Congratulations! You got the job.
And while this is an accomplished step in the right direction, it’s important to prove yourself within the first 90 days. There’s no better way to make your mark than to revolutionize the contract process. Whether in legal, sales, or procurement, excellent contract management and the right CLM solution (Contract Lifecycle Management) can enhance how the entire enterprise operates.
Below are our top 5 ways to revolutionize your contract process in your first 90 days. We’ve provided the areas you’ll need to think about, along with important considerations designed to walk you through this transformative accomplishment. While it’s a big decision and can be a large undertaking, Agiloft is here to walk you through each step.
1. Analyze what’s working and what’s not
The first step in revolutionizing the contract process is to understand whether or not the company currently has a CLM solution and –if they do—is the solution meeting its needs.
According to Healthcare Finance, about 60% to 80% of an organization’s transactions are governed by contracts. Yet many companies don’t use a CLM solution or the right solution to digitize their contract process, which means the business can be leaking at least 9% of its yearly revenue.
A CLM platform brings together all the tools your team needs to create, edit, track, and renew contracts across their entire lifecycle.
It serves as a centralized repository for contract information, making it easy for your staff to find what they need. It includes templates and other automations that cut down on repetitive manual tasks, and reporting capabilities that help you analyze and optimize future contracts. In addition, the right solution integrates (or connects to) tools that are used by your team on a daily basis.
The contract lifecycle process can be labor-intensive and monotonous, but when using the right CLM, it becomes streamlined and efficient, taking you seamlessly through each phase of the contract lifecycle.
Additionally, the right CLM has custom templates, a dynamic clause library, and other contract-focused tools that will increase the speed of your contract drafting and keep your agreements on track.
2. Develop a Contract Management Plan
Having a Contract Management Plan positively impacts the daily operations of a business as well as the way in which business is carried out. But where do you begin? One way to initiate this strategy is to start with a kick-off meeting. This allows all the employees to come together, voice their concerns or priorities, and clarify the details that go into creating a contract.
Next, it’s important to identify the weaknesses within the organization as well as the current way in which contracts are being managed. Once the pain points are identified, then you’ll know what you need to be looking for in a new system.
Finally, inspect the current contract process. Does the current CLM provide access to reports on contract amendment processes when drafting contracts? These can be used as a guide to approve future contracts and deals. You can also take a closer look at frequent amendments or unexpected circumstances that often arise. These are challenges that can be integrated into a new contract plan.
3. Quantify the current process
When it comes to your current contract management process, can you explain the system’s ROI to key stakeholders? If you are currently utilizing the right system, any top executive should be able to pull up reports containing data that can be used to assess the value of contracts and the CLM itself. When doing this, ask yourself: What are the key elements to quantify contract performance? In order to answer this question, you first must define KPIs and standards for contract goals like contract turnaround time, pricing and deal size, contract terms, and risk scores.
In addition, the CLM that you choose should have effective reporting that allows contract owners and the organization to stay connected, in real-time, throughout the contract lifecycle. In order to properly assess contract progress, you should clarify contract monitoring methods, reporting frequency, milestone and performance metrics, the process for dispute and claim resolution as well as the contract closeout checklist.
4. Digitize your contracts
Digitizing your contracts allows your company access to the richest source of data, all at the touch of a button. In addition, the contract workflow process is automated, resulting in an efficient, trackable, and faster solution that leads to savings in purchasing, a more efficient sales cycle, lowers risk of compliance, and much more.
A customized CLM gives you a unified solution to manage contract sustainability, consistency, completeness, searchability, ownership, and risk management. Every department will be able to make smarter, more informed decisions. You can easily pinpoint revenue opportunities from the data in the sell-side contracts, and you’ll be able to make data-driven negotiations. In short, your entire way of doing business on a daily basis will be elevated to a higher standard.
Below are just some of the main benefits you can expect to reap when digitizing contracts.
- Immediate access to all contracts
- Create standardized templates
- Create contracts instantly
- Streamline and manage workflow
- Comply with regulatory requirements
- Get customized reports
- Integrate with thousands of systems
- Measure KPIs and identify bottlenecks
- And much more…
5. Integrate and make critical connections
The right CLM solution should provide an organization with connected experiences on many levels. First, it will connect multiple stakeholders across the enterprise, including Legal, Sales and Procurement. Second, the CLM will also integrate with the tools that are crucial to a business’s day-to-day operations. This allows the data from the CLM to flow from system to system. Connections such as these were once hard to achieve. Not anymore. Today, advances have been made, resulting in drag-and-drop, no-code, integration platforms such as Agiloft.
Agiloft’s Integration Hub, powered by Workato, is a cloud-based solution that works with clicks, simplifying the integration experience. Agiloft’s Integration Hub offers a wealth of benefits including:
- More than 400 Community Connectors, pre-built connections to enterprise systems like Slack, Teams, and Workday with more Connectors being created every day.
- Access to Community Recipes, pre-built templates that send your workflow and data from one system to another.
- Access to the Automation Institution, Workato’s online training center offering more than 30 courses designed for the business user (no background in coding needed).
- and much more.
In short, the right CLM not only manages a company’s contracts but becomes a critical part of their business infrastructure.
Make your mark at your new job and become an invaluable member of your team. Revolutionize your contracting today and pave the way for business success.
