productivity due to its broad reach
collaboration capabilities, time and cost savings and more.
A hybrid work environment calls for a greater degree of efficiency in
managing workflows while effectively
collaborating with teams and stakeholders. With legal operations all awash
with legal technology, the one platform
that has seen enhanced role and influence over workflow processes is the
contract lifecycle management tool. A CLM
tool enables organizations to generate contracts, monitor the terms
of contracts, and take timely action
regarding drafting executing & executing or renewing contracts.
This post will address how CLM has become an almost indispensable tool for
contract managers to collaborate better,
unearth hidden risks and liabilities. The post also talks about taking
timely action in a hybrid work environment.
The primary stage: Simplified creation of contracts
Typically, it takes several emails back and forth to create, make revisions,
execute amendments, and draw up the
final contract. The legal department creates contracts for various other
departments either from scratch or with
readily available templates. Unfortunately, these templates may be
redundant, obsolete, irrelevant, while also may
fail to consider several valuable clauses, such as the Force Majeure, which
has drawn so much of attention in the
past couple of months. Needless to mention here, the system is fraught with
risks and prone to manual errors.
With the CLM, the process is more streamlined, effective, with in-built
capabilities to save time and automate the
entire system:
Faster contract creation with templates
Use of clause library for contextual use of keywords
Centralized control for automated workflows, redlining, and vetting of
contracts
Tracking of renewals, obligations etc.
Simplify the contract process and manage risks
Stage two: Automated collaboration for contractual milestones
Whether it is about negotiations, collaboration, or meeting such other key
contract milestones, a robust CLM such as
RazorSign, has been a primary port-of-call to improve contract
standardization, compliance, and contracts due to its
extensive collaboration support. RazorSign now has enhanced collaborative
features allowing the execution of
contracts in a smooth collaborative development process with multi-party
buy-in. This allows direct in-draft editing
of contracts by multiple stakeholders, get approvals, and more - in
realtime! Check out our article on contract negotiation to know more of the latest in
collaboration enabling features in a CLM.
Stage three: Execution of contracts
Execution of contracts is the penultimate stage of the contract management
process, has been mostly a manual process.
Drawing greater efficiency into the contract management processes involves
automating the platform with the prompt
contract execution tool, - the e-signature platform. With value-added
features like the e signature for contract
management, the CLM platform offers easy-to-use and quick implementation of
streamlined contracts. RazorSign is a
platform that seamlessly integrates with your existing CLM solution,
enabling you to execute your contract within
minutes. Simply share the final version of your contract with all
signatories via our RazorSign CLM suite and using a secure link, the
signatories can safely sign the contract in an instant.
Relevance and importance of a robust contract management system going ahead
These three aspects above – simplified creation, collaboration, and
tech-enabled execution, together create the bedrock
that supports a hybrid work atmosphere with distributed teams carrying a mix
of office and home-based employees. Thus,
as we built a whole new infrastructure for a hybrid work environment
tech-enabled internal processes that are flexible
become essential. These processes must at the most basic level, include
streamlining workflow processes, collaborating
with teams over contracts and agreements, for example:
Real-time status tracking of contracts-in other words, contract
visibility
Timely collaboration in a digital environment that can avoid the
exchange of multiple emails and communication
A contract repository system for authoring, storage, retrieval of
contracts, document storage, improving
accountability, increasing productivity, and fix the shortcomings for
manual workflow processes
Doing away with the paper-based processes that can help save money, save
time, while also offering enhanced
security
An end-to-end mechanism for contract lifecycle management right from the
stage of request and authoring to a
stage of execution of contracts and beyond, to contract administration
Bearing these in mind the relevance of a prompt contract management
tool has increased manifold during recent times. Offering the
best-in-class features is our CLM platform
RazorSign that has helped organizations automate contract management
systems and align the organization's performance
with those of the stakeholders' and internal teams.
RazorSign
