Aspects to take into account when developing the right Contract Workflow for your organization

Según un estudio de Gartner, para el año 2023, el 90% de las multinacionales y el 50% de las PYMES, contarán con un Software de Gestión de Contratos.

No matter what industry your organization is in, proper contract management is essential to the smooth running of your organization and to protect your interests in case of disagreements with others.

Often, this task can be complicated by the large number of contracts to manage manually. In addition, these contracts are usually stored in Shared Folders and managed with the parts through emails.

In this situation, organizations face problems typical of this manual management: errors, loss of key documents, forgetting important dates and team saturation, among others.

The solution to these complicated contract management processes is automation.

When you automate with a contract workflow, you can create, negotiate, sign and track contracts quickly and efficiently, cutting the time you spend on them in half.

First of all, what is a Contract Workflow?

A Contract Workflow is the process of managing a contract from its creation until it is completed, after fulfilling certain stages. Although it may seem simple and different for each organization, the following steps are always required:

• – Gathering information
• – Creation of the contract
• – Negotiation
• – Approval
• – Signing
• – Renewal or termination

This process can involve anywhere from two to dozens of people, so managing it properly is critical.

Stages of a contract

Before jumping into the pool to generate a contract workflow in a CLM like Docuo, it is important that you do not try to duplicate what you did manually. Although it may seem like the best way to do it, the process you followed manually should only serve as a reference.

Once you have this clear, the next step is to understand the contract cycle, to see which of its stages you can improve thanks to automation.

1. Creation

When you create a contract, it is of vital importance to do it carefully and based on the legal requirements of each country. Automation will help you to forget about this, as well as drafting contracts for each case; with Microsoft 365 templates, you will be able to adjust contracts in a single click.

2. Revision

It is essential to review the contracts to be sent to customers. This operation can be greatly streamlined with a CLM like Docuo, where you can be notified if the contract is correct or if it needs any changes, indicating where from the tool itself.

3. Negotiation

Conducting the negotiation by mail can cause numerous versions of a single contract and confusion among the parties involved. With automation, not only will you keep the parts informed in real time and with the updated version of the contract, but you can also set up your workflows to receive alerts when it’s your time in the process.

4. Signature

All the changes have been made, the parts have finally reached an agreement and it’s time to sign; this  process that can take weeks. To avoid this, you can resort to the electronic signature, which not only can be included in your workflows so that it is carried out automatically, but also, with an eSignature such as Docuo’s, you are 100% compliant with the European eIDAS regulation.

Advantages of a Contract Workflow

As you already know, managing contracts is a complicated task that requires a lot of time and attention in order not to overlook details and key dates. In addition, making mistakes in this process can lead to financial losses, legal problems, etc.

Therefore, having a Contract Management Software is essential and brings you numerous benefits: reduce costs, time and risks of management, improve productivity and efficiency, not only of the process but also of your team and avoid disorganization of tasks.

Recommendation for creating a Contract Workflow in Docuo

Your organization may need to carry out numerous actions in its contracts due to, among other things, the number of people involved. In that case, it is advisable to group the different stages of these into three different ones and make a Workflow for each of them:

• – Creation, review and negotiation.
• – Signing
• – Renewals

This is, for example, a Workflow for the creation, review and negotiation process:

However, for simpler processes, you can group the three stages into a single Workflow. The process can be tailored to your organization’s needs.

This is just a part of what a Contract Management Software like Docuo can do for you, contact us and discover the rest!