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Contributed on April 21, 2020

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Contract Management Automation: Handling Manual Contract Visibility Challenges with 2020 Contract Lifecycle Management

Blog: NASSCOM Official Blog

Contract Management Automation: Handling Manual Contract Visibility Challenges with 2020 Contract Lifecycle Management

Only a week ago, Japan discontinued its long-standing tradition of using hand stamps. A big step towards accommodating the digital society that the world is rapidly turning into. Manual Contract Management is no longer efficient. In fact, at this point in time, it is causing more harm than good. Manual contract lifecycle management is limiting the companies in terms of – Visibility, financial management, and version control.

Visibility cannot be taken lightly during the contract lifecycle. There are multiple points of interest that may be affected due to poor visibility:

• • Contract Initiation: Bringing all the stakeholders on the same page about the contract terms can take unnecessary time because of manual handling.

• Negotiation Tracking: Recording the negotiation and maintaining their transparency can be another overhead further delaying the contract lifecycle

• Obligation Handling: The contract obligations are hard to track over the longer period that the contract lifecycle extends to. Thus, poor visibility, in this case, can cause financial leaks as well

• Version Maintenance: Keeping all the stakeholders in sync about the latest contract version that the project is being carried out on is also a time-consuming job due to the low visibility of manual CLM.

Visibility maintenance has a fruitful outcome for contract management. So, let us take a look at why organizations are facing challenges to maintain good visibility in the contract lifecycle and how these challenges can be dealt with.

Visibility challenges

To understand the challenges that enterprises face against transparency and visibility in manual contract management solutions, we need to understand the points that demand visibility. 

• Contract Inconsistencies: Contracts are complex. Bigger the project, more complexity. Different organizations can have their own standards to handle their contracts but it is highly likely that every contract will show substantial diversion from their expectations. End-to-end visibility in such cases can easily point out the inconsistencies and help the leadership in taking the required decisions. However, that itself is a challenge for visibility. Manual contract handling demands a lot of time in assessing these inconsistencies. Even after that, chances are that some points would be undesirably overlooked.

• Legal and Governance Challenges: The recent events have taught us well that the government might itself be forced to enact in a way that might not go well with the company’s vision. New laws and acts might affect the contract lifecycle in ways that manual contract handling may not be able to comprehend at all.

• Visibility Amongst Teams: Sourcing engagements may not be properly visible to the teams handling the contracts. The tools being used by the sales team might not be compatible with the solutions employed by SMEs. In short, The different teams might have restricted visibility into each other’s work which may create blind spots in the contract itself. These blindspots are difficult to foresee by manual contract handling thus ensuring the visibility in such conditions is demanding.

CLM Automation

The underlying narrative of the visibility challenges is that manual contract management is exhausting. Therefore, organizations need to turn towards CLM automation for assured contract lifecycle transparency. Here are some key benefits of automated contract handling with regards to visibility:

• • Surface Visibility: For complex contracts, the automation enabled contract management solutions like #LetsContract offers surface visibility dashboards. The stakeholders can have a continuous outlook of all the contract inconsistencies at all times.

• Obligation Tracking: Government, legal or any other custom obligations can be recorded and emphasised by the CLM automation platforms. The stakeholders can be duly notified and financial leaks can be proactively nipped in the bud.

• Integrated CLM: Automation platforms are devised to be compatible with the different CRM and SAP tools so that the different teams do not face restrictions due to siloed work. This ensures that there are no blindspots for contract management and the visibility is maximised.

Conclusion

Contract Lifecycle Management is a complex job, to begin with. Manually ensuring visibility for every crucial detail is tricky at the least. Automated contract management solutions will not only maximize visibility but also help the organizations to save time and capital. Automate CLM to Dominate Contract Lifecycle Visibility

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