According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the average Fortune 2000 company now holds 20,000-40,000 active contracts. Global supply chains, multi-jurisdictional businesses, and changing regulations have also made contract management more complex.
Unfortunately for legal teams, contract management processes have not kept pace with marketplace changes. Manual contract management is still a common practice, even at the enterprise level. Tracking contracts manually is not only labor-intensive, but it also increases risk and reduces compliance.
Fortunately, there’s a better way.
The Time for Contract Management Software Has Come
Procurement professionals have ERP systems, sales leaders have CRM software, and HR departments have human capital management systems to better leverage their data and improve performance. But until now, legal teams did not have contract management software that could do the same.
According to Bizible, CMOs should take a more sophisticated approach to managing their marketing departments using cloud-based software to plan and manage marketing activities. Similarly, legal teams must improve their approach to managing contracts with contract management software.
The Icertis Contract Management (ICM) platform is a cloud-based solution that offers significant advantages. It speeds the authoring process and provides visibility into all contracts and business relationships. Users can easily uncover data hidden in the company’s contracts to better manage risk and compliance, increase revenue and improve performance.
Improving Contract Authoring
The ICM platform guides legal teams through the contract authoring process using a robust clause and template library and rules engine. It automatically identifies the right clauses to be included in the contract and ensures the correct templates are used. The result is increased contracting velocity and improved compliance—and time saved for the legal team.
Tony Ulkekul, Head of Enterprise Commerce Engineering at Microsoft reports, “Leveraging the meta-data from Microsoft CRM, the Icertis platform automatically generates complex, multi-page, multi-clause licensing agreements in multiple languages and geographies with unprecedented speed and precision.“
The platform also supports multiple languages, is flexible and easy to update. Modifying pre-approved language to comply with new regulations is simple. In addition, legal teams can use the platform to quickly identify and monitor contracts with deviations, even if the contracts are written on third-party paper.
Managing Compliance and Performance
The contract management process does not end with contract creation. Tracking contract compliance and performance over time is critical to managing risk. Contract management software provides legal teams with better visibility into a contract’s status, reducing risk and helping organizations maximize revenue.
The ICM platform serves as a single source of truth by creating an enterprise-wide repository for contracts. Legal teams can easily access contracts, view obligations and monitor contract terms to ensure enforcement, mitigate risk, improve compliance, and reduce penalties. The platform tracks and calculates incentives, rebates, and discounts, and automatically notifies key parties about milestones and expirations, ensuring contract commitments are met and benefits realized.
Watch our webcast to learn more about the critical role contract management plays in risk mitigation and how the ICM platform can help.
