What to Look for in Enterprise Contract Management Software

Business is great. You’re getting tons of new (and renewed) monthly contracts, which means your company’s growing. But there’s a caveat—you must manually sign, track, and approve each and every one.

Nothing kills the joy of growth faster than dealing with the manual workflows that sustain it. Managing piles of paperwork, numerous stakeholders, countless iterations (with untracked changes, might we add), and sluggish approvals isn’t how you want to spend your days.

And let’s not forget the dreaded data loss. 

It’s a messy, chaotic process that costs your team time and money. 

A World Commerce & Contracting and Deloitte Legal report estimates that inadequate contract management is costing businesses 8.6% of a company’s annual revenue.

But things don’t have to be this way. All-in-one enterprise contract automation software gives large companies the same simplicity that small businesses enjoy (without shrinking your business). These tools help your team maximize performance and reduce compliance risks by automating your processes.

What a breath of fresh air.

Read on to learn the key features of enterprise contract management tools and what they can do for your business.

What’s So Special About Enterprise Contract Management Software?

Enterprise workflow management can be chaotic and riddled with costly mistakes—especially when each department and team runs its own unstructured process.

In this scenario, the answer is simple: Create a transparent, efficient, and compliant system to reduce costs and headaches. But putting that into action is a whole other story.

You need software that can meet the high demands and standards of complex contract workflows. But even if you find one (ahem…Docubee), there are still hurdles to jump over. 

In small and medium-sized businesses, purchasing decisions are often based on convenience and cost. In enterprise-level businesses…not so much. There’s more to consider than upfront costs—you also have to worry about reliability, scalability, security, and compatibility, to name a few.

When you use an enterprise contract management software like Docubee, you eliminate these worries. Here are the top reasons enterprise contract management software is special:

• No more lost contracts. It provides a secure and centralized location to store and manage all contracts, ensuring easy access and retrieval of contract information.
• Faster contract creation and approvals. It simplifies the contract creation process by providing templates, clause libraries, and workflow automation that connects all of the pieces, reducing time, manual touchpoints and the overall effort your team would normally have to expend..
• Stay compliant with internal policies. It helps you comply with contractual obligations, regulatory requirements, and internal policies through elevated data security measures, alerts, reminders, and segmented permissions.
• Know exactly where contracts are in the workflow. It offers real-time visibility into contract data, allowing you to track contract status, key dates, obligations, and performance metrics.
• Save time and money. By automating manual tasks, such as contract generation and approval workflows, it saves time, reduces administrative overhead, and improves overall efficiency.
• Scale up or down as needed. As your organization continues to grow, managing contracts becomes more challenging. Docubee helps you scale your contract processes efficiently without adding headcount.
• Create contracts with less effort. Docubee is designed to fit the way your business works instead of the other way around. It offers pre-built template and options to create custom contracts using data you’ve already collected or throughgenerative AI technology to handle any agreement that comes your way.
• Integrate it with your current tools. Docubee integrates with existing applications, enhancing productivity and allowing for a seamless interface with other software tools.
• All contracts are secure and legally binding. It ensures the security of your contracts and offers legally binding eSignatures, eliminating the need for printing, scanning, and emailing documents.
• Grow your revenue potential. By automating complex contract processes, Docubee helps you increase each contract’s return on investment (ROI).

With benefits like these, the added cost is worth it to ensure your team doesn’t lose sleep over creating and sending contracts.

How Can Organizations Benefit from Enterprise Contract Management Software?

You’ve learned why enterprise contract management software a must-have. Unfortunately, the higher-ups who make purchasing decisions aren’t buying it. 

Here are the top things about enterprise contract management tools to point out to change their minds. 

Accelerates Contract Cycle Times

Enterprise contracts are long, complex, and take time to pass through the entire lifecycle.

With enterprise contract lifecycle management software, you can automate time-consuming, low-value work, eliminating multi-stepped processes that decelerate negotiation times.

In other words, no more spending days or weeks with a manual approach. The end result: faster closing rates, customer provisioning, and time to revenue.

Minimizes Contractual Risks

Poor contract management exposes your business to unnecessary risks.

Enterprise contract lifecycle management tools minimize risks in audit and contract compliance.

You can do things like:

• Get automatically notifed on missing  contract approval messages without searching your inbox
• Gain insights by analyzing data collected from clients via your contracts and existing CRMs
• Deliver standardized audit reports of each contractual activity and signature for reference
• View contract analytics and reports on vendors’ legal or regulatory compliance, making identifying and mitigating risks across the entire organization easier
• Calculate risk based on risk scores during the contract negotiation to make smarter negotiating decisions

Reduces Operational Expenses

An EY Law Survey found that inefficient contract processes delayed revenue recognition for 57% of organizations, while 50% of businesses said it cost them business.

You’ll pay to use a contract management tool, but you’ll also pay a hefty price for continuing to use outdated, manual contract management processes.

The benefits far outweigh your investment.

Adopting software eliminates unnecessary delays and the risk of human errors that lead to invoicing disputes and potential non-compliance.

And, with standardized contracting processes, you can maintain consistency in contracts, ensuring all stakeholders adhere to the required standards. This means less financial liability and costly compliance failures.

Mature Contract Performance Tracking

Contract management systems track the entire contract lifecycle so nothing gets overlooked.

The software tracks and reviews each contract’s history, ensuring better compliance and more accurate audit trails. This effective record-keeping and milestone tracking means you’re always in-the-know of what’s being paid, to whom, and when.

Does your Organization Need Enterprise Contract Management Software?

Some companies are stuck in their old ways, while others refuse to switch platforms due to complacency. But the truth is hard to deny when you have glaring red flags throughout your organization. It’s time for an upgrade if your company:

• Has multiple departments with numerous decision-makers with a stake in the entire contracting process.
• Operates in highly regulated industries that must adhere to strict state or federal laws and regulations.
• Handles sensitive and critical medical, financial, and legal documents.
• Depends on relationships with vendors, financial advisors, property managers, and other third parties involved in the procurement process, which is controlled and managed via contracts or legal agreements.

The question now is which software to choose? Next, we explore the most important features an enterprise contract management software should have.

Key Features and Functionality to Consider in Enterprise Contract Management Software

There are numerous enterprise contract management systems available today. Which are worth your investment? And more importantly, which can integrate seamlessly into your current operations?

Here are the standout features to consider during your search.

Flexible Contract Templates and Clause Library

Enterprise contract management solutions revolutionize the contract management process from start to finish. It offers contract automation using flexible, customizable contract templates and clause libraries.

Templates speed up the contract creation process and reduce pay-per-template costs, while a clause library with pre-approved clauses and fall-back language helps non-legal users generate documents at the click of a button.

Contract Creation and Authoring

Say goodbye to building contracts from scratch. Templates are the name of the game and they streamline and modernize the contract creation, drafting, and authoring process. Tracking document versions and compliance tasks has never been easier.

Contract management tools also eliminate back-and-forth emailing. Just set a predetermined sequence of steps for a single contract or group of contracts to move between stakeholders at different times in the contract lifecycle.

Automated Approval Workflows

Automated approval workflows are one of the most important things to look for in a potential tool, as it ensure your process stays connected and on track. A flexible, configurable workflow makes it easy to define, deploy, and maintain contract processes in your organization. Plus, it creates a faster path to value and reduces the total cost of ownership as your processes change.

Compliance and Risk Management

Highly-regulated industries with regulations like FedRAMP, SOC 2, TRUSTe, or HIPAA calling for strict compliance makes everything more complex and create costly delays in the contracting process.

Check for compliance and risk management features that adhere to existing regulations and filter through contracts to pick out and rework outdated language.

Alerts and Notifications

The more contracts you process, the harder it gets to manage them.

Contract management software offers alerts and notifications, keeping you and other users in the loop about important contract updates and critical deadlines. This way, you’re prepared to take the necessary actions.

Bulk Actions

Enterprises need contract workflows that scale. Bulk actions empower everyone in the contracting process to manage contract creation, sending, and signing at scale, making large contract volumes more manageable.

Real Customer Support

Problems happen. And when they do, you need support right away. 

The provider you choose should help you implement the software and be available to address questions or issues that arise down the line. 

Some providers go the extra mile and give unlimited, complimentary training for your team, so your business succeeds when adopting their software.

Conditional Approvals

You won’t always have the capacity to review every contract you receive. Conditional approvals automate when certain contracts require approval from specific individuals, based on the contract terms or value.

Cloud-Based Document Storage

The right enterprise contract management tool manages all contracts in a central, accessible, source of truth.

Traditional methods lack centralized storage, but enterprise contract management solutions store everything in a central, convenient, cloud-based repository for all users to find and access.

Advanced Search and Filtering Functionality

With a centralized, searchable repository, you can store, organize, and quickly track every contract, saving you time, money, and manual labor.

A digital contract management system provides an easy way to store and retrieve documents. You can conduct filtered searches by keyword, metadata, or concept, and find any contract or clause in minutes.

eSignature Integration

From EY’s survey, 84% of organizations extensively use approval-to-sign technology, like electronic signature tools.

Selecting an enterprise contract management system with electronic signature functionality and integration offers a more secure way to sign, so you can collect digital signatures from important figures and get consent on contracts and documents.

Branding Functionality

Custom branding shows professionalism and builds and maintains customer trust.

Enterprise contract management solutions with branding options let you insert your company logos and colors into transactional emails, increasing engagement and trust from counterparties.

User Interface and Training Time

Ready to scale your operations? Then, you must empower and train workers across multiple departments. This way, they’ll get up to speed quickly and know how to use the software in the specific context of their roles.

Ease of Integration with Existing Systems

Contracts are involved across business processes, teams, and departments.

An enterprise contract lifecycle management system should connect and work with core business systems, like your CRM, enterprise resource planning (ERP), or human capital management (HCM) solution. This makes it easier for users to move between business platforms within their roles.

Making the Right Choice for Your Enterprise Contract Management Needs

Like they say, more money, more problems. As your enterprise continues to grow, so will your challenge with contract volumes and complexities. An automated, scalable digital contract management system can be your answer to improving efficiency, maximizing resources, and accelerating revenue.

If you’re considering an enterprise contract management solution, let Docubee help.

Our intelligent contract automation platform lets you create, manage, sign, and track digital contracts. You can securely gather information, generate contracts, manage workflows, and collect legally binding eSignatures to increase the ROI of each contract and streamline your agreements process.

Choose from pre-built templates or use Docubee’s flexible workflow builder to automate essential business agreements. Then, use its built-in reminders, generative AI technology, and contract routing to save time, eliminate errors, and cost-effectively scale your contract process so you can focus on growing your business.

Excited to learn more? Get your demo now.