What is Contract Visibility?

Definition of Contract Visibility

Contract visibility refers to the ability of an organization to easily access, understand, and manage all of its contracts. In practice, it is about having a clear and comprehensive view of all contracts within an organization, from creation to expiration. This is often achieved with contract lifecycle management software.

Importance of Contract Visibility

Strong contract visibility gives organizations the ability to minimize risks, optimize resources, and enhance overall business performance. Having strong contract visibility helps organizations gain an advantage in key areas of contract operations:

1. Compliance and Risk Management 

Helps legal teams ensure adherence to legal and regulatory requirements while identifying potential risks, such as missed deadlines or unfavorable terms. 

2. Cost Efficiency 

Helps organizations control costs by tracking financial commitments, avoiding unnecessary expenses, and preventing missed savings opportunities. 

3. Improved Decision-Making 

Provides organizations insights into contract performance, supplier relationships, and negotiation opportunities, leading to more strategic business decisions. 

4. Operational Efficiency 

Streamlines contract management, reducing manual work, improving collaboration, and ensuring contracting teams can quickly access critical contract details. 

5. Renewal and Obligation Tracking 

Prevents unintended auto-renewals or contract lapses by helping contract managers keep track of key dates, deliverables, and obligations.

Key Elements of Contract Visibility

The elements of contract visibility work together to enhance contract oversight, improve efficiency, and support strategic decision-making. They include:

1. Centralized Contract Repository 

This refers to a single, accessible location where all contracts are stored, making it easy to retrieve and manage agreements. It is the key element that makes all other visibility elements possible.

2. Advanced Search and Retrieval Capabilities 

Features that allow users to quickly locate specific contracts, clauses, or terms using filters and keyword searches. Advanced platforms powered by AI allow users to search for critical information across their company's entire contract repository in an easy-to-use chatbot format.

3. Contract Lifecycle Tracking 

Features that allow contract managers to monitor key contract milestones, such as renewals, obligations and expirations, to prevent missed deadlines or penalties. 

4. Access Control and Permissions 

Defined user roles and security measures to ensure that only authorized personnel can view, edit, or manage contracts.

5. Compliance and Risk Management 

Features that help organizations track regulatory requirements, contractual obligations, and potential risks.

6. Reporting and Analytics 

Dashboards and reports that provide insights into contract performance, financial commitments, and vendor relationships.

7. Audit Trails and Version Control 

Logs that track changes to contracts over time, ensuring transparency and accountability.

8. Automation and Alerts 

Automated workflows and notifications for important dates, approvals, and contract actions to improve efficiency.

Creating Contract Visibility for Your Organization

Create a single source of truth in your enterprise by consolidating all your existing contracts into a single, enterprise-wide repository. The Icertis platform enables the setup of all contract types and any associated metadata within a single system, with easy access to a centralized repository of all contracts, contract documents, contract data, contract terms, and related business transactions. Robust security and access contract management enable control of data visibility in multiple dimensions, including for an individual document.

Automatic Notifications and Alerts

Provide strong proactive contract visibility to users with notifications. Notifications can be set for events that occur throughout the contract lifecycle management process, and a configurable notification template lets users specify the format and content for relevant alert information delivered via email. Proactive alerts are sent for contract dates such as expiry, milestone deliverables, and key obligation events. Support for user-defined rules enables selective exception-based notifications.

Powerful Contract Search

Equip stakeholders in the contract lifecycle management process with quick, easy, and smart access to contract data. Users can search across relationships, configure results, and export on the fly and built-in OCR capabilities let users search the full text of documents including metadata in the contract management process. Smart Links provide 360-degree contract visibility on related transactions, and they can be personalized for one-click access to other related data such as contracts involving the same party, commodity, or products.

The Icertis Contract Management Platform

Now that you know the importance of contract visibility tools for successful contract lifecycle management, you should consider embracing an award-winning contract management software platform that provides comprehensive contract visibility with all of the information mentioned above. That solution is the Icertis ICI Contract Management Platform. Icertis's scalable, low-friction contract management software platform has been trusted by contract professionals in a variety of industries for over 13 years and counting. Icertis has been praised and awarded for offering contract lifecycle management tools to tackle contract processes with optimal contract visibility.

If you are looking to positively transform contract tracking and contract lifecycle management for your business, schedule a demo to see the Icertis Platform in action!

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