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Reasons Your Business Needs Contract Maintenance Software

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Reasons Your Business Needs Contract Maintenance Software

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Contract management software, such as Dock 365 Contract Management System, can help you optimize and expedite this time-consuming step of the contract management process during the contract intake and request phase of contract lifecycle management. A wide range of events may occur throughout the intake and request periods. You may, for example, submit a fully finished contract agreement and save it in your centralized contract repository for additional monitoring. Alternatively, you might have your lawyer draft specific agreements (such as non-disclosure agreements) for a new project with a potential client.

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Many businesses and organizations wish to optimize their contract lifecycle management strategy and are unsure where to start. For many, there's a rapid influx of demand placed on their organization, resulting in the need for more control over their growing contract portfolio. For others, there's a specific mishap that occurred or an event that left the business with less time and money. Commonly, businesses forget about auto renewal dates and let their contracts slip through the cracks, meaning they unintentionally auto renew unfavorable agreements. Many simply lose or misplace their contracts on a routine basis.

As you can see, there are numerous examples of challenges presented in the process of managing several contract lifecycles simultaneously. However, with the assistance of contract maintenance software, you can manage your contracts seamlessly and alleviate many issues associated with contract lifecycle management.

Let's examine five reasons why businesses are making the move to contract maintenance software.

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1. Access contracts anywhere with cloud-based contract maintenance software

Manual contract management is outdated. Not only is it old news, but it's inherently risky, expensive, and time-consuming. Companies that leverage a manual approach to contract management consistently experience difficulty in finding their contracts within their manual storage system.

With manual contract storage, you keep your contracts in a disorganized system of filing cabinets, shared drives, and email chains, desktops, and in other disjointed means, you immediately increase the likelihood for difficulty in retrieving what you need when you need it.

Keeping your contracts in a cloud-secure digital contract maintenance system guarantees that you can access your contracts within moments with customizable, savable filters and text-based search capabilities. This makes locating and retrieving exact metadata, clauses, terms, key dates, and contracts quick and pain-free. Due to the cloud, your authorized users can access your contracts at any time, any place, on any device. If your business relies heavily on a remote workforce, then having remote access to your contracts should be factored in appropriately when searching for a solution to your contract management needs.

In the case of unexpected events that prevent your team from getting to the office, your team can easily continue working due to the access to contracts they have within the cloud.

2. Boost visibility of your contract activities

General counsel and legaltypically hold a significant level of control over a company's contracts. Contract maintenance software enables all of your departments to attain any contract-related answers instantly within their software solution. The ability to rapidly retrieve exact pieces of metadata, clauses, and contracts within seconds from your software platform can improve the experience that your clients and vendors have because you're able to give them accurate answers backed-up by the contract data. In contrast, manual contract management means you increase the risk of giving business partners the wrong answers at a snail's pace.

Basing your contract lifecycle management on manual procedures decreases the visibility of the overall picture of each contract at hand. It becomes challenging and time-consuming to identify which stage each contract is in within its lifecycle as well as how the contract is performing. Without a central source of truth for all of your contract-related data, your team might make detrimental contract decisions due to a lack of knowledge of the current and past contract data. Today, many contract maintenance software solutions have built-in contract data analysis and reporting capabilities so that contract managers, business owners, and other authorized users can glean key insights on their contract data and share these insights with their leadership team.

There's no need to store your contracts in email chains, shared drives, filing cabinets, and desktops. Increase the ease of your contract management once and for all and store all of your contracts and associated data in a cloud-secure, centralized contract repository in your contract maintenance software. Access your contracts 24/7 so you can proactively plan for negotiations, reviews, and approvals. In summary: Contract maintenance software gives users the ability to find exactly what they need at the times they need it most.

3. Save time and increase productivity

Managing contracts manually takes an exorbitant amount of time and is prone to increased risks, human errors, and bottlenecks. However, with contract maintenance software, you can both save time and increase employee productivity rates by automating several activities within the contract lifecycle. Contract maintenance software empowers users to standardize and systematize several elements of the contract lifecycle. In a manual contract management approach, you waste your team's time on low-level administrative tasks that could easily be automated.

Relying on manual contract management procedures and manual contract storage for a large portfolio of highly complex contracts makes it incredibly challenging to not let details slip through the cracks. Managing obligations and key dates like auto renewals and contract expirations becomes time-consuming and disorganized, making it difficult to confidently ensure that your agreements are appropriately fulfilled and delivered upon. Manual contract reviews are also inefficient due to the inaccessibility of contract data, so finding answers takes much longer than necessary. All of these bottlenecks will exponentiate with increased demand on your contract portfolio.

Thanks to contract maintenance software, you can automate several of your repetitive, low-complexity contract lifecycle management procedures. This includes sharing contract status updates with your stakeholders, monitoring upcoming expiry and auto renewal dates, and retrieving clauses and metadata. By automating these tasks, you save your team time on the low-ticket items so they can spend more of their time on contract activities of higher complexity.

4. Gain a proactive contracting approach to maximize revenue and cut costs

All of your contracts should be monitoredaround the clock so you can make the most data-driven decision when it comes time to renew the agreement. In the case you forget about an auto renewal date and a contract with unfavorable terms auto renews, then you get locked into an agreement that you could've terminated or renegotiated. A manual contract management strategy increases the likelihood of forgetting key deadlines, dates, and milestones that can drive up costs in the fees associated with correcting these errors and missed dates.

By keeping your whole team and involved stakeholders in the loop of upcoming due dates with customizable, automated reminders, you can gain back control of your contracts. No need to use written notes and calendars prone to inaccuracy and human error to keep everyone on the same page. Forgetting key contract deadlines is a common struggle among many businesses and organizations today. With contract maintenance software, you can solve this problem.

Storing your contracts in a contract maintenance software solution can support your team by increasing visibility and access to contract metadata in a single and secure place. This can encourage proactivity towards time-sensitive contract responsibilities. We recommend leveraging customizable reports to share on an automated schedule with your team, including reminders of contracts with upcoming auto renewal and expiration dates.

Shifting from written calendar reminders to digital automated reminders will keep your team aware of approaching contract auto renewal dates and expiry dates at all times so they can prepare ahead for the best deals and make the best business decisions when these dates come.

5. Contract maintenance software supports business growth

Manual contract storage and manual contract tracking might suffice for an organization with a small portfolio of low-risk contracts of minimal complexity. However, scaling such a system is essentially obsolete. To properly manage contracts, it requires diligence, attentiveness, and the effort of many involved stakeholders. Once your contract portfolio reaches a certain volume, manual contract management becomes a hopeless prospect.

If your business has experienced fast growth and is finding it difficult to properly keep up with all of your obligations, dates, and contract-related responsibilities, then it may be time to make the transition to contract maintenance software. Companies of all sizes, from small businessesto massive enterprise-level organizations, should assess all of their current contract management procedures to determine which areas could use optimization and improvement.

Furthermore, transitioning to a contract maintenance software solution can give you the competitive edge when managing a massive increase of contracts in the future. We encourage you to be proactive and make the switch early while you have a fairly manageable, smaller contact portfolio. This will make it much easier to adopt the solution, rather than making the transition when you're working with a rapid influx of new agreements, due dates, and obligations.

Conclusion

Contract maintenance software will help your organization save time and money while maximizing your ROI and mitigating risk. You'll also get instant contract access due to cloud-based software, increase visibility, boost productivity, develop a more proactive contracting approach, and support your future business growth.

Dock 365 offers an intuitive and user-friendly contract management system built on your Office 365, SharePoint, and Teams for cost-effectiveness, easy adoption, and secure storage of contract data.
Learn more about our Learn more about For more information, we would like to welcome you to schedule a free demo with us today.Contract Lifecyle Management (CLM) Software here.Dock 365 Contract Management System here.

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5 Reasons Your Business Needs Contract Maintenance Software | Dock 365 Blog

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Many businesses and organizations wish to optimize their contract lifecycle management strategy and are unsure where to start. For many, there's a rapid influx of demand placed on their organization, resulting in the need for more control over their growing contract portfolio.

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The Role of Reporting in Contract Lifecycle Management

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The Role of Reporting in Contract Lifecycle Management

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If there is one problem that is continuous throughout the corporate landscape, it is that the contract management process is fraught with barriers and difficulties. Failures in contract management often compound and may cost your firm a significant amount of money over time. As a result, it is critical for your company to identify and address these difficulties. Effective contract administration may ultimately save your firm a significant amount of money and effort.

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Contract lifecycle management is an essential component to every organization. It's critical to have systems in place that allow for a standardized approach to managing a hefty contract portfolio. A poor contract lifecycle management system could mean losing track of your contracts and mismanagement of a growing contract portfolio.

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However, managing contracts effectively takes more than simply planning for deadlines and organizing your agreements. A powerful, optimized contract lifecycle management process will leverage reporting features and performance monitoring capabilities provided by a dedicated contract lifecycle management (CLM) software solution. Reporting and overseeing the performance of your contracts helps you gain valuable insights on how to improve your current contracting processes and identify where areas of opportunity might exist.

Oftentimes, contract managers and legal departments choose to employ contract management software because of the advanced custom reporting features available in these solutions. Custom reporting can assist companies by providing them with a comprehensive understanding of all the details included in their agreements. These details outline where their contracting processes are thriving and where they need improvement, as well as what trends are most important to track as time progresses.

We'll discuss why contract lifecycle management software reporting capabilities can significantly help your company gain control on a growing, complex contract portfolio. By analyzing and developing reports on your company's contracts, you can create data-driven strategies for future contract lifecycle management success.

8 Ways Reporting Helps Your Company's Contract Lifecycle Management Process
Reporting can support your company with all of the following:
1. Learn From Your Failures

The most common mistakes made when managing contracts include forgotten contract auto renewal and expiration dates, missed deadlines, violations of compliance standards, and mismanagement of funds. With effective, custom contract reporting, you can alleviate any of the pains associated with these very common issues. Taking corrective action is easy when you're equipped with the data that shows how, when, and why certain problems occur. This can help you avoid the same mistakes moving forward. You can also analyze what contracts performed well so you can take steps to repeat the same process.

2. Identify Emerging Patterns and Trends

A custom reporting feature can help you identify any emerging patterns and trends in your contracts, allowing you to make the most of your data and plan ahead based for the future. One scenario where using contract trends can help is when making decisions regarding which contracts to renew and which to terminate. If a given contract's renewal date is approaching, leverage your custom reporting features to see if similar contracts had performed well previously. If so, you can feel more confident in your choice to renew it.

3. Plan Ahead for Risk

Contract management reporting is phenomenal for risk mitigation. Reduce and manage potential risk by leveraging all the customized data provided by this feature, allowing you to make decisions pertaining to your organization's risk mitigation and management strategy. Reporting can help you decide how to respond to unforeseen circumstances as well as help you take decisive, corrective action before a small mistake turns into something much bigger.

4. Make Well-Informed Decisions

Any company would only want to continue working with the most favorable contracts. Reporting features can help you decide which contracts are best to renew, and which ones should be terminated. Now that you can view the facts and important data on-demand, you can make critical business decisions with all the information at your fingertips. In this way, you'll only renew the contracts that will help contribute to your business goals and objectives.

5. Monitor KPIs and Improve Processes

It's important that you don't lose sight of your contracts, that's why consistently monitoring and setting KPIs is the key. To optimize your contract lifecycle management, you can set specific KPIs to oversee how each contract is performing. In addition, contract reporting features will help you improve your processes by collecting data that will help you both strategize and make the best choices for your system moving forward. This may lead to improvements like reduced contract lifecycles, faster negotiation and approval times, increased compliance, increased contract accuracy, and saved time, money, and resources.

6. Reporting Helps You Share Data With Internal Stakeholders

Communication and collaboration are critical components to effective contract management. When working across departments or with several teams in a large company, it can be a bit challenging. For legal, procurement, finance, sales, and other departments to work cohesively, contract management software offers numerous collaboration-minded features to make this possible. In addition, a dedicated CLM software centralizes all internal communications, that way everyone is kept on the same page in the same digital platform. To work against any information silos, reporting on your contracts can seriously help. You can share important contract metrics, data, trends, and more with anyone in your organization. Reporting is made remarkably easy with contract management software, and several custom options give you the ability to schedule and share contract reports with internal stakeholders. You can configure settings to have customized reports be distributed throughout your organization on a predetermined schedule. If you'd like to have monthly reports prepared for discussion, you can easily do so with this powerful capability.

7. Reporting Helps Work Proactively Towards Upcoming Deadlines

Missed deadlines and forgotten auto renewal and expiration dates can lead to some of the most detrimental repercussions to an organization. To ensure you never miss a key date or deadline again, we recommend leveraging the reporting feature of a contract management software solution so you can keep everyone in-the-loop. Ever wonder what the timeframe of an opt-out window is on a certain contract? Well, you can easily find those dates in your contract management software so you don't have to worry about an auto renewal. By keeping tabs on all of your key deadlines, you can gain contract control and save money, rather than waste it on contracts that aren't ideal. The reason why contract reporting can be so advantageous in terms of tracking your deadlines is because your reports contain every upcoming date in a single place. For example, you can run custom reports on all of your contracts to identify which ones expire in 30-, 60-, and 90-day intervals. And with automated reminders and alerts, you can keep everyone reminded of their responsibilities, obligations, and milestones for their contracts.

8. Reporting Helps You Gain A Bird's Eye View of Your Whole Contract Portfolio

Reporting is important for knowing what is happening with your contracts at all times. Monitoring contract performance, location, status, and entire contract lifecycles is critical to understanding what next steps to take and what responsibilities might need to be shifted. Your contract management software's custom reporting feature gives you the ability to standardize your reporting by automatically scheduling custom reports according to certain data tags. In this manner, you can run monthly and quarterly reports discussing items like opt-out windows, active contract performance, risky-clause management, required legal reviews, and vendor agreement performance. By generating custom reports on an automated schedule, you'll ensure that your teams have access to all the data they need to make intelligent contract decisions.

Gain the Competitive Contract Management Advantage with Dock 365

The best contract lifecycle management (CLM) system can help your organization generate detailed, customized reports for contract management success. In addition, a CLM system can help your organization reduce risk, automate tasks, and centralize communications.

The Dock 365 Contract Management System offers a powerful and cost-efficient approach to contract lifecycle management using your Microsoft 365 and SharePoint tenant as the base for contract management. Dock's easy-to-use, aesthetic, and customizable contract lifecycle management software provides unique features and integrations that boost collaboration, efficiency, and productivity. Upgrade your contract management system today with Dock.

Ready to get started?
For more information, we welcome you to schedule a free demo with us today.

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The Role of Reporting in Contract Lifecycle Management | Dock 365 Blog

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Generating custom reports to share within your organization is key to staying on top of your contracts and to gaining the competitive advantage.

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To help you understand how to enhance your present contracting strategy, we've created some best practices below for you to peruse. Through process optimization and streamlining, you will be able to identify specific areas in your present workflow that may be improved upon to boost output and improve contract management outcomes.

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Top 10 Best Practices in Contract Management | Dock 365 Blog

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Smart contract management can help businesses save time, money, and stay efficient even in tough times. Here are our 10 best contract management practices.

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Top Legal Contract Management Software Features

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Top Legal Contract Management Software Features

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General counsel, paralegals, and other legal professionals frequently deal with large numbers of complex contracts. Effective legal contract management is critical to solving many of the issues that legal departments encounter in firms of all sizes.

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With legal contract management software, you can equip your employees with the best tools to optimize and streamline the legal contract lifecycle. In addition, you can count on reduced delays, risks, noncompliance, and increased organizational efficiency and productivity by leveraging a dedicated software platform.

An Overview of Legal Contract Management Software

With legal contract management software, your legal department can effectively manage all legal agreements and counterparty contracts. Overseeing the entirety of your legal contract lifecycles becomes a seamless process with the assistance of a software solution. Custom reporting, performance monitoring, automated contract workflows, and several other features (discussed in further detail below), make legal contract management that much easier. By centralizing and automating several of your company's legal agreements and contracts, you'll find a solution to many of the bottlenecks and inefficiencies that currently exist within your process.

In essence, legal contract management software is an intelligent solution utilized by thousands of legal professionals and general counsel to manage client and vendor contracts between parties, ensure properly negotiated renewals, enforce compliance, and improve the overall value of their organization. In this manner, you can capitalize on your ROI almost immediately by supporting your company's legal contract administration systems. In addition, improving communication and collaboration on a centralized platform is made entirely possible by these software solutions.

Standout Features of Legal Contract Management Software

One of the most powerful capabilities offered legal contract management software is the ability to easily submit legal contract requests. Your centralized software uses customizable intake forms that save client and vendor intake data for later use when drafting the legal agreement. Your contract request intake forms create a way to efficiently gather, review, store, and approve automated requests for contracts.

To add, your software comes equipped with automated legal contract workflows that route your contracts and associated documents to the right people at the right times, ensuring that all required actions are completed during the contract's lifecycle. Attaching files and converting legal contract requests into various file formats or into records is made easy with auto population capabilities so you can save time rather than of have to re-enter data manually. Version tracking, document monitoring tools, customizable alerts, and other features allow for your legal department to maintain accountability, visibility, and transparency in this step of legal contract management.

Considerably the largest advantage gained by legal contract management software is how contract requests can be standardized and systematized, which gives your vendors and customers a sense of familiarity and reliability when working with your organization. With simplified contract requesting, you will keep clients coming back.

Automating your legal contract authoring will help your company build compliant, accurate contracts rapidly. Contract automation gives users the ability to auto populate and merge data with pre-approved clauses. In addition, you can use contract templates, exportation features, and document versioning capabilities when drafting your agreements.

Contract negotiations are one of the most critical processes within legal contract management. Maintaining version control, utilizing redlining, and effectively collaborating and communicating on select documents is central to the success of paralegals, general counsel, and legal professionals when overseeing their contracts. Legal contract management software can help you to automate your contract negotiation processes with document version control and time stamping, where you will be able to maintain be correct version of each legal contract so that every stakeholder is on the same page.

Collaborating with counterparties is easy with simple download/upload capabilities for the most current versions of your contract drafts - ensuring that version control is effectively maintained. A unique and robust feature of legal contract management software is clause ownership. Assign owners to select clauses so that editing and approving of such clauses can be managed efficiently during the negotiation stage with a rules-based system. By customizing a rules-based strategy for your contract negotiations, you can have productive communication between your internal and external negotiating parties. Leveraging your automated contract workflows creates even more efficiency, where your legal contract stakeholders can receive notifications pertaining to the contract's status.

Within your collaboration portal, accessing and reviewing documents is simplified particularly for negotiating external parties and for your company's employees that do not have access to your legal contract management software solution. In this manner, these specific groups are able to edit the contracts specifically assigned to them. Negotiations can be made remarkably simple, with automated reminders and notifications regarding contract negotiations and approval so that relevant stakeholders can be notified instantly.

A successful contract lifecycle is dependent upon the execution and fulfillment of key legal contract obligations. Strategic legal contract management is made possible with automated workflows that allow you to oversee all of your contractual obligations. Within your workflows, you can enable automated notifications and reminders, and assign tasks to ensure that all actions are being completed in a timely and proactive manner. Using an obligations workflow, you can customize specific triggers pre- and post- contract execution when certain rules are met. With effective obligations management, you will encourage a proactive environment for your contracts so that everything is completed ahead of time.

Modern risk management, compliance, and auditing tools equip legal departments with the upper hand in terms of visibility of all of your company's contracts. Robust reporting capabilities and proactive deadline monitoring for automated renewals and contract expirations allows your business to seamlessly maintain compliance standards and ensure that unwanted contracts are not renewed automatically.

Your contract management dashboard allows you to see key insights of all of your contract lifecycles, on demand. Assess contract statuses and performance instantly and generate contract reports so you can strategize your next move. By leveraging the reporting capability, you can encourage communication and awareness throughout your company regarding obligations, upcoming deadlines, and various tasks.

Routinely create your reports and schedule them to be electronically distributed throughout your organization to keep everyone in the loop on key contract-related initiatives and business developments. Your electronic report generator gives your legal department the ability to build and configure customized report outlines for key contract data. Exporting your reports is effortless with numerous exportation file format options available within your software solution. To add, your comprehensive system has monitoring features for your finances, as well as advanced search and filtering functionalities for your legal team to use for payment and spending tracking and review.

Utilizing powerful risk management tools is crucial to maintaining a secure legal contract management system. Increase the accountability of your legal contract management team by developing risk scores so they can visibly see their performance in terms of risk feature utilization.

With these risk scores, you can analyze and assess your risk management strategies overtime organization-wide and develop improved processes as your business gross. Risk exposure tracking, risk mapping, and risk rating can help paralegals, general counsel, and legal contract management departments analyze how to move forward with specific contracts in a well-informed manner and action-driven manner.

Upgrade Your Legal Contract Management for Best Results!

With your new understanding of the many features that make legal contract management software such a standout solution for paralegals, general counsel, and legal professionals, it's plain to see that it's time for a legal contract management software solution suited for your company's unique goals and needs. With automated legal contract workflows, your company will effectively manage risk, reduce delays, and powerfully and productively oversee your large volume of highly complex contracts. The solution you need is Dock 365.

Dock 365 is equipped with all of the features and tools that your company needs to efficiently manage legal contract lifecycles in full. As a Microsoft partner, Dock 365 utilizes your Microsoft 365 and SharePoint infrastructure to assist your legal department and contract management team in all of your contract-related needs. With the assistance of a centralized contract repository, automated contract workflows, easy implementation, and a user-friendly software interface, Dock 365 is the best modern solution for the most powerful approach to legal contract management.

Don't waste any more time, resources, or money on a disjointed method of managing your legal contracts. Automate, centralize, and optimize your legal contract management system to increase results today with Dock 365.

Learn more about ourDock 365 Contract Management System here.

Learn more aboutContract Lifecyle Management (CLM) Software here.

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Top Legal Contract Management Software Features | Dock 365 Blog

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Legal contract management software is an excellent solution with powerful features for effortlessly managing legal agreements and contracts.

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Software solutions for managing contract renewals frequently offer complete contract lifecycle management capabilities in an easily scalable, user-friendly interface.

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A traditional method of contract lifecycle management relies heavily on manual processes to complete contract-related tasks and activities. In companies that work with a low volume of contracts, perhaps utilizing email reminders, spreadsheets, wet signatures, and other manual processes will not harm their productivity or increase risk substantially. However, in organizations that consistently work with high volumes of complex contracts, manual contract management is only bound to fail. Especially when considering the , you'll encounter several inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas of risk potential. Outdated methods of renewing contracts will complicate risk management, so we recommend leveraging a different strategy for your renewals. Let's discuss this in further detail so that you can increase your contract results, reduce risks, and gain control of your contracts with an optimized contract renewal management software platform. contract renewal process

An Overview of The Contract Renewal Process

Contract renewals are central to overall contract lifecycle management . It's necessary to ensure that you only renew contracts that are favorable to your organization's needs and objectives, and contract renewal management software can help you do just that with automated alerts and reminders. At the point within the contract lifecycle, the contract is nearing expiration. Based on contract terms, a counterparty can renew their contract or . Many contracts are configured for auto renewal, and with these contracts, it's imperative to review the contract a month in advance before the renewal is active. While auto renewals can increase efficiency and are time savvy, they can cause issues when unfavorable contracts are renewed. In this way, a well-functioning approach to renegotiate can help counterparties mitigate the risk of entering into certain contracts that are longer conducive to their needs. contract reviews

How Effective Contract Renewals Increase Opportunity

Contract renewals increase opportunity for your organization in a few ways. During the contract renewal stage of contract lifecycle management, counterparties can discuss their concerns with previous contracts and engage in renegotiations to achieve more favorable contract terms moving forward. Oftentimes, contracts will contain renewal provisions, however its important to be prepared well in advance by looking for standardized contract terms and clauses that could have been updated since the time of the initial contract execution . In addition, contract management teams should ensure that all services included in the contract still apply as well as review pricing and goals, as these items can be discussed during contract renewals.

Every company evolves with time in different ways, be it their products and services, budgets, or specific objectives and needs. Contract renewals allow contract stakeholders to improve contract terms in a manner that supports new goals and standards. Furthermore, renewals are the time where stakeholders can renegotiate terms, resulting in saved money, discounts, and improved contract performance. It's also important to keep in mind that even the most minor changes to a contract and lead to large effects on the quality of services of products provided within a given contract.

To maximize your contract renewal process, we suggest leveraging contract renewal management software to assist you and your team in reviewing contracts and in assessing the benefits and drawbacks of potential renewals. Contract renewal management software can help your reduce renewal times, helping your organization increase revenue, meet deliverables and obligations, improve risk management and security, cut costs, and capitalize upon business partnerships.

The Pain Points of A Manual Approach to Contract Renewals

To make the most of your contract renewals, developing an efficient renewal process can help your organization scale and increase contract results. Manual contract renewal methods inhibit your ability to maintain productivity and to renew the most favorable contracts. With spreadsheets, emails, and decentralized contract storage , you'll find that overseeing high volumes of contracts and appropriately managing their renegotiation dates and renewal terms is remarkably difficult. In a manual approach to contract renewals, you decrease the speed and transparency of your renewal process while increasing the possibility of missing important terms or clauses. Manual contract renewals take long amounts of time and several resources from your legal and finance departments to review. Manual contract renewals require even more time to follow-up with individuals who edited the contract prior to renewals. This step is taken to ensure that contract language, terms, and numbers are updated in a timely manner. The most important factor to consider when weighing the pros and cons of a manual contract renewal process versus an automated and software-supported contract renewal process is how a manual approach increases risk, missed opportunities, and a reduction in contract productivity.

Optimize With Contract Renewal Management Software

Instead of dealing with bottlenecks and headaches associated with manual contract renewals, you can leverage a software-supported approach that automates your renewal process. Reduce risk, increase productivity, and finally take control of your contract renewals with contract renewal management software.

The main benefit of contract renewal management software is the ability to support your renewals with contract automation. Contract automation allows organizations to leverage a standardized method to contract renewals that allows them to get more out every contract. An automated contract renewal process improves processes organization-wide. For example, with automated contract renewals, you minimize the need to send documents off to the legal department for review, allowing legal to spend more time and energy on risk management and other processes require their expertise.

Automated contract management can assist organizations by speeding up contract renewals with a proactive approach that can efficiently work through high contract volumes, ensuring every renewal is completed ahead of time with only the most favorable negotiation outcomes and minimized risks.

Contract renewal management software solutions can support organizations of any size in recognizing new opportunities during the contract renewal process. With contract renewal management software, your organization can assess these opportunities and keep contract stakeholders in the know, allowing for proactive decision-making and reviews. easy to implement Contract renewal management software solutions are often customizable, , and intuitive systems that include full contract lifecycle management capabilities. These systems can support your contract renewal process with the following features:

Notifications for upcoming auto renewals, contract expiration dates, milestones, and obligations

Heightened security systems, equipped with audit trails, permissions-based access , and more

Conclusion

Contract renewal management software will support your company in taking control of your contracts and in realizing opportunities for success. Streamline not only your contract renewals, but the entirety of your contract lifecycles today with Dock 365.

Learn more about our Dock 365 Contract Management System here .

Learn more about Contract Lifecyle Management (CLM) Software here .

For more information, we welcome you to schedule a free demo with us today .

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The Importance of Contract Renewal Management Software | Dock 365

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Contract renewal management software can assist organizations in mitigating risk, increasing productivity, and in renewing the most favorable contracts.

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How To Find the Best Contract Management Software for Your Business

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How To Find the Best Contract Management Software for Your Business

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Finding a contract management system that fits your company's demands and goals is essential if you want to optimize the long-term performance and expansion of your enterprise.

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To have the most success in the contract lifecycle management department of your business, it's important to find a method that works seamlessly while simultaneously developing and improving client and vendor relationships. To maximize the success and growth of your business in the long-term, finding a contract management system that aligns with your business's needs and objectives is crucial.

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To increase client retention, you must adhere to and stay compliant to every contract created. Additionally, you want to ensure that critical dates are not missed and are instead planned and prepared for ahead of time - think renewals and expirations. Due to the intricate and legal nature of contracts, developing an expert understanding of all the details pertaining to contract management is imperative if you want to conductcontract managementprocesses successfully within your business.

To increase client retention, it is very important that you have a contract management process that provides confidence, security, and keeps the client returning to your business. Start by asking yourself if you were the client, would you return to your business for your future contract management needs? Was the process efficient, seamless, and full of clear communication across all parties? Take an assessment of the current functionality of your current contract management system and identify where areas of improvement might exist.

If you handle contracts expertly with the client in mind, you will certainly increase client retention by providing a positive experience. A great way to ensure client happiness and to increase their satisfaction is by conducting contract management activities with efficiency, attention to detail, organization, and timeliness. If your contract management process is subpar, unorganized, and unnecessarily delayed, you risk bittering client relationships by breaking their trust and confidence in your system and operations.

However: You're in luck.

There are incredibly advanced tools to help you create the best possible solution for your unique business needs and goals. You can both improve your contract management process and your working relationships with clients and vendors. The#1 tool we recommend implementing iscontract management softwareto increase productivity, efficiency, and return on investment. If one of your many business goals is to increase client retention and acquisition, adopting a revolutionary contract management software will set you up for success.

What is contract management software?

Contract management softwareis software that designed for the management, storage, and tracking of contracts. Contract management softwarehelps businesses efficiently take contracts through each stage of the contract lifecycle. Additionally, contract management software is designed specifically for the various functions pertaining to legal contracts.

These functions include:

The best contract management software will streamline the entire process of managing contracts through their lifecycles while increasing internal collaboration and communication - making it an efficient process for your entire contract management team or department.
Contract management software simplifies; previous contract management methods tend to complicate.
Witha contract management solutionlike our Dock 365 Contract Management System, you can create an organized and methodical approach to your contract management process. You will improve client and vendor relationships by making the contracting process more efficient both for your team and for theirs, creating more confidence and trust in your practices. By using contract management software, you increase the likelihood of gaining more accuracy in your renewals and approvals while speeding up their rates.

According to Forrester, implementing contract management softwarecan reduce your contract approval time by an average of 82%.

Increasing the quantity of well-structured renewals and approvals can result in maximized client satisfaction, increased productivity, and decreased working stress within your business. By combining contract management software withcustomer relationship software, you can be fully aware of both your contracting processes and how your clients are responding to the way your systems are operating.

Why Contract Management Software is Essential to Your Business's Success

The modernization of today's contract management softwarehelps companies and industry leaders globally up-level and advance their contract managementsystems. By leveraging the capabilities of leading contract management software, you gain the upper hand on your competitors and outperform them with more efficiency and productivity. Contract management softwareallows you to automate workflows, making contract management software a game-changer for collaboration and communication.

It's interesting to note that today, it's common to measure a business's success by how and by if they incorporate automation in their day-to-day operations.

According to SalesForce, 81% of top IT professionals find that the percent of automated processes within an organization is a crucial KPI for the organization to track.

By introducing automation into your contract management processes, you can streamline contract lifecycles by creating smooth transitions for the contracts as they move in and out of the stages of their lifecycles. When regularly working with massive quantities ofmetadata, automated contract workflows can increase efficiency, accuracy, and timeliness of your contract lifecycle management processes - taking it to a whole new level.

9 Reasons Your Business Needs Contract Management Software with Contract Automation Capabilities

The contract management softwareyour business chooses should have automation features so you can completely transform your contract management process for the better. Maximize results, reduce risk, increase profits, and improve workplace efficiency with workflow automation-enabled contract management software.

In a study by Aberdeen Research, administrative costs of contracts reduce by 25%-30% by employing an automated contract management system.

Here are nine reasons your contract management software needs contract automation included:

1. Drastically increase efficiency and reduce cost

2. Filtered and customizable searches in a centralized repository

3. Draft contracts with customizable templates

4. Digital workflow automation

5. Automated reminders, alerts, and notifications

6. Increased visibility

7. ESignature integration

8. Conduct data analysis

9. Create custom reports

Contract Management Software Gives Your Business the Competitive Edge

Put your company ahead of your competitors by leveraging all the features of our Dock 365 Contract Management Software.

Here are 20 advantages of implementing our software solution:

1. Ensure organization

2. Improve client acquisition, retention, and satisfaction

3. Increase time-efficiency

4. Contract template library

5. Clause library

6. Effectively manage high contract volumes

7. Reduction in human error

8. Utilize real-time updates

9. Improve accuracy and speed of contract renewals,approvals, andproposals

10. Automate workflows and tasks

11. Sort documents and contracts in a centralized repository

12. Improve contract collaboration

13. Employ thecustom filtered searchfunction

14. Create more accurate reports

15. Conduct detaileddata analysis

16. Contract archiving andtracking

17. Microsoft 365 and SharePoint integrations

18. Sertifi ESignature integration

19. Increased security

20. Single Sign-On (SSO) feature

Conclusion

Contract management softwareoffers numerous benefits to your company. With such software, you can allocate your time and resources in a manner more conducive to achieving business objectives. Reduce turnaround times and increase client satisfaction and trust with improved contract lifecycle management by way of contract management software. Choosing to adopt contract management software is easy - the advantages are rather undeniable.

OurDock 365 Contract Management Systemtakes your business's needs and goals seriously, and we will work with you to create a unique solution designed specifically for your business.

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How To Find the Best Contract Management Software for Your Business | Dock365 Blog

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To have the most success in the contract lifecycle management department of your business, it's important to find a method that works seamlessly while simultaneously developing and improving client and vendor relationships. To maximize the success and growth of your business in the long-term, finding a contract management system that aligns with your business's needs and objectives is crucial.

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Common Challenges When Implementing Contract Management Software

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Common Challenges When Implementing Contract Management Software

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Understanding potential issues you can run into when implementing contract management software adoption is essential to increasing the likelihood of a seamless and informed transition for your company.

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To increase the likelihood of a smooth and well-informed transition for your business, it is necessary to understand potential pitfalls you might encounter in the implementation stage of adopting contract management software.

Challenge 1: Taking the Implementation Stage Too Fast

New challenges will be presented to your business and employees when learning a new contract management software system. By setting the intent of having all divisions of your company on the same page with your new software, it can create an easy, efficient transition for everyone.

Due to the nature of contracts, there will be varied needs and approval requirements across different sectors of your business. When designing your system based on your contract management software, be sure to make appropriate changes that are conducive to the various divisions within your business. An employee in licensing will approach the contract workflow differently than an employee in marketing or sales, for example (Thomson Reuters).

When presenting the software to each of your company's teams, take the time to receive feedback team-by-team. We also recommend that you ensure that the business objectives by implementing the software are correctly comprehended by employees. With proper expectations set within each division of your company, it will set each team up to successfully begin using the software. When working with each division, it is necessary for the implementation specialist(s) to understand the dynamics of company culture to establish trust.

Challenge 2: Misunderstanding by the Business User of Modern-day Contract Management

Prior to adopting a digital contract management system, we recommend taking an assessment of how contract management has shifted and changed in the modern-day. By understanding the needs and deficits in your current system, you can gain a greater understanding of how new software can fill those needs.

Consider asking yourself the following questions regarding your current system and its areas for improvement:

1. Is our current contract-creation process time-efficient?

2. Are there disorganized or disjointed system faults that lead to time-consuming approval rates?

3. Would our system benefit by adding or reducing a single step?

4. Are there any bottlenecks in our current process?

5. Does our system accurately track due dates in an orderly manner?

6. Is there room for growth and improvement in our contract activities and templates?

7. Where does automation fit best within our current contract management system/process?

8. Do our current systems, filing procedures, spreadsheets, etc. work as effectively and efficiently as possible?

9. Are there new tools that would benefit our contract management system?

10. Are there tools we no longer need?

11. In what ways will implementing contract management software be a catalyst to new practices that will improve our current system?

Challenge 3: Automating Individualized Contracts Rather than Repeatable, Formularized Contracts

Contract management software can benefit your business due to its efficiency, flexibility, and predictability. To reap these benefits, it is imperative to automate contracts that are used most.

When you initially add contract management software, you are given permissions to add rules that will manipulate different types of contracts in a specified manner. Items such as the type of contract, approvals required, origin, financials, and order of contract workflow will determine how the contract is managed within the system (Whittaker, 2018).

Contracts that should be designed on a case-by-case basis will include one or more of the following characteristics:

Highly negotiable

Contains impactful and significant corporate actions

Saturated in legal language

Requires multiple reviews prior to approval status

Challenge 4: Failure by the Implementation Specialist to Plan for Continued Help and Change Management

As a business user begins using the system and becoming familiar with its processes, it is the implementation specialist's responsibility to plan for need for continued help, change management, and needs of the business user. Businesses select contract management systems to increase their contract management efficiency and productivity.

Implementation specialists should do two things: create two-way problem solving and offer extra support when requested. Business users have valuable feedback to provide implementation specialists that can offer the chance to improve system functionality (Agarwal, 2020).

If you adopt a contract management software system and encounter issues, you might find yourself either (a) scheduling a retraining session, or (b) calling IT. An experienced and solutions-focused implementation specialist or team will be a professional at following-through with your questions when you experience issues with the software. Implementation specialists should train certain company employees on the software so they that can take-on questions their co-workers might face on a typical workday. Implementation specialists can also provide a system support desk at a consistent time daily to aid business users on a same-day basis.

Challenge 5: Ineffective Communication Between the Implementation Specialist and the Business Owner

What leads to problems and breakdowns in communication between these two parties?

Excluding the business user when employing contract management software creates deficits in the user's understanding of day-to-day contract management processes

Failure of the implementation specialist or contract manager to communicate the benefits of implementing a contract management system to the business user

Misunderstanding of workflows and the stepwise process of managing contracts within a new, digital format

Inaccessibility of standard contracts, contract language, and clauses during the contract-creation phase to ensure company security and quality contract-creation

Challenge 6: Failure to End the Refining Process of System Implementation

The best remedy to this issue is goal setting. Set a specific, time-bound goal of a calendar date to take the contract management software system live.

Contract management software systems ultimately fail at the implementation step because of continual refining and unrealistic expectations. We recommend you focus on the big picture of system performance, rather than automating an exceptional number of conditional contracts or lengthy approval processes. Unrealistic expectations of a demanding system that can handle all contract types presents several roadblocks to the implementation strategy.

Our recommendation is to implement contract management software in specific phases to ensure optimal functionality company-wide. This might look like automating a specific contract type or automating a contract management process based on individual business departments.

Conclusion

Keeping these six challenges in mind can prepare you in your implementation strategy of contract management software. Understanding these challenges can also help you know what to expect from the implementation specialist during this stage.

By having a solution-focused effort between the business user and the implementation specialist, you can ensure success when you undergo the transition to managing contracts in an electronic repository with your contract management software. The success of a contract management software system is dependent upon the efforts and strategy used in the implementation stage.

All in all, the end goal is to have a properly functioning system in place that provides ease and efficiency in your company's contract management processes. Effective implementation ensures that all departments will have familiarity and an understanding of the software - providing them the ability to go to the appropriate resources for troubleshooting when needed. Contract management software serves to provide great value to any contract management team, especially when the switch to the software is a particularly smooth one.

References

Agarwal, M. (2020, January 8). Why do contract management tools fail? https://journal.iaccm.com/contracting-excellence-journal/why-do-contract-management-tools-fail.

Thomson Reuters. (n.d.). How to develop and implement a new contract management system. How to develop and implement a new contract management system | Thomson Reuters. https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/insights/articles/how-to-develop-and-implement-a-new-contract-management-system.

Whittaker, D. (2018, October 12). The Top 5 Mistakes Companies Make Implementing Contract Management Software. Corridor Company. https://www.corridorcompany.com/blog/the-top-5-mistakes-companies-make-implementing-contract-management-software.

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Common Challenges in Contract Management Software Implementation

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Understanding the possible challenges you may face when implementing contract management software will prepare you and your team for a smooth transition.

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A comprehensive and secure approach to contract lifecycle management in any business or organization must include contract risk management as one of its most important components. You may reduce your concerns about possible hazards and increase your prospects by strengthening your contract risk management.

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Contract risk management is one of the most critical functions of a successful and secure approach to contract lifecycle management in any business or organization. By improving your contract risk management, you open yourself up to incredible opportunities by minimizing the fears of potential risks.

Before learning about our contract risk management checklist, we'd like to inform you of different types of contract risk to be aware of.

4 Contract Risk Types

To effectively manage the potential risks that your contracts may encounter, your team needs to have the knowledge that supports them in pinpointing when these risks are present.

Legal Risk

Legal contract risks occur when there is a breach of contract that results in possible litigation or legal action. There are a couple subcategories of legal risks as well, and they include dispute, regulatory, and contract noncompliance risks. In the context of contract risk management, legal risks might arise when contracted obligations are left unfulfilled or when regulatory and industry-based compliance policies are not adhered to. Other actions that increase legal risk include infringements of intellectual property, contract conflicts and disputes, inappropriate use (or lack thereof) of legal clauses in contracts, and disclosures of confidentiality.
Learn about the top legal contract management features here.
Financial Risks

Financial risks are contract management risks that coincide with monetary losses, irrespective of the effect it may have on your organization's bottom line. In light of contract management, these financial risks are often caused by forgotten deadlines and key dates (i.e., contract expiry and auto renewal dates) leading to the continuation of an unfavorable contract due by forgetting to terminate a contract prior to autorenewal or by failed business partnerships. Financial risks are also often referred to as equity and credit risks. Another way that financial risk increases is through contract termination with coinciding milestones, warranty issues, and delivery dates that are missed and left unfulfilled.

Brand Risks

A brand risk refers to the risks associated with poor customer reviews, pessimistic employee morale, and negative public opinion. Brand risks typically occur after problems associated with security, legal, and finance. Eliminating brand risks is essential, especially given how fast a negative review can travel through social media. So be sure to take your brand's reputation seriously by managing brand risk appropriately, as the detrimental effects of a damaged reputation can wreak havoc on the financial performance of your contract strategy.

Security Risks

Security risks are associated with some of the most detrimental repercussions for your business or organization. Security breaches in the context of contracts lead to added legal and brand challenges. Risks in contract security arise when you leverage a manual approach to contract managementand storage by storing contracts in several places that lack security (i.e., filing cabinets, physical copies of contracts, shared drives, computer desktops, email chains, etc.). Other scenarios that increase contract risk include the following: even levels of contract access within your organization (a lack of role-based access control), unencrypted data in transit and at rest, communicating and collaborating on contracts via email.
Learn more about leading security features in contract management software here.
It's evident that contract risk management should be prioritized to protect your business from the negative financial and reputational repercussions of risk-prone contracting. Your approach to contract risk management should be standardized, continual, and detail oriented. We recommend reviewing your contract clauses throughout the year each quarter to ensure they are accurate, compliant, and still appropriate for your contracts with current business partners. After evaluating and pinpointing the contract risks that exist within your practices, your team can then work to eliminate and significantly reduce these risks.

Contract Risk Management Checklist

Ready for a step-by-step guide to better manage contract risks? Take a look at the checklist below to support your team throughout the process of managing contract risks.

#1 Locate contract risk management problems throughout every department

We recommend having select individuals in every department (i.e., operations, legal, finance, procurement, etc.) involved in contract lifecycle management to examine every contract for potential risks. Contract management software can greatly assist your team in task and obligations management, standardization of the contract lifecycle, task assignments, and secure contract storage.

#2 Estimate the likelihood of potential challenges in contract risk management

Assess where contract risks are present as well as the likelihood of them occurring. Then notate the consequences associated with these risks.

#3 Employ risk defense strategies

Establish an acceptable risk threshold to filter out the higher-level risks to reject throughout the contract lifecycle.

#4 Actively reduce risk

Review your clientele and vendors. Select the ones below your threshold for acceptable risk, then choose projects that make sense from a financial and legal perspective.

#5 Outsource

Share risk by outsourcing or subcontracting with an expert in risk management. The support of an expert can support your organization in corroborating your due diligence.

#6 Manage risk by using insurance

Control contract risks by confining possible losses with an insurance plan.

#7 Use clauses to transfer, eliminate, or bear risks

Build new compliant contract clauses or modify your current ones for improved accuracy. With a library full of compliant and preapproved clauses, you can successfully mitigate potential contract risks. Here at Dock, we offer unlimited contract storage, contract templates, and clause template libraries.

#8 Neutralize risks

Neutralize contract risks by confirming that every party to a contract accepts the proposed contract clauses, then modify the clauses on a case-by-case basis.

#9 Monitor risks

Configure your contract management software with automated reminders and alerts to keep your whole team up to date on upcoming key dates and deadlines (i.e., milestones, auto renewal dates, contract expiry dates, etc.) so you can prepare ahead and get the best deals possible while cutting down on potential risks. Email notifications and customizable calendar reminders will support cross-department communication and collaboration throughout the contract lifecycle.

#10 Use accurate, compliant contracts and provisions

It's essential to both create and useyour compliant and legally accurate clauses and contracts. This will lead to standardization in your resulting contracts, which cuts down on risk potential. Comprehensive preapproved contract templateand clause libraries increase efficiency, speed, and risk management within every contract lifecycle. In addition, we recommend employing custom reporting features provided by your contract management software to reduce inaccuracies in contract language.

Conclusion

Risks exist in nearly every activity. However, it doesn't have to be this way with your company's contract lifecycle management. It's possible to reduce risk and increase results by employing a detailed and intentional contract risk management strategy. In this manner, you work within acceptable risk thresholds and create an approach to minimize detrimental impacts and financial losses. With intuitive, cloud-secure contract lifecycle management (CLM) software, you can design a unique risk management strategy to support your business or organization.

Our Dock 365 Contract Management System is built on your existing Microsoft Office 365 environment for streamlined adoption and implementation. Leverage automated reminders to never forget about contract expiry and auto renewal dates, store contracts securely in a searchable, cloud-based SharePoint contract repository, and remove tension from your legal department with contract management made easy.
Learn more about our Learn more about For more information, we would like to welcome you to schedule a free demo with us today. Contract Lifecyle Management (CLM) Software here.Dock 365 Contract Management System here.

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A Contract Risk Management Checklist & 4 Common Types of Contract Risk

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Ready to improve your contract risk management strategy within your organization's contract lifecycle management? Take a look at this step-by-step guide.

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To help you identify exactly how to improve upon your existing contracting process, we have prepared the best practices listed below for you to peruse. In order to boost productivity and contract management outcomes, you'll be able to identify specific areas within your present process that can be streamlined and optimized.

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Top 10 Best Practices in Contract Management | Dock 365 Blog

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Smart contract management can help businesses save time, money, and stay efficient even in tough times. Here are our 10 best contract management practices.

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Small business contract management software

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Small business contract management software

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Contract administration is not usually given top priority by small companies. Small businesses would naturally prioritize developing strong relationships with customers and carrying out essential tasks. But you must first prepare by implementing a specific contract management strategy if you want to grow your small business successfully.

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Contract Management Software for Small Businesses - CMS | Dock 365

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Dock 365 makes it easier to handle contract workflows & challenges. Powered by Microsoft 365, our Contract Management Software for small businesses here!

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Whether you're closing a deal or developing an agreement, a contract serves to lay the foundation for the rights of each party, as well as what they are contractually obligated to deliver upon.

While contracts vary in scope, term length, and party involvement, every contract must include the following six required elements:

With the presence of these six requirements, a document goes from an abstract agreement to a legally binding contract. If you miss one of these requirements, your contract may fail to be enforced by law.

1. Offer

Every contract begins with an offer, encompassing the responsibilities of each party and the exchange of a product, good, or service. An offer exists once the requesting party receives the offer, but keep in mind, the offer can be modified and even terminated prior to acceptance. The party extending the offer can also provide a counteroffer. In this case, the beginning offer is canceled and the parties will negotiate a different result.

2. Acceptance

After an offer is provided, the recipient can accept or reject the offer. In the case the recipient desires to accept the offer, they can make their acceptance known via verbal acceptance or written acceptance. In the context of a counteroffer, the counteroffer serves as a termination of the initial offer. However, some scenarios allow a conditional acceptance where new conditions are considered valid so long as the conditions are made clearly known to each party.

Failing to act upon the offer does not mean the offer is accepted, and contract acceptance must be clear to each party. An acceptance will demonstrate the willingness of one party to follow contracted terms and conditions. Each offer will contain parameters and actions that determine an official acceptance. In order for an offer to be accepted, the offeree must have awareness of exactly what is contained in the offer. The offeree must also demonstrate their intention to formally accept the offer, and then they must express the acceptance in accordance with the guidelines provided in the offer.

Learn how to build accurate and complaint contracts with the assistance of a contract template libraryand a library full of preapproved clauses by reading these blogs.

3. Signatory Awareness

To consider a contract valid in a court of law, each party must be fully aware of the intent to enter in the agreement. Each party must be a willing and active participant to the contract at hand, recognizing the existence of the contract and agreeing to be legally bound to the containing obligations and responsibilities.

In the case that signatory awareness is not clearly established, then a contract can be voided. If one party signs a contract under circumstances that compromise their awareness, then the agreement will be discarded and invalidated. To prevent against this phenomenon, it's essential that each party entering the contract ensures that they establish a mutual and consensual agreement to the contents of the contract.

Basically, know what you're getting into before signing the dotted line.
To learn more about the benefits of adopting an electronic signature solution into your contract management strategy, clickhere.
4. Consideration

In the context of contracts, consideration includes an agreed value (item, action, etc.) Some common examples of contractual consideration are services and property. It's also necessary to understand that a financial element is not required for valid contract consideration, and simply agreeing to the exchange of products or services meets the legal requirements of consideration. The most important factor to keep in mind is that consideration includes a mutually agreed upon value between the contract's signatories.

5. Capacity

The signing party must sign the agreement without signing off their rights. This means that according to contract law, each signer must understand the terms, consequences, and responsibilities of each contract prior to signing. This understanding is known as the "legal capacity" of the signatory - a requirement of any contract to be considered valid.

People who might not possess legal capacity include the following:

Minors

Individuals with brain disorders

Individuals under the influence

Individuals who fail to understand contractual language

There are a few steps that can be taken to support these individuals on a case-by-case basis. For example, the court may appoint a representative to assist a minor.

6. Legality

Every contract is subject to the laws and regulations of the jurisdiction they are located in, including laws on the local, state, and federal level. If an agreement does not align with local laws for example, the contract will not be considered legally valid. However, the legality principle is very nuanced. Contracts must adhere to the laws within the jurisdiction of where the contract is signed. And if federal and state laws clash, then the Constitution's Contract Clause will guide the contract in question.

There are a few scenarios that invalidate a contract's legality:

Duress and misrepresentation - when a contract party signs the agreement as a result of threats or coercion

Unconscionability - when a contract's outcome initiates unfair obligations and consequences that create a sense of shock within the court

Illegality - when a contract threatens public wellbeing

Mistake - when a contractual error impacts obligations that each party initially agreed upon

Force Majeure - when conditions extend past the control of each party, resulting in the failure to deliver upon contractual obligations because it's simply impossible to do so

To learn more about the importance of an efficient contract intake and request process for your legal department, clickhere.
Bonus: Mutuality

Mutuality refers to the manner in which each party agrees to being legally bound to carrying-out the obligations contracted to them. Without mutuality of parties, then the law determines that neither party can be held legally responsible to the agreement. Both parties must be bound to the contract to ensure that the agreement isn't one-sided. A contract without the element of mutuality will be considered void.

This is particularly critical when one party to the contract isn't provided the opportunity to terminate and cancel the contract. In some of these scenarios, one party can fulfill their contracted obligations without taking away the opportunity for the other party to perform upon contracted requirements. The court oftentimes voids these contracts, as they fail to contain mutuality of contracted obligation. In order to prevent your contract from being considered invalid due to a lack of mutuality, then you should take steps to restrict each party's ability to void the agreement.

Conclusion

Contracts are an essential tool for any business. In this way, it's critical that you establish legally valid contracts with clearly defined responsibilities and terms, ensuring that each party is willing and able to enter agreements with a clear conscience. We recommend reviewing your contracts through the lens of theses six required contract elements to support you in developing legally valid and enforceable agreements.
For more information, we would like to welcome you to schedule a free demo with us today.

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What is Required in a Contract? 6 Elements of a Contract | Blog

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Do you have trouble creating contracts that are valid in a court of law? Then refresh your memory of the essentials when it comes to contract creation.

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Modern and groundbreaking technical breakthroughs have radically transformed the contract management game. Contract management software is a strong tool that may relieve all of your contract-related stress and make managing lifecycles orderly and simple.

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It's time to start thinking about the tools you're using in your organization's contract management processes. Consider the results you are currently receiving from your contract management system. Is there room for improvement? Perhaps transitioning to Dock's Contract Management System is the right move for you.

Contract management software is an important part of any business. If your contract maintenance software isn't making contract lifecycle management easy for your company, now might be the time to start looking for a new one. To help you with that, we have developed a list of a comprehensive list of 18 of the most "must-have" features for a contract management system.

Easy-to-Use Dashboard

With a contract management system, having a clean, easy-to-understand dashboard doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be effective; it is, however, a pretty good indication. Users need to be able to log into your solution and get a grasp of what they should be doing. You need a CMS that provides users with a home dashboard that shows an overview of the important information they need. This includes data such as the number of active contracts, the total value, and which contracts are expiring soon. All of this is important so users can know what needs their attention so they can jump into doing their work.

Our well-designed and user-friendly dashboard offers you instant contract insights on demand. Analyzing data and reports in real-time is simple, allowing you to stay in the loop on every detail. An easy-to-use dashboard is a helpful tool that allows you to optimize and appropriately plan ahead in all of your contract management operations.

Intuitive Configuration

Does your contract management solution require custom code development every time you want to create new workflows, rules, and fields? Effective contract management solutions will allow super-users to quickly change and configure the application to a new business process, avoiding the need for code changes.

New challenges will be presented to your business and employees when learning a new contract management software system. By setting the intent of having all divisions of your company on the same page with your new software, it can create an easy, efficient transition to contract management software for everyone.

Central Contract Repository

The organization is key for effectively managing all of the different contracts your company works with through their lifecycles. Previous contract management methods utilized physical storage and files for contracts and related documents - a method with a high potential for contract and data loss, misplacement, and tampering. One of the best ways to organize contractual agreements is to use a contract management system with a central contract repository. This offers users quick and easy access to contracts and contracts data. Your team can now spend less time searching through OneDrives and email inboxes and more time working with contracts. This allows users - and your organization by extension - to be faster and more flexible in the work they do.

By leveraging a SharePoint-based contract repository, your business will effectively increase productivity, organization, and visibility within its contract lifecycle management processes. Our central repository allows you to easily conduct customizable, filtered searches so you can find any contract or clause within minutes. We will discuss this function a bit more in-depth below.

Document Storage and Organization

Contract management goes beyond just the contracts you're working with. It also extends to the documents surrounding the contracts you and your team are working on. This includes things like the Scope of Work (SOW), schedules, cost estimates, and more. It's important that users be able to easily find and work on them. A contract maintenance system that helps you sort and organize your associated documents can be a great help. You should really look for one that allows you to store documents under the contract listing and not just in a document library. This way, you can make finding important contract documents a cinch.

OCR / AI

Depending on what your organization does, you might be working with anywhere from a dozen to hundreds of contracts. It's important that you be able to sort through all of these and find the contracts you're looking for. The latest contract management software has OCR capabilities. OCR stands for optical character recognition. OCR is used when scanning documents into a database. The process involves two basic steps. First, scan a paper document into a computer system. Second, use the data in the document in the same way that a non-scanned document or a saved file on a computer can be used. Edit the scanned document, search, copy, and more.

This is a game-changer for document scanning and for contract management software. The ability of OCR to pull characters, words, phrases, etc. from a document and place them into a database that can be searched later is an example of artificial intelligence (AI) in contract management software. OCR uses AI to perform this cataloging of data from a document to a database in milliseconds. No more scrolling through pages and pages of contracts. Instead, a CMS with search capabilities and OCR can allow you to search for the exact contract and save time. This is certainly a must-have for any company looking to streamline contract life cycle management.

Automated Alerts

It's important that you and your users are up to date with important updates about your contracts. Whether it's about key terms, obligations, or expiration, you need to be in the loop. That's why you need to find a contract management system that is going to alert your users at important times and dates. With automated reminders, alerts, and notifications, you can create increased organizational awareness of critical deadlines, such as renewals and expiry dates. Now, you can enable customized reminder flows to keep the right people in the know. This way, you don't risk running into compliance issues from not fulfilling an obligation or not being prepared as a contract expires. Instead, you'll be fully aware and prepared to take whatever actions are necessary to ensure a smooth contract management process.

Monitoring and Reporting

Just like you want to know what's going on in each of your contracts individually, you also want to be able to know the status of your contracts overall. It's important to know whether your contract management process is healthy and working properly. That's why you need a contract management system that monitors and reports that. The CMS allows your team to manage master service agreements, the value of contracts and complex contractual hierarchies to give you a holistic view of all deals across the entire organization.

With a well-designed digital contract management dashboard, you can analyze reports and data in real time so you can stay up to date on every single detail. You can measure the progress of contract lifecycles and assess where changes need to be made. A clear and customizable reporting facility in your contract management software allows you to identify and mitigate risk as well as understand the results of your current contract management processes. Any system that doesn't offer that isn't worth your time.

Version tracking

Every single change to each document is notated and stored withindigital contract management software. In this way, you can collaborate effectively and know who made changes to which document and at what exact times the changes were applied. Version tracking is an additional way to mitigate risk because it safeguards against losing or duplicating data.

Contracts are often edited several times over, so version tracking helps you gain awareness of the various interactions on a specific document or contract. With several people and several changes involved in a single document, gaining insight into the changes made is critical to contract and data accuracy. Contract management software provides a solution to your version control needs during the negotiation process. With version control tools, you can redline, approve, and review documents within your contract management system so you can maintain cohesion and accuracy.

E-Signature Integration

Digital is the way of the future - something that's especially true for the contract management process. The old ways of gathering approvals and signatures are too slow. You need a system that makes it easy for executives and leaders to sign off on contracts and important documents.

Ensure quick and secure contract execution with a contract management system that easily integrates with e-signature solutions such as DocuSign, Adobe Sign, Sertifi, and other electronic signature platforms. This is a fast way to get important figures' consent on contracts and documents. Not only that, but it provides plenty of benefits including security, verification, and full audit capabilities for your business.

Streamlined contract intake and requests

The contract intake and request step is very important to the rest of the contract's lifecycle. By developing a standardized contract intake and request process, you will greatly benefit your contract management system. Email-based contract intake and requests are very inefficient and increase risk.

Customizable contract request forms document all important data prior to launching an automated workflow. Without a well-organized intake and request step, you may miss out on potential leads and encounter delays, bottlenecks, and other errors. To maximize returns and build client and vendor relationships best, we recommend taking a look at how your current contract intake and requests process functions and then considering all the improvements you can make with the help of specializeddigital contract management software.

Templating Capability

Creating documents from scratch takes time. You have to dig through them with a fine toothcomb to make sure that you've found any mistakes or issues in the contract. That's why your business should look for a contract management system that can help you move away from this. A CMS system that makes it easy for your company to create and use templates for your contracts can do a lot for your business. Instead of spending time building and tweaking a contract, you can plug the important information into your templates and get going. This is a fast, efficient, and must-have feature you should expect from your CMS provider.

Not only are contract templates and preapproved clause libraries time and cost-efficient, but these revolutionary features also offer a phenomenal risk mitigative advantage in terms of contract administration software. For example, having preapproved, standardized clauses available for rapid and accurate contract building allow you to develop contracts that decrease liabilities and increase compliance.

Automated Workflows

Human error is one of the biggest issues that comes up in the contract management process. That's why you need to be on the lookout for as many ways to remove the human element as possible. A contract management system with automated workflows is the best way to do that. Instead of employees manually notifying an approver when a contract needs to be signed, a CMS with workflows will send a notification without the employee having to remember. This can help with any issues with people forgetting aspects of the process and eliminate any handoff gaps you may be having.

Now, your business can use time and resources intelligently with the help of flexible and customizable automated contract workflows. These workflows guide each step with contract lifecycles, allowing you to allocate more manual labor toward other strategic initiatives. Within an automated workflow, a digital contract is sent through a sequence of predetermined steps, notifying select stakeholders along the way of specific and timely actions to take according to the document in question. Workflows can be applied to a single contract or a group of contracts within your cloud-based, centralized repository. Make contract planning, reviews, negotiations, and execution simple with numerous settings available for each flow.

Tool Integration

As we move, it's important that our tools be as modular and flexible as possible. To that end, you need tools that can connect and work with your other tools. A contract management system that doesn't talk to your other solutions ends up wasting more time than it saves. That's why you need to find a CMS that allows you to integrate any internal or third-party tools that you're using.

Integrating with single sign-on (SSO) environments such as company intranets and enterprise content management/knowledge management systems allow end users to have all their tools and solutions in one place. In this way, your organization can streamline workflows and processes by making it easy for users to connect their preexisting business accounts. Contract management software also seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Business Central, Salesforce CRM, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM to facilitate efficient business operations. That way, you can ensure that your data is the same across all platforms. This lets you move seamlessly from platform to platform without having to worry about any issues or discrepancies.

Manageable Deployment

Time Digital projects can prove to be complex and challenging, especially when delayed by lengthy deployment times. Inflexible contract management software that requires technical resources to configure can prolong projects and put them at risk. We suggest looking for a highly configurable and flexible solution that allows you to deploy in weeks rather than months. Dock's Contract Management System can be implemented in one week, saving time, money, and headaches.

Access Permissions Controls

Contract management system administrators (admins) control access to contracts. There are three levels of access:

Owners Group (Full control)

Members Group (Limited control)

Visitors Group (Read-only)

Admins or owners have full control of all settings and uses of the contract management software and can allocate which other individuals or groups can also have full control. Full control users can edit settings such as which data fields will appear on reports, the types of workflows that can be available for other contract management system users, who have E-sign privileges, and more.

Limited control options are governed by those with full control and have edit permission. A typical example of a contract management system user with limited control is the ability to add documents to the contract repository, edit or redline contracts, assign tasks to other users, etc. Limited control users in contract management software can execute every action that a site owner can, except delete a contract/party or access the settings option.

While the C-suite executives, legal counsel, and regional VPs will usually have full control of the organization's contract management software, position holders with limited control may be department managers, team leads, and supply chain personnel that interact with vendors or customers to create contract requests to be approved by managers with full control access. Contract management system users with read-only access or visitors group may consist of new trainees, prospective clients, or third parties. Read-only users can view documents, but only with temporary access granted by a contract management system user with full control.

Unlimited User Support

One of the key considerations when selecting a contract lifecycle management software platform is the level of user support provided. If the software requires hefty amounts of resources and time during implementation, the software provider should most definitely help with the beginning process. The best CLM software providers will go the extra mile to ensure your company's success when adopting their solution.

For example, here at Dock, we help to import your data into your customized Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams environments so your entire team can make an easy, seamless transition to our CLM system - at no added cost. We recommend using a software provider that also provides unlimited, complimentary training so that all of your employees can get a handle on the software. Being able to successfully adopt the software is critical, so software providers should be more than willing to train your employees for free.

Advanced Security Capabilities

Secure contract storage is an absolute must-have to protect your business from risks and security breaches. With a cloud-based contract lifecycle management (CLM) system, you're going to want to look for how the software provider protects sensitive data by ensuring there are sufficient security features like data encryption and permissions-based accessibility. Audit trails and electronic signature integrations are additional features that can help keep your contracts and client and vendor information protected. When looking for CLM software, ask about backups, data recovery, intrusion detection, and other features so you can keep your company data safe from cyber security attacks.

Analyze data with audit trails

With a centralized contract repository, you can audit your agreements and contracts. Audit trails allow you to assess compliance and stay aware of organization policies so you can ensure every decision made is the correct one. These audit trails are especially helpful for reviewing contract history so you can stay fully aware and engaged. Audit trails are key for maintaining visibility and transparency in your contract management processes.

Conclusion

Contract management isn't a fun process, but that doesn't mean it has to be a hard process. One of the best ways to make the contract management process manageable is to use a modern, intuitive contract management system that fits your needs. Make sure to look for the features above and you'll be on your way to finding a system that can help you take your business to the next level.

If you have any questions about contract management systems, or you're interested in booking a demo of Dock's Contract administration software, fill out the form to the right to schedule a free, 30-minute demo with our team. We'd love to answer any questions you may have and show you how our system can revolutionize your contract management process.

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18 Must-Have Features For A Contract Management System | Dock 365 Blog

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Contract management software is a powerful tool. Find out what features you should expect from your contract management system (CMS) through our blog!

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The contract renewal phase is one of the most significant phases of the contract lifecycle because it determines whether you capitalize on opportunities to extend positive contracts or cancel unfavorable contracts in a timely way.

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Companies of all sizes rely on contracts to ensure that essential business operations and activities are successfully completed and accounted for while maintaining accuracy and compliance to industry standards. A business partnership typically involves a contract to outline the parameters and expectations of each party regarding the exchange of goods, products, or services.

In contractual relationships with customers and suppliers, once the agreement term comes to a close, the contract requires renewal. Businesses must ensure that appropriate contracts are renewed to confirm that obligations with their counterparties (be it a client, service provider, or supplier) are protected legally.

Increasing the Efficiency of Your Contract Renewal Process

First, we recommend adopting a contract management software solution to support you throughout the contract renewal phase of the contract lifecycle. A software-supported approach will assist you in monitoringcontractual terms and in overseeing the status of your approvals. Additionally, you can configure customizable alerts and notifications within your contract management software to stay in the know of upcoming auto renewal dates and contracts with nearing renewal dates. Your software can also remind you of the expiration date of a contract and the end of a contract's term. To build efficiency in your contract renewal process, we recommend delegating specific employees to complete tasks within the renewal workflow.

When you go about renewing your contracts, ensure that communication is clear and that expectations are understood amongst everyone involved to prevent bottlenecks pertaining to billing and obligations. We recommend reviewing standardized terms and clauses that should be added during the renewal, ensuring that they are added appropriately. Tag these new terms and clauses so they receive appropriate treatment and approval.

The Purpose of a Contract Renewal

Contract renewal is a normal part of business operations, as they ensure that adjustments are made in accordance with changes in business with the client at hand. With a contract renewal, you also eliminate services that your parties can do without. This is necessary to match what is being used by the client with what they are purchasing. When developing the new contract in your contract renewal, you should clearly address any issues that existed in the previous contract. Do you need to increase the specificity of your contract terms? Use contract renewal as an opportunity to review your pricing scheme and communicate any pricing updates to your clients. Take the time to review if you should perhaps reduce your rates and modify your pricing more competitively as you enter a new contract term. To main aim here is increase the value of your contracts by developing a high-performance approach too renewing the most favorable agreements. Contract renewals should be reliable, consistent, easy to administer, and cost-efficient.

Prior to Signing A Contract...

Before you sign a contract, read and reread the fine details and print to confirm that the document aligns with all negotiated terms. Seek help from legal professionals to gain clarification if needed. Ensure that the contract is complete, with no empty spaces, as this could invalidate the document. Once a contract has completed its lifecycle, the contract will either be terminated, renegotiated, or renewed. In the case that the signing party wishes to end their contract, both parties must agree to terminate their contracts. In the scenario that a contract is terminated due to uncontrollable, unforeseen circumstances, the contract can be terminated by providing notice to the counterparty. In the most unfortunate scenario where a party is noncompliant with contracted terms and conditions, then the counterparty will terminate the contract.

The Contract Renewal Process

In the majority of contracts, there are guidelines created specifically for contract renewals. While most renewals occur rather seamlessly, there are things that can stand in the way of a smooth renewal. Contract management software will support your contracts from the initial contract intake and request phase all the way through renewals.

Contract Renewal Management Software

Contract management software automates tasks during the contract renewal phase. This software also ensures that your orders are appropriately managed for any third-party vendorsor suppliers at the right times. In this way, you ensure your revenue stream is uninterrupted and that contracted activities and continue progressing. Contract renewal software streamlines the repetitive task of processing through service level agreements and associated support contracts. With contract management software, you can efficiently manage a massive volume of contracts in a centralized, cloud secure digital repository. Through the cloud, you can access your contracts at any time, any place, on any device. Many leading contract management software solutions integrate with business applications and electronic signature providers to increase the productivity of your contract lifecycle management processes.

Contract Management Software Features That Support Contract Renewals

Contract management software is equipped with several advanced features to support the contract renewal phase of your contract lifecycle. One of which is automated alerts and reminders, which are easily configured to keep contract managers in the know of contracts with approaching renewal and auto renewal dates. This allows contract managers to maintain a proactive approach to their contracts, giving contract managers an adequate amount of time to review and approve contracts prior to the renewal date to ensure financials are in check and that billing is completed on time. Clients and customers are notified prior to the renewal date, giving them the ability review and approve their contracts. Contract management software supports this phase with collaboration-friendly and secureportals that allow for efficient redlining, commenting, and communication regarding each contract that is up for renewal. Electronic signature integrations are also a great utility of contract management software that can support your renewals and cut down on turnaround times. Contract management software also includes self-service features that allow individuals to work independently on contract renewals.

Contract trackingand monitoring features provide stellar capabilities, as they assist contract managers through monitoring active support tickets. They also help clients through digital requests. Contract management software helps ensure that invoices are sent in a timely manner, as well as help buyers gain visibility into pricing. By implementing software, you can mitigate risk and reduce the likelihood of late payments for any renewal fees. Contract management software helps contract managers see the exact status of their contracts to assess which dates are best to configure for renewal.

Advantages of Adopting Contract Management Software for Contract Renewal

Contract lifecycle management software supports businesses in standardizing their approach towards renewals. With easier contract renewals, you'll cut down on turnaround times and increase profitability and accuracy. By increasing the visibility and transparency of your renewal phase, you gain control over contract activities and ensure faster renewals. In addition, you eliminate many liabilities and risks, which can result in cost savings. You'll also boost your contract performance and gain the ability to assess performance during the contract term. This allows you to make improvements moving forward and discuss any concerns regarding costs and service needs so you can develop increasingly effective strategies towards your future renewals.

Many organizations have missed out on increasing revenue by missing contract renewal dates. Contract management software automatically alerts and reminds users of upcoming contract renewal dates, meaning you'll never forget to terminate an unfavorable contract during the active contract term. Forgetting to do so can drive up risk potential, resulting in increased costs and failure of service delivery. This also occurs when contract managers fail to renew contracts on their renewal date.

Without properly understanding key contracts dates, you might miss out on the opportunity to renegotiate your agreements. In this way, you should leverage contract management software to notify you of upcoming dates and deadlines.

The Risks and Pain Points of a Suboptimal Contract Renewal Process

When contract renewals do not receive an appropriate amount of care and consideration, risk potential and the likelihood for profit loss increase. In addition, you give your competitors the advantage, meaning you'll most likely lose customers. Considering supplier contracts, you run the risk of losing service. A poor contract renewal process will drive up renewal costs, requiring more of your manual effort and time during each renewal. Lastly, manual contract renewals will delay the workflow of your contract lifecycle, as each contract will require time-consuming renegotiations.

Get The Most Out of Your Contract Renewals With Dock 365

The contract renewal phase is one of the most important phases of the contract lifecycle, as this phase can determine whether you capitalize on opportunity to renew favorable contracts or terminate unfavorable contracts in a timely manner. To extract the most value out of your contract portfolio and to increase the efficiency and productivity of your contract renewal phase, then look no further than our Dock 365 Contract Management System. Built onto your SharePoint and Microsoft Office 365, you can gain a cost-effective and user-friendly approach to not only your contract renewal, but to the entirety of your contract lifecycles.

Learn more about ourDock 365 Contract Management System here.

Learn more aboutContract Lifecyle Management (CLM) Software here.
For more information, we would like to welcome you to schedule a free demo with us today.

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Revamping Contract Renewals with Contract Management Software | Blog

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Take control of your contracts & extract more value by renewing only the most favorable agreements with the help of contract renewal management software.

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Contract lifecycle management is a critical procedure for the success of any firm. As time passes, various technical developments and robust ideas that ease contracting continue to emerge to the surface, empowering contract managers and business owners.

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To keep your organization competitive in the contract management sphere, we have developed a list of contract management tools most conducive to enhance contract results and productivity.

#1: End-to-End Contract Lifecycle Management Software

Every organization should leverage a comprehensive contract lifecycle management solution that systematizes every stage of the contract lifecycle. Today, many companies utilize outdated methods to manage and store their contracts - only leading to increased risk, noncompliance, missed deadlines, and lost documents. As 2022 approaches, you need to ensure that your company has everything it needs to optimize every contract's lifecycle. Contract lifecycle management software can help you scale your business and provide transparency into your contracting processes. In addition, contract lifecycle management software automates several processes for your contracting team and other involved departments, allowing your organization to allocate hands-on efforts strategically while saving time and money.

Have you ever considered all the features that contract lifecycle management software could support your organization with? Here are just a few highlighted features that will certainly help your contract management process:

Customizable contract intake and request forms

Automated, flexible contract workflows

Preapproved contract template and clause libraries for easy contract authoring

A centralized, cloud-secure contract platform for communication and collaboration during negotiations, reviews, approvals, and more

A digital repository for contract storage and retrieval

Custom reporting features

A proactive and detailed contract dashboard

Contract expiration and auto renewal notifications

Audit trails, permissions-based access, and other risk mitigative/security capabilities

Employing a dedicated contract lifecycle management software solution can support your organization by reducing contract lifecycle times and expediting tasks with automated workflows and much more. To increase compliance and results while decreasing risks and costs, leveraging a contract lifecycle management software solution is the best decision your organization could make.

#2: A Cloud Secure, SharePoint-based Contract Repository

To effectively oversee and store all of your company's contracts, you should strongly consider adopting a contract repository that uses SharePoint as the central storage platform. Manual contract storage only results in lost contracts, noncompliance, and an increase of risk. Today, several organizations use an outdated approach to contract storage (think filing cabinets and email chains) that complicate the ability to maintain the security of your contract data, locate key details and documents, and properly control contract versions.

To gain the competitive edge, a SharePoint-based contract repository that supports the storage and organization of your contracts is the key. For example, in your SharePoint, you can configure permissions, enable version control settings, monitor contract performance and status, leverage custom filters for rapid searching, redline and review contracts easily, and much more.

During a contract's lifecycle, sensitive contract data is managed and stored in your contract lifecycle management software. To protect your confidential data, permissions-based access controls are available to ensure that only authorized users can view and retrieve your contracts and associated documents.

Ever considered transitioning to a digital contract repository? Here are five key reasons why a cloud-secure digital contract repository can support your organization's contract lifecycle management:

1. Increase security withcloud storage

2. Leverage audit trails and contract dashboards to improve transparency and accountability

3. Centralize your processes (i.e., negotiations,reviews and redlining, approvals, etc.)

4. Rapidly retrieve contracts and maximize productivity

5. Standardize contract storage

To make the most of your company's contracts, a cloud secure repository is exactly what your company needs in combination with cutting-edge contract lifecycle management software.

#3: Flexible Contract Workflow Automation

Imagine managing every step of the contract lifecycle manually. With a manual approach to contract lifecycle management, you waste time and money overseeing mundane tasks that could otherwise be automated. In the case that bottlenecks and other delays occur, you'll find other processes within the contract lifecycle to be impacted - slowing the entirety of a given contract's lifecycle. This negatively influences your return on investment and the duration of your contract lifecycles. As we approach 2022, we recommend contract managers to leverage software that can automate several tasks and regular, administrative processes.

To alleviate the pains associated with manual contract workflow management, we suggest employing contract lifecycle management software that includes flexible, automated contract workflows. Contract workflow automation sends alerts to the right employees and departments to complete contract-related actions within the workflow - allowing for systematized contract lifecycles. With workflow automation, you can configure contract notifications and reminders to keep the right people proactively aware in each stage of the contract lifecycle.

Automated contract workflows give contract managers the ability to use:

Custom reporting and data analysis features

Audit trails

Redlining tools

Centralized collaboration for negotiations and approvals

Electronic signature integrations

Contract auto renewal, expiration, and milestone reminders

Detailed audit trail histories

#4: Simplified Contract Authoring

Have you dealt with the frustration of drafting your documents without the assistance of contract management software? The rate of productivity within your organization's contract management processes takes a steep drop with a manual contract authoring method due to the time-consuming nature of drafting every new contract. When several people and departments are involved in the creation and review of a given contract, ensuring that the contract draft gets into the right hands at the right time without software can be complicated.

Consider all the factors involved when creating a new contract from scratch - copying and pasting content, downloading contract templates, retrieving key information, manual data entry, and ensuring compliance... the list goes on. A manual approach to drafting your contracts further complicates version control and compliance, particularly in the case when contract clauses and templates are unregulated and aren't current.

With an automated contract authoring process, you simplify many of the processes involved in developing an accurate, compliant legal agreement. Not only do you simplify contract authoring, but you save energy, money, and time by automating this stage of the contract lifecycle. An automated approach to contract authoring allows contract managers and legal departments to centralize and systematize each contract in a manner that improves compliance management and collaboration while mitigating against human error and risks.

A standardized contract authoring process can assist contract managers with auto population and merging capabilities of preapproved clauses and data into contract templates. This allows for time-efficient contract authoring within your user-friendly interface. In addition, exporting documents into various file formats is made possible with contract lifecycle management software during your drafting and revising stages. Maintaining version control is efficient as well with automated contract management software, ensuring that every contributor to the authoring process is literally kept on the same page.

Another key item to note in regard to contract authoring software is how contract managers can configure permissions and rules so that only select individuals can be involved in contract creation. Approval routing and audit trails additionally help to ensure a smooth document authoring process. Optimize contract management with secure contract assembly and storage and you'll surely reap several benefits quickly by automating this stage of the contract lifecycle.

#5: Electronic Signature Integrations

DocuSign, Adobe Sign, and Sertifi serve as some of today's leading electronic signature providers that can support your organization in the contract signing and execution process. Electronic signature solutions expedite contract signing and approvals, allowing for quicker turnaround times and contract lifecycles. For example, once a negotiation is complete, you can immediately send contracts and associated documents off for signing within moments with just a few clicks. Your centralized contract repository serves as the single location where communication and collaboration occur on every contract, making it easy to oversee the status of documents during the signing and execution stage of the contract lifecycle.

There are several pitfalls to manual contract signing, and e-signature integrations have evolved to increase the speed and efficiency of this critical step. E-signature providers give contract managers a secure and rapid way to collect signatures for all of their agreements, where contract managers can send off unlimited files for signing in bulk. One of the most incredible aspects of e-signature integrations is how contracts can be signed on-the-go. So long as the signer has a digital device and internet connection, they can sign virtually any document at any time - any place. By integrating your contract lifecycle management software with an electronic signature provider, you can expedite and streamline contract signing.

Conclusion

Contracts lifecycle management is optimized with the five tools mentioned, and we highly recommend leveraging each of these key tools for a secure and successful contracting process. Dock 365 offers end-to-end contract lifecycle management software, a cloud-secure and SharePoint-based contract repository, flexible contract workflow automation, simplified contract authoring, and electronic integrations so that your company optimize and streamline all aspects of contract management. Gain the competitive advantage today with Dock 365.

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Top 5 Contract Lifecycle Management Tools For Success | Dock 365 Blog

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Leverage these 5 key contract lifecycle management tools to increase the productivity, efficiency, and results of your organization's contracting process.

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When parties are striving to finish and conclude their contracts, redlining is common during the contract negotiation stage of the contract's lifespan.

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A successful contract is the result of several stages, reviews, and completed tasks within the contract lifecycle. For example, redlining of contracts, negotiating, and editing and are key elements that play a role in the accuracy and compliance of a given contract. While redlining and negotiations may appear to be rather complex processes, you can develop strategies and utilize Contract Management Software to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of these specific stages.

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What is Redlining?

"Redlining" in the context of contracts refers to the process of editing and revising a legal document. During redlining of contracts, parties will make "redlines" on a given contract, and then decide which redlines to accept or reject. Redlining is key because once parties have agreed to the redlines, they can then move on to the signing and execution stage of the contract at hand.

Redlining often occurs during the contract negotiation stage of a contract's lifecycle when parties are working to complete and finalize their contracts. When a given party edits what they wish for the resulting contract, any changes and additions are documented on the contract in red font, making it easier for a counterparty to view any change made on the document.

How Can Redlining Software Benefit My Business?

With a user-friendly software solution, you can use contract redlining software features to streamline contract negotiations and keep all changes tracked and monitored in a centralized location. Here are three reasons why redlining software is advantageous:

1. Version control- When working on a given document, you can use version control capabilities to ensure that only one person is making changes to a document at a time. Microsoft offers acheck in/check out featureto ensure exactly this. In addition, you can review timestamped changes and all document histories with redlining software.

2. Track information regarding negotiations- All of your contract negotiation data is kept with comprehensive audit trails that detail who, what, and when changes were made on any given document. A contract management software solution with contract automation and redlining software capabilities makes this possible.

3. Contract approval workflows- With a dedicated contract management system, you can assign contracts and tasks to the correct users to ensure that contracts are approved in a timely manner prior to signing and executing them.

Contract redlining software solves many problems associated with contract lifecycle management. For example, contract redlining helps with formatting, clarity, compatibility, and the inclusion of appropriate metadata, all in addition to the previously mentioned benefits. Any issues pertaining to these items are completely solved with the assistance of redlining of contracts capabilities provided by contract management software. Redlining features can significantly help legal departments swiftly complete the contract redlining software process by removing extraneous challenges and bottlenecks, increasing the productivity and simplicity of negotiations and of editing of key contracts.

5 Tips For Optimized Contract Redlining and Negotiations

Due to the collaborative nature of contracts, it's necessary to document every change made to each draft in order to maintain its security and integrity. For the most effective management of redlining and negotiating of your company's contracts, take a look at the following 5 tips:

Tip #1: Conduct Quality Research

Take your time to complete quality research so you can ensure that you take part in the best deal possible when undergoing negotiations. Carefully research regulations, industry practices, and your counterparty prior to undergoing contract negotiations. In this way, you can master your negotiations and build positive and productive business relationships that will assist you in your future contracting successes.

Tip #2: Include Your Legal Department Early In The Process

Your organization's legal department is an incredible asset that can significantly help you during contracting processes. Legal is key to contract drafting and reviews, so leverage their assistance early on! Your legal team can ensure the compliance, legal validity, and accuracy of each contract when they conduct their reviews, and this is critical to avoiding risks and liability.

In addition, legal can provide all of their insights and legal expertise so that only the best possible contracts are authored. With their extensive knowledge and understanding of legalese, your legal department can pinpoint specific areas in a contract that might be more difficult to understand, which can help during negotiations. Your legal team's perspective can help you gain confidence that all important clauses are terms are included in your contracts.

Tip #3: Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate

Collaboration is key when working on your contracts, and more particularly so when undergoing negotiations and revising your drafts during redlining phases. Your legal team and other involved departments (i.e., operations, finance, procurement) can work cohesively to design the best possible result. By combining the expertise of multiple departments, you'll ensure that you cross your t's and dot your i's on all of your companies contracts.

Having multiple teams and people review your contracts is an excellent risk mitigation strategy that can help decrease the possibility for compliance issues and human error. You can develop an organized and systematized process for cross-department collaboration and communication that can lead to contracting success.

For seamless collaboration, we suggest leveraging contract management software that centralizes all of your collaborative efforts - especially where multiple departments and teams are concerned. Working together on every document and detail can be difficult, so using an in-house solution for tracking changes and inputs on your contracts is the key. Our Dock 365 Contract Management System offers several incredible Microsoft 365 features that are collaboration-minded, which will greatly assist during contract authoring, redlining, negotiating, electronic signaturecollection, and finalizing your contract drafts. Our solution is additionally equipped with electronic signature integrations from providers like DocuSign, Adobe Sign, and Sertifi to make signing fast and easy.

Tip #4: Communicate Effectively

Having effective lines of communication is central to a successful contract negotiation process. Contract negotiations follow the detailed editing and legal contract review process, so with open communication, you can ensure your concerns are made known to your counterparty. Without appropriate channels of communication, you might damage business relationships with contractual parties - which can hurt your future contracts and opportunities.

Thankfully, contract management software can ease many of the tensions and challenges involved when communicating during redlining and negotiation processes. With Dock 365, you can finalize your contracts with speed and efficiency by including all of your participants in the software platform. In this manner, all customers, suppliers, and employees can discuss important contract information with customizable channels within the software.

Because our software centralizes your contract reviews, redlining, and negotiations, your teams can review and add comments to ongoing draft discussions and editing efforts. Now, you can easily ensure that critical version change information is documented and communicated to everyone involved. Dock's system is additionally equipped with contract recording and monitoring capabilities that track all of your ongoing conversations within your centralized platform, which will ultimately enhance your communication.

Tip #5: Track Every Change Made

Editing your contracts is an essential component to every negotiation stage within a contract's lifecycle. One of the most important elements of contract redlining and ensuring contract compliance is confirming that all changes are documented in extensive detail, including information regarding who made the changes, when the changes were made, and what the changes were.

In previous contract editing systems, users would track changes by downloading drafts into Microsoft Word, then make the appropriate changes, and then send the document back via email. However, if two people make changes to a given draft at the same time, you can run into serious version control, accuracy, and compliance issues. This can lead to some pretty monumental mistakes that can take an extensive amount of time to reconcile.

Conclusion

Contract redlining and negotiations are some the most critical processes within contract lifecycle management. However, there are several contract lifecycle management (CLM) software solutions available today to ease any of the challenges associated with these tasks. One of which is the Dock 365 Contract Management System.

Dock 365 offers a powerful and productive approach to managing your organization's contracts with a cost-efficient and intelligent software platform. As a Microsoft partner, our solution utilizes your Microsoft 365 and SharePoint subscriptions to assist your company in all of your contract-related needs. With the a centralized contract repository, cloud security, automated contract workflows, easy implementation, and a user-friendly software interface, Dock 365 is the best modern solution for the most powerful approach to contract management for any organization.

No need to waste any energy, funds, and time on an outdated contract management approach. Instead, centralize and streamline your nonprofit's contracts today with Dock 365.

Learn more about ourDock 365 Contract Management System here.

Learn more aboutContract Lifecyle Management (CLM) Software here.
For more information, we welcome you to schedule a free demo with us today.

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Contract Redlining Overview: 5 Tips for Redlining & Negotiation

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Contract redlining and negotiations are critical processes to every contract. Learn these 5 key tips for effective, productive redlining and negotiations.

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Contract risk management is one of the most important tasks of any business or organization's successful and secure approach to contract lifecycle management. By enhancing your contract risk management, you may open yourself up to tremendous opportunities by reducing your anxiety of prospective dangers.

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Contract risk management is one of the most critical functions of a successful and secure approach to contract lifecycle management in any business or organization. By improving your contract risk management, you open yourself up to incredible opportunities by minimizing the fears of potential risks.

Before learning about our contract risk management checklist, we'd like to inform you of different types of contract risk to be aware of.

4 Contract Risk Types

To effectively manage the potential risks that your contracts may encounter, your team needs to have the knowledge that supports them in pinpointing when these risks are present.

Legal Risk

Legal contract risks occur when there is a breach of contract that results in possible litigation or legal action. There are a couple subcategories of legal risks as well, and they include dispute, regulatory, and contract noncompliance risks. In the context of contract risk management, legal risks might arise when contracted obligations are left unfulfilled or when regulatory and industry-based compliance policies are not adhered to. Other actions that increase legal risk include infringements of intellectual property, contract conflicts and disputes, inappropriate use (or lack thereof) of legal clauses in contracts, and disclosures of confidentiality.
Learn about the top legal contract management features here.
Financial Risks

Financial risks are contract management risks that coincide with monetary losses, irrespective of the effect it may have on your organization's bottom line. In light of contract management, these financial risks are often caused by forgotten deadlines and key dates (i.e., contract expiry and auto renewal dates) leading to the continuation of an unfavorable contract due by forgetting to terminate a contract prior to autorenewal or by failed business partnerships. Financial risks are also often referred to as equity and credit risks. Another way that financial risk increases is through contract termination with coinciding milestones, warranty issues, and delivery dates that are missed and left unfulfilled.

Brand Risks

A brand risk refers to the risks associated with poor customer reviews, pessimistic employee morale, and negative public opinion. Brand risks typically occur after problems associated with security, legal, and finance. Eliminating brand risks is essential, especially given how fast a negative review can travel through social media. So be sure to take your brand's reputation seriously by managing brand risk appropriately, as the detrimental effects of a damaged reputation can wreak havoc on the financial performance of your contract strategy.

Security Risks

Security risks are associated with some of the most detrimental repercussions for your business or organization. Security breaches in the context of contracts lead to added legal and brand challenges. Risks in contract security arise when you leverage a manual approach to contract managementand storage by storing contracts in several places that lack security (i.e., filing cabinets, physical copies of contracts, shared drives, computer desktops, email chains, etc.). Other scenarios that increase contract risk include the following: even levels of contract access within your organization (a lack of role-based access control), unencrypted data in transit and at rest, communicating and collaborating on contracts via email.
Learn more about leading security features in contract management software here.
It's evident that contract risk management should be prioritized to protect your business from the negative financial and reputational repercussions of risk-prone contracting. Your approach to contract risk management should be standardized, continual, and detail oriented. We recommend reviewing your contract clauses throughout the year each quarter to ensure they are accurate, compliant, and still appropriate for your contracts with current business partners. After evaluating and pinpointing the contract risks that exist within your practices, your team can then work to eliminate and significantly reduce these risks.

Contract Risk Management Checklist

Ready for a step-by-step guide to better manage contract risks? Take a look at the checklist below to support your team throughout the process of managing contract risks.

#1 Locate contract risk management problems throughout every department

We recommend having select individuals in every department (i.e., operations, legal, finance, procurement, etc.) involved in contract lifecycle management to examine every contract for potential risks. Contract management software can greatly assist your team in task and obligations management, standardization of the contract lifecycle, task assignments, and secure contract storage.

#2 Estimate the likelihood of potential challenges in contract risk management

Assess where contract risks are present as well as the likelihood of them occurring. Then notate the consequences associated with these risks.

#3 Employ risk defense strategies

Establish an acceptable risk threshold to filter out the higher-level risks to reject throughout the contract lifecycle.

#4 Actively reduce risk

Review your clientele and vendors. Select the ones below your threshold for acceptable risk, then choose projects that make sense from a financial and legal perspective.

#5 Outsource

Share risk by outsourcing or subcontracting with an expert in risk management. The support of an expert can support your organization in corroborating your due diligence.

#6 Manage risk by using insurance

Control contract risks by confining possible losses with an insurance plan.

#7 Use clauses to transfer, eliminate, or bear risks

Build new compliant contract clauses or modify your current ones for improved accuracy. With a library full of compliant and preapproved clauses, you can successfully mitigate potential contract risks. Here at Dock, we offer unlimited contract storage, contract templates, and clause template libraries.

#8 Neutralize risks

Neutralize contract risks by confirming that every party to a contract accepts the proposed contract clauses, then modify the clauses on a case-by-case basis.

#9 Monitor risks

Configure your contract management software with automated reminders and alerts to keep your whole team up to date on upcoming key dates and deadlines (i.e., milestones, auto renewal dates, contract expiry dates, etc.) so you can prepare ahead and get the best deals possible while cutting down on potential risks. Email notifications and customizable calendar reminders will support cross-department communication and collaboration throughout the contract lifecycle.

#10 Use accurate, compliant contracts and provisions

It's essential to both create and useyour compliant and legally accurate clauses and contracts. This will lead to standardization in your resulting contracts, which cuts down on risk potential. Comprehensive preapproved contract templateand clause libraries increase efficiency, speed, and risk management within every contract lifecycle. In addition, we recommend employing custom reporting features provided by your contract management software to reduce inaccuracies in contract language.

Conclusion

Risks exist in nearly every activity. However, it doesn't have to be this way with your company's contract lifecycle management. It's possible to reduce risk and increase results by employing a detailed and intentional contract risk management strategy. In this manner, you work within acceptable risk thresholds and create an approach to minimize detrimental impacts and financial losses. With intuitive, cloud-secure contract lifecycle management (CLM) software, you can design a unique risk management strategy to support your business or organization.

Our Dock 365 Contract Management System is built on your existing Microsoft Office 365 environment for streamlined adoption and implementation. Leverage automated reminders to never forget about contract expiry and auto renewal dates, store contracts securely in a searchable, cloud-based SharePoint contract repository, and remove tension from your legal department with contract management made easy.
Learn more about our Learn more about For more information, we would like to welcome you to schedule a free demo with us today. Contract Lifecyle Management (CLM) Software here.Dock 365 Contract Management System here.

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A Contract Risk Management Checklist & 4 Common Types of Contract Risk

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Ready to improve your contract risk management strategy within your organization's contract lifecycle management? Take a look at this step-by-step guide.

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Modern Contract Management Solution for Simplified Procurement Cycle

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Modern Contract Management Solution for Simplified Procurement Cycle

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Dock 365 provides vendor dashboards and management solutions to help your company obtain complete control over procurement contract management. AI and OCR-enabled contract management software streamlines the entire procurement process.

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Contract Management Software for Procurement | Dock 365 Inc.

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Adopt Dock Contract Management Software for Procurement to handle end-to-end management of procurement contracts and forge healthy vendor relationships.

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AI has transformed several industries, but none more so than the standard business practice of contract lifecycle management, which is prevalent in every industry. Contract lifecycle management software is increasingly being used by organizations with contract portfolios that are rising in both volume and complexity in order to reduce human errors and boost efficiency.

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The introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) created a paradigm shift in the way that the global marketplace and modern businesses operate. AI has transformed numerous industries, but most especially, AI has changed the common business practice of contract lifecycle management - found in every industry. Organizations with contract portfolios growing in both volume and complexity are leveraging contract lifecycle management software more and more to minimize human errors and increase productivity.

Subpar contract lifecycle management is the result of a couple of different things. First off, if your employees have insufficient training on how to track contract data, performance KPIs, and other key metrics, then you automatically have a decreased level of visibility into your contracts. Without the ability to effectively pull data and run reports on your contracts, it becomes difficult to maintain organizational awareness of upcoming deadlines, obligations, and milestones. And what does this mean? An increased likelihood of missed contract auto renewal dates, expiry dates, and other time-sensitive contract responsibilities slipping through the cracks.

To complete these contract tasks successfully, your team should be properly educated on how to do so. And with poor contract lifecycle management, each stage of the contract lifecycle becomes more complicated than it has to be. However, AI can support contract authoring, reviews, approvals, and so much more to streamline and automate your contract lifecycle management processes.

Today, we'll dive into several reasons why AI can support your organization in its approach to contract lifecycle management.

1. Build Accurate, Compliant Contracts Effortlessly

Contract authoring is often considered one of the most difficult and time-consuming steps in contract lifecycle management. With heaps of contract data available, it takes significantly more time for a human to pull relevant data for a given contract in comparison to artificial intelligence. By introducing AI into your contract management strategy, you can easily sort through a myriad of contract data in a fraction of the amount of time it would take for a human.

In this manner, you cut the time spent in the contract creation phase with AI-supported clause selection according to the type of contract that is drafted. And while manual contract creation is still rather effective, there's no doubt that having your team parse through your past contracts in order to author a new contract can increase risk. What's so unique about AI in the context of contract lifecycle management, and more particularly during contract authoring, is how AI observes, tracks, and learns from previous contracts to improve future data analysis.

2. Get Better Results From Negotiations

The results of your agreements hinge on the negotiation phase of contract lifecycle management. AI allows organizations to improve the outcomes of negotiations by reducing the turnaround time of your reviews and overall negotiation process.

With artificial intelligence, you can efficiently leverage previous contract data to determine necessary changes in your clause library to increase the likelihood of positive negotiation results. An AI-supported contract management system can use custom negotiation rules that ensure you only close deals that make sense with your company's needs, standards, and goals. In this manner, you increase visibility into your deals while confirming each deal is made in alignment with company objectives and quality standards.

3. Improve Risk Management

Rather than having your contracts be a source of stress and liability, you can turn them into a landing ground of opportunities by optimizing your contracting strategy with an AI contract management system. As industry-specific compliance standards steadily change, your contract clauses will also require frequent review and updating to ensure they remain compliant. Now, you can reduce the likelihood of creating non-compliant contracts.

Contract lifecycle management software equipped with artificial intelligence gives your organization the upper hand in contract risk management by analyzing contract language to categorize and alert users of which clauses might increase risk. In this manner, you can omit risky clauses from contract drafts and proactively build contracts that are risk preventative in nature. AI also offers the ability to monitor your contracts with audit trails, allowing organization to increase transparency and improve version control.

4. Simplify Contract Approvals

AI contract management software empowers companies with simplified approval routing and smart workflow automation to streamline the contract approval phase. AI identifies which stakeholders have yet to approve the document at hand and effectively routes the file to the appropriate user, increasing the efficiency and speed of renewals. In addition, you can increase compliance and obligation management with AI's ability to pinpoint contracts with exact characteristics and conditions.

An optimized contract approval procedurewill enhance the results of your contracts. AI can help you accomplish tasks faster, so things like collecting signature from various stakeholders and departments become fast and pain-free. Even if your enterprise regularly works with an exorbitant number of contracts and associated contract drafts that require several approvals, AI can make the task more efficient than that of a traditional contract lifecycle management approach.

5. Save Money

Companies that lack transparency into the status, performance, and deadlines associated with their contracts increase the potential for financial damages and losses due to noncompliance and failure to deliver upon contracted obligations. Rather than incur the penalties that stem from noncompliance, you can reduce costs and improve your contract results and ROI with AI-supported contract management software that centralizes and secures your contract data. Contract lifecycle management software and AI improve cost-efficiency with proactive notifications and reminders to increase awareness of approaching deadlines and milestones while alerting users of risky items.

For more information on how contract management software can cut business costs, clickhere.

Conclusion

AI contract management software can open up many doors of opportunity for the modern business. Here at Dock 365, we offer a cost-effective and user-friendly Contract Management System that is built on your current Microsoft Office 365 investment for easy adoption. With new AI capabilities and integrations with leading electronic signature providers like DocuSign and Adobe Sign, you can take your contracts on the go (with the Microsoft Teams mobile app) and execute compliant, results-driven agreements within minutes.

Our solution includes automated contract reminders so that you stay in the loop of upcoming key deadlines contract expiry and auto renewal dates. Secure contract storage is also provided with a searchable, cloud-based SharePoint contract repository. Interested in improving organization and eliminating tensions within your internal legal department? Then start with Dock for contract management made easy.

Unlock unrecognized contract value, reduce risks and costs, save time, and get the best deals possible with us here at Dock.
Learn more about our Learn more about For more information, we would like to welcome you to schedule a free demo with us today. Contract Lifecyle Management (CLM) Software here.Dock 365 Contract Management System here.

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5 Reasons AI Brings Value to Contract Management | Dock 365 Blog

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Learn 5 key reasons why artificial intelligence is changing modern contract management and how your business can leverage AI contract management software.

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Minimize Risks Throughout The Contract Lifecycle

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Minimize Risks Throughout The Contract Lifecycle

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With a superbly designed and secure contract management system, it is simple to reduce contractual risks. It allows businesses to securely keep all of their active contracts and important papers in a one spot.

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Contract Risk Management Tools for Modern Businesses | Dock 365 Inc.

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Identify and manage risk throughout the contract lifecycle to drive business results with robust and intuitive contract risk management tools.

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Healthcare & Insurance Contract Management Software

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Healthcare & Insurance Contract Management Software

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Contract management software for the healthcare and insurance industries may centralize employee agreements, vendor contracts, service and equipment contracts, and research agreements while remaining HIPAA compliant.

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Healthcare & Insurance Contract Management Software | Dock 365

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With Healthcare & Insurance contract management software, managing contracts is easier than ever before. They streamline the entire contract lifecycle.

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You may improve visibility, efficiency, and structure in your contract management process by implementing a SharePoint-based centralized contract repository. Leveraging all that a contract repository has to offer would not just improve contract storage but will also provide opportunities to improve day-to-day company operations and business-vendor interactions.

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Are you tired of spending countless times trying to find specific contracts, clauses, or other critical information?

Do you have an organized contract storage system where you could pull data from months or even several years ago? What would that process look like when searching for that information? How long would it take?

Is your current contract storage system organized and efficient? Does it promote growth and the scaling of your business? Will your current contract storage system work for the long term?

If your company consistently works with a high volume of contracts, it's likely you've encountered the regular time-wasting bottleneck of manual contract and clause searches.

Did you know that according to the Journal of Contract Management, 71% of organizations that manage contracts lose 10% of their contracts?

By adopting a SharePoint-based centralized contract repository, you can increase visibility, efficiency, and organization in your contract management process. Leveraging all that a contract repository has to offer will not only improve contract storage but will also offer ways to improve day-to-day business operations and business-vendor relationships.

Content-

What is a contract repository?

A digital contract repository is an electronic contract storage system that allows users to tag, sort, categorize, archive, store, and retrieve their company contracts and associated documents in a cloud-secure environment. They're the highlight of modern contract management software solutions. Prior to the technological advancements of today, traditional contract management processes were conducted manually - leading to disorganization, a lack of cohesiveness, and document loss. In these previous management methods, storing and sorting physical documents was very ineffective and risky. Contracts and related documents were often improperly categorized (or not categorized at all) in physical storage systems - leading to difficulty and time wasted when searching for a specific document in the repository.

With a centralized repository provided by contract management software solutions, the contract manager or business owner can build, store, manage, sort, and execute contracts in a single location. The Dock 365 Contract Management System (CMS) uses a centralized contract repository. In this repository, you can create, store, sort, and manage contracts in one location, allowing you to find contracts quickly while increasing visibility. The contract repository includes an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capability to convert old contracts and make them searchable within the database. To create a cohesive and streamlined contract management process, we recommend utilizing a centralized contract repository to store all of your contracts. A contract repository is a centralized place where contracts and related metadata is kept and managed. The repository will function in various ways based on the type of business, growth of the business, the number of users, and types of contracts and documents.

How To Use A Digital Contract Repository

Contracts are the cornerstone of every business partnership, containing critical information and sensitive data pertaining to company performance stats and other business relationships. Your method of contract storage, accessibility, and organization is dependent on the contract lifecycle management solution you adopt. Today, digitizing contract management opens you up to increased opportunities to extract more value from your contracts.

Manual, paper-based contract management is clearly outdated, risky, and slow. A digital contract management solution allows users to easily access their contract and associated data to analyze trends and gain insights into contract performance and statuses. Within your digital contract repository, you can derive key contract information to help you make the most data-driven business decisions. In addition, you can rapidly and accurately search for exact pieces of metadata, clauses, and contracts within seconds with advanced text-based search capabilities and customizable, savable filters.

Why Your Business Needs a Contract Repository

A primary concern in contract management is contract visibility. Without an appropriate level of visibility in your contract management system, there won't be an accessible and comprehensive overview of contract details, terms, and obligations. Because every contract is different, and every contract manager creates and manages contracts in a unique manner, it's necessary to develop a contract management system that provides visibility for all involved in the contract management process.
For example, if a contract manager prefers to store contracts and related information in physical files, it will create an obstructed and difficult process to filter through and find specific documents. In this way, the following could result

Delays in service

Missed or forgotten deadlines, renewals, expiration dates, etc.

Contract non-compliance

Expired contracts

Duplicated contracts

Avoid all of these pitfalls with the help of a functional contract repository. A contract repository allows you to access all contract and document information within a single centralized location. Find whatever you need, whenever you need it.
Technological advancements have enabled today's contract repositories to possess some remarkable features and search/filter functions. With a contract repository, you can increase data cohesiveness and accuracy, utilize automation, track contracts, improve teamwork, and increase compliance. Manage, store, sort, and create contracts in one place with increased visibility with the help of a contract repository. Gone are the days of endless time wasted searching for contracts - find anything rapidly with a repository.

Using our CMS solution, you will have every contract within direct access at any time with a customizable search function where you can set pre-made filters for different contract and document types.

3 Tips for Contract Repository Implementation

Let's discuss three top tips for successful contract repository implementation.

1. Begin by assessing your business's unique needs and goals

Discuss with your contract management team the needs and goals within your business. Follow-up by assessing what the purpose of a contract repository is and how it will serve in achieving business results.

Discover what the administrative team needs and where gaps can be filled. Where are there existing delays in the process? What is the current system of filtering and searching for contract data like? How effective is communication across various teams (legal, contract, executive, etc.)? Having an extensive overview of how the current system functions and what needs exist will help in further decision-making. In this way, you can decide which data to prioritize in the new contract repository.

Is there automation in your contract management process? We suggest setting automated reminders and alerts of critical dates and deadlines. Set your sales department up for success by facilitating discussion surrounding what a contract repository has to offer them. The filtered search capability of a contract repository, for example, can help your sales team find specific contract terms and clauses as well as information regarding negotiations. With automated reminders, they will also be well-prepared for renewals and other key dates.

Lastly, ask your contract managers what the biggest area of need is. They are key for setting the fine details for the contract repository when it is implemented.

2. Sort contracts and associated documents

After taking a complete assessment of unique needs and goals from a variety of departments in your business, use the information you compiled to decide in what order to upload contracts and documents into the contract repository.

This is important because contract types play a large role to the repository. Based on the answers from your teams, which type of document is most important to your business's goals? Which type of contract is used most consistently? Create a seamless transition into using the contract repository by having a broad overview of the impacts of contracts currently so that transferring them into the repository is easy.

Organize contracts based on specific characteristics. This is a very important step that takes a considerable amount of time but will pay high dividends in the long run for team efficiency. Sort contracts based on various clauses, conditions, and terms. This allows you to conduct time-efficient and accurate searches within the contract repository by using customizable filters. This optimizes contract management by saving valuable time and making it extremely simple to find very specific information in a sea of complex contract data. Your contract management, legal, and sales teams will thank you!

This is the step that takes the most time but is what ends up paying off in a significant way. Effective and clear organization of contract details will create a very simple, clean, and cohesive contract repository.

3. Implementation

Now that all of the planning is complete, you are ready for contract repository implementation.
We recommend our Dock 365 Contract Management System. Our system will offer you a centralized contract repository that gives you a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of your contract management processes. Our effortless contract management life cycle platform allows you to review every part of your customer and vendor contracts, set deadlines and review dates, create, and edit contracts, and use contract tracking tools to track various items and obligations.

By taking the time to plan and organize contract repository implementation, you can ensure a smooth transition into its use and increase the likelihood of its success. Assess your business's unique needs and goals, sort the contracts and other pertinent documents, then implement. With these three steps, you will certainly have contract repository success!

The Pain Points of an Inefficient Contract Repository

Microsoft Excel has historically been the key software used by businesses to store contracts. An ill-equipped contract repository will only make it harder for you to manage your current contract portfolio, and most especially, a contract portfolio growing in volume and complexity. If you currently struggle to manage your contracts effectively, then a poor contract repository certainly won't make it any easier - particularly when it comes to gleaning insights on your contract data. Consequentially, it can leave your business vulnerable to several potential pitfalls including the following:

Poor data accessibility

Keeping contracts filing cabinets, shared drives, desktops, email chains, and other disjointed locations only leads to an increased likelihood of data and contract loss as well as bottlenecks in retrieving your contracts when you need them.

Minimal security

Contracts include highly confidential data, and with a repository system lacking in security, you run the risk of a data breach and your documents being found in the wrong hands. A digital contract repository offers encryption in transit and at rest, user permissions-based access features, and other robust security capabilities to minimize risk exposure.

Forgotten obligations and key dates

Are you tired of letting auto renewal and contract expiry dates slip through the cracks? Say no more with automated reminders brought to you by contract lifecycle management software. A manual contract repository makes it difficult to collect key dates and track obligations directly from your contracts. Contract management software extracts metadata like milestones, obligations, terms, and key dates so you can easily monitor these items and plan ahead for them with your team.

Subpar version control

Collaboration and communication on your contracts become harder than it needs to be with a manual contract storage method. You'll often have people working on the wrong contract draft version, or the wrong version might find itself in the wrong place. The poor ability to control contract version histories only leads to decreased visibility and increased confusion. In more extreme cases, minimal version control can result in the deletion of contracts or losing your contracts entirely.

Struggle to monitor KPIs

Without instant access to your contract data, it becomes nearly impossible to use your data to effectively oversee and monitor contract KPIs - cutting into your ability to analyze contract performance and business achievements.

Expensive compliance outcomes

A manual contract storage method increases costs by incurring fines and penalties associated with contract noncompliance and failure to adhere to industry and regulatory requirements and policies.

Why You Should Opt for a Cloud-Based Contract Repository

Cloud-based contract repositories are ideal for time management and efficiency. This is because the energy and time spent on manually searching for contracts and clauses or monitoring compliance can be drastically reduced. By using the contract repository, key contract managers and employees can shift their efforts towards more important tasks that require a hands-on approach, rather than be pulled to administrative duties. This way, your contract management team can increase productivity instantaneously. You can perform several functions pertaining to your contracts in a single secure place with the repository.

Let's discuss the many benefits of a centralized repository.

Using a contract repository will decrease the fragmentation of your data and increase overall cohesiveness and organization. During contract life cycle management, it's very likely that data will get fragmented at some point. Even by using a solution such as SharePoint to collect your data, it's inevitable for data to become scattered due to numerous people and parties inputting different information. Utilizing a centralized contract repository will help in contract and metadata storage and management on a large scale. Additionally, contract metadata can be uploaded into the repository for contracts that are both new and pre-existing.

A massive advantage of a cloud-based, centralized contract repository is the fact that it provides a detailed birds-eye view of all contract information. Digital contract repositories provide business owners with a single source of truth regarding where their contract data is stored. Every contract detail, including contract type, name of the client or vendor associated with the contract, expiry date, status within the lifecycle, execution date, and more is readily available. Previous contract management heavily relied on Excel spreadsheets or written documents to track specific contract details. Authorized users can access contracts without the hassle so they can attain accurate information relating to ongoing business relationships.

Boost accuracy with automation

Human error is one of the largest areas for potential discrepancies that you will encounter during contract life cycle management. By entering data manually into spreadsheets, errors are bound to occur. Small errors can lead to large impacts business-wide.

What could human error cause in my business?

Reduced mastery of contract obligations

Missed renewals and deadlines

Misinformed business decisions

Inaccuracies in various reviews and reports

The Dock 365 Contract Management System offers a centralized contract repository that can automate data entry. In this way, your contract management team can work with a consistent user interface and eliminate human error - giving you and your stakeholders more confidence in the data storage, security, and accuracy of your contract repository.

Storing contract documents has never been easier. With our cloud-based, contract management system, you'll never have to worry about losing track of documents. The previous manual method of storing physical copies of contracts and related documents made storing and retrieving copies incredibly difficult and disjointed. Storing physical documents takes up a large amount of space, increasing costs and decreasing efficiency. Now, you can use a digital contract repository that stores documents within a cloud and centralizes every piece of data. Finding a single document or clause within your contract repository is incredibly easy and efficient.

A cloud-based centralized contract repository is perfect for boosting overall performance and time efficiency. This is because the energy and time spent on manually searching for contracts and clauses or monitoring compliance can be drastically reduced. By using the contract repository software, key contract managers and employees can shift their efforts towards more important tasks that require a hands-on approach, rather than be pulled to administrative duties. This way, your contract management team can increase productivity instantaneously.

When working with various clients and vendors, having a centralized contract repository will actually help improve communications. Because your business works with many contracts and many parties, it's important to streamline where possible. A centralized contract repository will enhance organization while creating a more accurate storage, search, and management process.

Without a centralized repository, you risk missing critical details or losing contracts entirely when it's preventable. You'll never miss important deadlines or misconstrue data and details with the help of a repository. The impact of a disorganized contract management storage system can be tremendous - leading to dissatisfied and angry clients and vendors. You also run the risk of breaking the code, facing various penalties, and being non-compliant.

Gain control, insight, and visibility with a centralized contract repository. With the user-friendly dashboard provided in a contract repository, all contract information is available in plain view. In this way, you can find errors that exist and make adaptive changes quickly. Our contract repository additionally allows you to set automated reminders and notifications for dates and deadlines.

A contract repository can offer your business some amazing benefits. Your contract management team will be equipped with tools to communicate accurately and dependably with clients and vendors. You will improve response times and be able to pinpoint any errors and address issues effectively.

In acentralized repository, all sensitive data is kept safe so you can make tampering and document loss a thing of the past. Adopting a centralized contract repository software is an easy way to mitigate risk immediately. Don't let your company's reputation be soured by a lack of data security. Within a contract repository, your contract manager can enable specific security measures and permissions within the software to limit access to certain contracts and related documents. In previous manual contract management, security risks and the potential for tampering were highly increased. In electronic contract management, it's impossible for a forgery to take place because users are noted within the software every time an individual accesses a document.

Version tracking is one of the most revolutionary features provided by a centralized repository. Within the lifecycle of an individual contract, the contract will undergo several edits and iterations by many different people. It's important that the correct version of the contract is in the right hands at all times so that the correct information is relayed during its lifecycle. During contract building and drafting, several experts work together to create a contract. While spreadsheets provide a simplistic overview of data, as well as a convenient method to track contracts, using spreadsheets is a manual contract management method that cannot effectively handle complex contracts or a high volume of contracts for an organization.

Within the centralized repository, the user can select the most recently edited document so they can continue working on the correct version of the document whenever they desire. To scale your business and make the most of your relationships with your vendors, it's necessary to switch from a manual contract tracking approach to a digitized one. If you desire to increase the number of vendors you work with or the volume and/or complexity of contracts, make the switch so that you can optimize these processes.

Customizable, Filtered Search Functionalities

Our system is equipped with a customizable, filtered search function. Want to save a custom filter to use again in a similar search in the future? You can do just that within our centralized repository. Simply search for whatever type of contract, clause, or document you need by typing specific keywords in the Search bar. Apply several filters to find highly specified data instantly. In this way, time efficiency and productivity are maximized within your centralized contract repository.

Contracts include a whole host of sensitive information and a digital contract repository increases the efficiency of sorting through this information so you can retrieve specific data points whenever needed. Searching, reporting, and data analysis are simplified with the assistance of your repository, where you can take data points and develop KPIs and assess performance on proactive, comprehensive contract data dashboards.

Lastly, our contract management software offers you the ability to set custom notifications, reminders, and alerts so you can stay proactive and aware of any critical date. Rather than rely on a third-party notification, our software has all you need to stay on top of contractual obligations. Thanks to automated notifications, your team never has to miss a renewal or expiry date ever again.

Stress-free contract management team

Does your contract management team spend far too much time looking for certain contracts, clauses, or associated documents?

When your contract management team conducts a "search mission" for pertinent documents as a part of day-to-day operations, it's a sign that the current system is below standard. Thankfully, there is absolutely a solution for these types of headaches. If your team is overburdened by the need to locate hard-to-find documents consistently, it pulls time and energy away from contract administration.

Using a centralized contract repository rather than manual data entry via spreadsheets, you set up your contract management team for success and time efficiency. Contracts can be easily located and filtered through so that your employees can focus on other critical tasks and propel business objectives forward.

Improve client satisfaction

A contract repository will increase the time efficiency and productivity of individual contract lifecycles. In this way, you increase the value of your business by providing faster turnaround times. Increase client satisfaction with rapid and accurate fulfillment that will consistently keep your customers returning for your services.

By giving your customers repeated, high-quality performance in contract management, you'll exceed their expectations and boost your business's reputation indirectly. With quality service, comes quality results. A centralized contract management repository will only help your business scale!

When you have no clue where contracts are located, it makes it astronomically difficult to prove if your business is in compliance with specific rules and regulations.

With fragmented data storage and management, you make it nearly impossible to define what is occurring organization-wide. Reduce regulatory and financial risks by employing a centralized contract repository. By having on-hand access to supplier or vendor certificates, you can stay informed of the correct actions to take, ensuring you provide external auditors with proof of your business's compliance. A centralized contract repository can function as a source of truth about your business dealings and serves as a source where non-compliance occurrences can be identified and then corrected.

Ready to cut down on costs? Then adopting a digital contract repository is an excellent place to start. A contract repository allows you to find contracts faster than a paper-based repository or one where you store contracts in multiple places (i.e., shared drives, emails, desktops, etc.). Text-based search and filtering capabilities allow you to retrieve contracts based on contract name, contact, organization, and other characteristics. In this manner, you can easily find answers to your contract questions rapidly without needing the assistance of your legal department.

Conclusion

Do you have a centralized repository? If not, you are certainly leaving some incredible benefits on the table. Our Dock 365 Contract Management System will help you store, manage, and create contracts so you can streamline, optimize, and achieve business results.

With readily available data, improved communication, maximized security, enhanced client satisfaction, increased integrity, and higher levels of accuracy, you can make great strides in your contract management processes today.

Our contract management software was created with your business needs and goals in mind so you can up-level your business strategy and increase the value of your experiences with clients and vendors alike.

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Benefits of a Centralized Repository in Contract Management Software | Blog

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A cloud-based, centralized contract repository makes the entirety of managing a contract's lifecycle much easier and efficient for several key reasons.

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Dock can assist you with managing contracts throughout all phases of their existence. Use contract automation, safe storage, process templates, a centralized repository for contracts, and automated renewal and expiration warnings to keep your competitive edge.

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Best Contract Management Software Tools | Dock 365 Inc.

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To better manage the entirety of the contract lifecycle, from requests to approvals, opt for solutions with the best contract management software tools.

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The management of contracts throughout their lifecycle can now be enhanced via a variety of integrations. For effective contract lifecycle management, we at Dock use a number of integrations. Are you interested in learning more about some important integrations that support contract lifecycle management? This overview of contract management integrations will provide you with more information. We will go into greater detail about contract management DocuSign as an integration choice today.

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There are many integrations available today that help improve contract lifecycle management. Here at Dock, we utilize several integrations to help provide powerful contract lifecycle management. Want to learn more about some key integrations that help with contract lifecycle management? Here is a guide to contract management integrations that will give you a broad overview. Today, we will discuss contract management DocuSign as an integration option for contract management in more detail.

An Introduction to DocuSign

DocuSign is a very popular electronic signature solution that includes several features that increase the productivity and security of the contract signature step in contract lifecycle management. DocuSign is a great option for organizations, and Dock 365 includes the DocuSign integration within our Contract Management System for an easy electronic signature process. This integration is very widely-used, as DocuSign is leading in the market share with a figure of 74 percent. With more than 450,000 customers, millions of users, and over 180 countries where the product is in use, contract management DocuSign capabilities are a proven integration that can really help your business.

Here at Dock, we offer DocuSign contract, Adobe Sign, and Sertifi so that you have several eSignature options at your disposal. The user satisfaction score of DocuSign is 98%, with an overall score of 8.6/10, making it a wonderful option to use during your contract management processes. Our contract management software embeds the eSignature abilities through APIs from DocuSign contract.

With contract management DocuSign capabilities, you can attach e-signatures to your contracts within seconds, where you can send signature requests out swiftly within Dock's platform. This means that you don't have to create a different workflow for e-signature capture, and this results in a reduction of discrepancies by taking away the need for continued management and follow-up of signature captures when using DocuSign capabilities. DocuSign is also used in almost every industry: healthcare, communications, technology, insurance, and many, many others. This electronic signature integration is also used in various business departments including but not limited to, finance, procurement, sales, human resources, and more.

Evolve Your Electronic Signature Process with DocuSign

The DocuSign integration with the Dock 365 Contract Management System helps to increase the speed of your contract lifecycles and ease the administrative side of managing your contracts. DocuSign CLM can provide lower costs and provide a better experience for your customers. As DocuSign is embedded in our Contract Lifecycle Management System, it's easy to ensure that your senders and signers are authentic. Keep your business competitive by using this secure and easy-to-use electronic signature integration.

By leveraging DocuSign contract lifecycle management, you can increase your revenue by having a rapid signing process for your contracts. In addition, you can boost the productivity of your contract management processes because you'll have more time on your hands to focus on key business tasks rather than administrative ones. By using the DocuSign electronic signature integration, you can also improve your company's reputation by using one of the most competitive and well-reviewed solutions, creating a flexible and easy approach. With DocuSign contract management, you reduce costs by using less paper and save time spent on this step of the contract lifecycle by reducing the data that needs updates. It's clear - using this integration can save your business tremendous amounts of both time and money. You eliminate paper-based systems, increase the productivity of your process, and improve the customer experience - a win-win all around.

A Brief Overview of How The DocuSign Integration Works For Contract Management

By connecting to DocuSign for contract lifecycle management, you can choose signers when configuring contract approval flows. Once the contract is ready for signature, the DocuSign integration does its job - meaning you get a fully signed and executed contract synced back to your Dock 365 Contract Management System. Your contract management admin simply needs to enable the DocuSign integration to get started. As you build your contract approval flow, you can select who needs to sign the contract once you upload the document. When various approval steps are completed and the document is ready for signature, you can add signature blocks to your document. Then DocuSign will send emails to the signing party or parties. Once the document has been signed by all necessary contributors, the document will be synced to your Dock 365 Contract Management System.

Take a services contract for example. When this contract is being configured with a particular vendor, the automated contract workflow sends the contract through a systematized sequence of preapproved steps ensuring that all obligations, contractual terms, and financial details are effectively overseen during various phases of contract lifecycle management such as contract review, contract negotiation, and contract approval. When reviews, negotiations, and approvals are effectively completed by both parties, then your Contract Lifecycle Management System signals DocuSign for the electronic signature step for the contract at hand. All key details and dates are saved within your centralized contract repository to ensure that you can easily access any information when needed. Your automated contract workflow utilizes DocuSign, which electronically sends the contract off to the signer.

At this point, the now-signed document is received by your Contract Management System where your contractual stakeholders are sent an automated notification. From here, your flexible automated workflow will continue on with the remaining steps and tasks until the contract is made active. The DocuSign Contract Lifecycle Management System builds overall efficiency and saves an abundant amount of time. They do all of this while ensuring that your processes remain in integrity by overseeing a comprehensive record of each step within every stage of the contract lifecycle management process.

Dock and DocuSign: An Unbeatable Duo for Productive Contract Management

Dock's contract lifecycle management integration with the world's top electronic signature solution, DocuSign, has revolutionized the way that you can manage the signature step of your contracts. Because DocuSign contract lifecycle management provides a digital approach to capturing signatures for your contracts and associated documents, signing a contract remotely, securely, and even in bulk form are all possible with this powerful e-signature integration. Once a document is signed, it is stored in your Dock 365 Contract Management System with secure access capabilities and encryption of the data.

Integrity is very important in contract lifecycle management. With the appropriate integrations, you can improve the efficiency of your contract management process. As Dock 365 has shown by integrating with DocuSign, your contract management workflows will be streamlined during contract approvals, appropriately documenting when contracts and documents are ready for electronic signature captures. With DocuSign, users can integrate the DocuSign services into the solutions and applications already used by the business. As previously mentioned, but worth mentioning again - DocuSign is by far the most commonly used software solution by business leaders today.

Conclusion

Electronic signature has changed the game for contract lifecycle management. Here at Dock, there are several advanced and powerful integrations to choose from to help during your contract lifecycle management. DocuSign is simply one incredible option that you can use during the signature step, as it is very secure, fast, and user-friendly. You can optimize your contract lifecycle management with advanced capabilities and the key features offered by leveraging the DocuSign integration. Here at Dock, we are experts in improving the productivity and effectiveness of contract management processes, and we want to help businesses utilize several integrations features to revolutionize and streamline contract management.

Our Contract Management System is equipped with several amazing features that will help improve the quality of your contract management processes with the help of a SharePoint and Office 365-based collaborative software interface. Improve business dealings, increase contract compliance, reduce bottlenecks and turnaround times, enhance risk mitigation efforts, and completely overhaul contract management team productivity for the better with our contract management software.

Ready to get started today? Reach out to us to learn more about our   Dock 365 Contract Management System.

If you would like more information, we welcome you to schedule a free demo with us today.

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DocuSign: A Powerful Integration for Contract Lifecycle Management | Blog

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There are many integrations available today that help improve contract lifecycle management. Here at Dock, we utilize several integrations to help provide powerful contract lifecycle management. Want to learn more about some key integrations that help with contract lifecycle management? Here is a guide to contract management integrations that will give you a broad overview.

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Intelligent Business with Contract Review Software

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Intelligent Business with Contract Review Software

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Contract evaluation and tracking are critical for organisations today to derive actual value from their commercial relationships. Dock contract management software's unique functions enable businesses to review extensive data about each contract, as well as the whole history and status of the activities.

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Contract Review Software That Keeps You Updated | Dock 365 Inc.

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Make the most of your business agreements and mitigate risks with Contract Review Software to transform your contract data into actionable intelligence.

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Contract Monitoring Tools Every Business Needs

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Contract Monitoring Tools Every Business Needs

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Contracts are crucial in every organization, thus it is critical to monitor the agreement throughout the contract lifetime to ensure optimal outcomes.
Here are the greatest contract monitoring tools provided by CLM software.

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Best Contract Monitoring Tools to Stay Up-to-date | Dock 365 Inc.

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Ensure all the relevant parties comply with the terms of a contractual agreement and derive maximum value by adopting efficient contract monitoring tools.

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Due to significant global technical developments and the introduction of new digital contract management software systems, contract lifecycle management methods have changed dramatically.

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Digital Contract Management for Enterprises | Dock 365 Inc.

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Digital contract management is a necessity in this modern era, it automates and accelerates the entire contract lifecycle to improve productivity.

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Manual Contract Management vs. Electronic Contract Management

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Manual Contract Management vs. Electronic Contract Management

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Modern technical breakthroughs have paved the path for intelligent and streamlined contract administration. Your organization may use breakthrough tools to boost productivity and generate results, such as contract workflow automation, mobile apps, and electronic signature integrations.

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Manual Contract Management vs. Electronic Contract Management | Dock 365 Blog

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Here, we discuss similarities and differences between the traditional, manual method of contract management and today’s electronic contract management.

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Contracts are crucial in every organisation, so it is critical to monitor the agreement throughout the contract lifetime to ensure desired outcomes.
The following are the best contract monitoring tools provided by CLM software.

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Best Contract Monitoring Tools to Stay Up-to-date | Dock 365 Inc.

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Ensure all the relevant parties comply with the terms of a contractual agreement and derive maximum value by adopting efficient contract monitoring tools.

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5 Ways AI Adds Value to Contract Management

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5 Ways AI Adds Value to Contract Management

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AI has transformed several industries, but none more so than the standard business practice of contract lifecycle management, which is prevalent in every industry. Contract lifecycle management software is increasingly being used by organizations with contract portfolios that are rising in both volume and complexity in order to reduce human errors and boost efficiency.

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The introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) created a paradigm shift in the way that the global marketplace and modern businesses operate. AI has transformed numerous industries, but most especially, AI has changed the common business practice of contract lifecycle management - found in every industry. Organizations with contract portfolios growing in both volume and complexity are leveraging contract lifecycle management software more and more to minimize human errors and increase productivity.

Subpar contract lifecycle management is the result of a couple of different things. First off, if your employees have insufficient training on how to track contract data, performance KPIs, and other key metrics, then you automatically have a decreased level of visibility into your contracts. Without the ability to effectively pull data and run reports on your contracts, it becomes difficult to maintain organizational awareness of upcoming deadlines, obligations, and milestones. And what does this mean? An increased likelihood of missed contract auto renewal dates, expiry dates, and other time-sensitive contract responsibilities slipping through the cracks.

To complete these contract tasks successfully, your team should be properly educated on how to do so. And with poor contract lifecycle management, each stage of the contract lifecycle becomes more complicated than it has to be. However, AI can support contract authoring, reviews, approvals, and so much more to streamline and automate your contract lifecycle management processes.

Today, we'll dive into several reasons why AI can support your organization in its approach to contract lifecycle management.

1. Build Accurate, Compliant Contracts Effortlessly

Contract authoring is often considered one of the most difficult and time-consuming steps in contract lifecycle management. With heaps of contract data available, it takes significantly more time for a human to pull relevant data for a given contract in comparison to artificial intelligence. By introducing AI into your contract management strategy, you can easily sort through a myriad of contract data in a fraction of the amount of time it would take for a human.

In this manner, you cut the time spent in the contract creation phase with AI-supported clause selection according to the type of contract that is drafted. And while manual contract creation is still rather effective, there's no doubt that having your team parse through your past contracts in order to author a new contract can increase risk. What's so unique about AI in the context of contract lifecycle management, and more particularly during contract authoring, is how AI observes, tracks, and learns from previous contracts to improve future data analysis.

2. Get Better Results From Negotiations

The results of your agreements hinge on the negotiation phase of contract lifecycle management. AI allows organizations to improve the outcomes of negotiations by reducing the turnaround time of your reviews and overall negotiation process.

With artificial intelligence, you can efficiently leverage previous contract data to determine necessary changes in your clause library to increase the likelihood of positive negotiation results. An AI-supported contract management system can use custom negotiation rules that ensure you only close deals that make sense with your company's needs, standards, and goals. In this manner, you increase visibility into your deals while confirming each deal is made in alignment with company objectives and quality standards.

3. Improve Risk Management

Rather than having your contracts be a source of stress and liability, you can turn them into a landing ground of opportunities by optimizing your contracting strategy with an AI contract management system. As industry-specific compliance standards steadily change, your contract clauses will also require frequent review and updating to ensure they remain compliant. Now, you can reduce the likelihood of creating non-compliant contracts.

Contract lifecycle management software equipped with artificial intelligence gives your organization the upper hand in contract risk management by analyzing contract language to categorize and alert users of which clauses might increase risk. In this manner, you can omit risky clauses from contract drafts and proactively build contracts that are risk preventative in nature. AI also offers the ability to monitor your contracts with audit trails, allowing organization to increase transparency and improve version control.

4. Simplify Contract Approvals

AI contract management software empowers companies with simplified approval routing and smart workflow automation to streamline the contract approval phase. AI identifies which stakeholders have yet to approve the document at hand and effectively routes the file to the appropriate user, increasing the efficiency and speed of renewals. In addition, you can increase compliance and obligation management with AI's ability to pinpoint contracts with exact characteristics and conditions.

An optimized contract approval procedurewill enhance the results of your contracts. AI can help you accomplish tasks faster, so things like collecting signature from various stakeholders and departments become fast and pain-free. Even if your enterprise regularly works with an exorbitant number of contracts and associated contract drafts that require several approvals, AI can make the task more efficient than that of a traditional contract lifecycle management approach.

5. Save Money

Companies that lack transparency into the status, performance, and deadlines associated with their contracts increase the potential for financial damages and losses due to noncompliance and failure to deliver upon contracted obligations. Rather than incur the penalties that stem from noncompliance, you can reduce costs and improve your contract results and ROI with AI-supported contract management software that centralizes and secures your contract data. Contract lifecycle management software and AI improve cost-efficiency with proactive notifications and reminders to increase awareness of approaching deadlines and milestones while alerting users of risky items.

For more information on how contract management software can cut business costs, clickhere.

Conclusion

AI contract management software can open up many doors of opportunity for the modern business. Here at Dock 365, we offer a cost-effective and user-friendly Contract Management System that is built on your current Microsoft Office 365 investment for easy adoption. With new AI capabilities and integrations with leading electronic signature providers like DocuSign and Adobe Sign, you can take your contracts on the go (with the Microsoft Teams mobile app) and execute compliant, results-driven agreements within minutes.

Our solution includes automated contract reminders so that you stay in the loop of upcoming key deadlines contract expiry and auto renewal dates. Secure contract storage is also provided with a searchable, cloud-based SharePoint contract repository. Interested in improving organization and eliminating tensions within your internal legal department? Then start with Dock for contract management made easy.

Unlock unrecognized contract value, reduce risks and costs, save time, and get the best deals possible with us here at Dock.
Learn more about our Learn more about For more information, we would like to welcome you to schedule a free demo with us today. Contract Lifecyle Management (CLM) Software here.Dock 365 Contract Management System here.

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5 Reasons AI Brings Value to Contract Management | Dock 365 Blog

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Learn 5 key reasons why artificial intelligence is changing modern contract management and how your business can leverage AI contract management software.

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As digital workplaces grow and regulations become more demanding, vendors are being regarded as part of overall business strategy. Forward-thinking companies are putting in place sophisticated vendor management solutions. Many firms rely on third-party solutions to handle vendors and contracts. Third-party software management, on the other hand, can quickly become difficult and chaotic.
Why spend money on these expensive solutions when your Dock 365 Vendor Management System can handle your vendors directly? It is a platform for managing all of the vendors' services and goods.

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Build Stronger Vendor Relationships

Dock Vendor Management System offers the tools your businesses need to ensure compliance and build first rate third-party relationships. Through automation, vendor tracking, supplier assessment, automated notifications, and more, Dock VMS can help your company improve how you build and manage vendor relationships.

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Vendor Management System (VMS) - Vendor Management Software | Dock 365

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Keep all your vendor data organized using Dock 365's Vendor Management System. Get excellent VMS system tools with our vendor management software!

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Integrate your Microsoft 365 Business Central platform with our contract management software to manage the entire contract lifecycle.

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Contract Management for Business Central | Dock 365 Inc.

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Get more out of your Microsoft 365 Business Central platform by integrating with our contract management software to oversee the entire contract lifecycle.

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A strong vendor relationship necessitates deliberate effort, effective communication, and on-going work. These connections can serve as the foundation for a number of opportunities that will help your organisation achieve its goals. Positive working relationships with employees, clients, and vendors are all essential for effective contract lifecycle management. Immediately request a live demo of Dock 365's Contract Management Software.

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4 Ways To Improve Vendor Contract Management | Dock 365 Blog

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Oversee vendor performance & cultivate beneficial vendor relationships with contract lifecycle management software. Today, we offer 4 tips to get started.

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How To Use A Contract Repository: The Benefits and Functions

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How To Use A Contract Repository: The Benefits and Functions

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A contract repository is a centralized location for storing and managing contracts and related metadata.

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The Dock 365 Contract Management System (CMS) uses a centralized contract repository. In this repository, you can create, store, sort, and manage contracts in one location, allowing you to find contracts quickly while increasing visibility. The contract repository includes an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capability to convert old contracts and make them searchable within the database.

The Dock 365 Contract Management System will offer you a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of your contract management processes. Our effortless contract management life cycle platform allows you to review every part of your customer and vendor contracts, set deadlines and review dates, create and edit contracts, and use contract tracking tools to track various items and obligations. Using our CMS solution, you will have every contract within direct access at any time with a customizable search function where you can set pre-made filters for different contract and document types. To create a cohesive and streamlined contract management process, we recommend utilizing a centralized contract repository to store all of your contracts.

What is a contract repository?

A contract repository is a centralized place where contracts and related metadata is kept and managed. The repository will function in various ways based on the type of business, growth of the business, quantity of users, and types of contracts and documents.

Microsoft Excel has historically been the key software used by business to store contracts. Consequentially, utilizing spreadsheets is very risky and can leave your business vulnerable to several potential pitfalls including the following:

Subpar supplier or vendor performance

Obscure risks

Manual management errors

Overbearing administrative burdens

Substandard version control

Failure due to a single point of contact with a given spreadsheet

Missed deadlines and critical dates

By implementing a centralized contract repository, you create organized solutions for data storage and design efficient internal processes.

Contract Repository Implementation

First, you must locate all existing contracts to be placed into your contract repository. Ensure your software is updated to the most recent version and that you are able to upload and extract contract data. Contract management software can allow you to extract contract data into your new repository.

In the case of adding new documents and contracts, be sure to add them into the contract repository to mitigate disarray and fragmentation in your storage system. The best part of having a centralized contract repository is the way it takes every document in places them into a very secure place.

Why You Should Opt for a Cloud-Based Contract Repository

Cloud-based contract repositories are ideal for time management and efficiency. This is because the energy and time spent towards manually searching for contracts and clauses, or toward monitoring compliance, can be drastically reduced. By using the contract repository, key contract managers and employees can shift their efforts towards more important tasks that require a hands-on approach, rather than be pulled to administrative duties. This way, your contract management team can increase productivity instantaneously.

Implement the Dock 365 Contract Management System today so you can leverage all the features that a centralized contract repository offers.

The Dock 365 Contract Management System includes the centralized contract repository to provide your business with a modernized way to manage contract life cycles. You can perform several functions pertaining to your contracts in a single secure place with the repository.

Why will a contract repository benefit my business?

Leveraging all that a contract repository has to offer will not only improve contract storage but will also offer ways to improve day-to-day business operations and business-vendor relationships.

Let's discuss key benefits a contract repository provides to your business strategy:

1. Increase data cohesiveness

Using a contract repository will decrease the fragmentation of your data and increase overall cohesiveness and organization. During contract life cycle management, it's very likely that data will get fragmented at some point. Even by using a solution such a SharePoint to collect your data, it's inevitable for data to become scattered due to numerous people and parties inputting different information.

As your business grows, data fragmentation will increase - so it's imperative to implement a contract repository as a solution sooner rather than later. With every new contract, or when an existing contract is modified, your business is required to collect more data by creating more spreadsheets. Using spreadsheets is especially risky, and when contracts become more complicated, it can be a human error that leads your business to overwrite existing spreadsheets or to lose transparency and visibility in your contract management practices.

Utilizing a centralized contract repository will help in contract and metadata storage and management on a large scale. Additionally, contract metadata can be uploaded into the repository for contracts that are both new and pre-existing.

2. Boost accuracy with automation

Human error is one of the largest areas for potential discrepancies that you will encounter during contract life cycle management. By entering data manually into spreadsheets, errors are bound to occur. Small errors can lead to large impacts business-wide.

What could human error cause in my business?

Reduced mastery of contract obligations

Missed renewals and deadlines

Misinformed business decisions

Inaccuracies in various reviews and reports

The Dock 365 Contract Management System offers a centralized contract repository that can automate data entry. In this way, your contract management team can work with a consistent user interface and eliminate human error - giving you and your stakeholders more confidence in the data storage, security, and accuracy of your contract repository.

3. Conduct efficient contract tracking

While spreadsheets provide a simplistic overview of data, as well as a convenient method to track contracts, using spreadsheets is manual contract management method that cannot effectively handle complex contracts or a high volume of contracts for an organization.

To scale your business and make the most of your relationships with your vendors, it's necessary to switch from a manual contract tracking approach to a digitized one. If you desire to increase the number of vendors you work with or the volume and/or complexity of contracts, make the switch so that you can optimize these processes.

Contract management teams can certainly become overwhelmed with administrative tasks, which will only increase in number in direct relationship to your business growth. It can prove to be difficult and time-inefficient to navigate through administrative and contract-based tasks while in pursuit of business objectives. The last thing you want to happen is for data entry to be flawed and for metadata to be in disarray because of poor methods.

By using a cloud-based and centralized contract repository, you can ease the scaling process of your business by having the best solutions at your fingertips so you can efficiently manage numerous contracts and users. Our Dock 365 Contract Management System will give you the power and confidence to employ the contract repository for data collection and storage in a single, secure place.

4. Relieve the stresses of your contract management team

Does your contract management team spend far too much time looking for certain contracts, clauses, or associated documents?

Is the biggest headache found in the process of locating key information?

In general, would you describe your contract data and documents as "all over the place"?

When your contract management team conducts a "search mission" for pertinent documents as a part of day-to-day operations, it's a sign that the current system is below standard. Thankfully, there is absolutely a solution for these types of headaches. If your team is overburdened by the need to locate hard-to-find documents consistently, it pulls time and energy away from contract administration.

Using a centralized contract repository rather than manual data entry via spreadsheets, you set up your contract management team for success and time-efficiency. Contracts can be easily located and filtered through so that your employees can focus on other critical tasks and propel business objectives forward.

When you have no clue where contracts are located, it makes it astronomically difficult to prove if your business is in compliance with specific rules and regulations.

With fragmented data storage and management, you make it nearly impossible to define what is occurring organization-wide. Reduce regulatory and financial risks by employing a centralized contract repository. By having on-hand access to supplier or vendor certificates, you can stay informed of the correct actions to take, ensuring you provide external auditors with proof of your business's compliance. A centralized contract repository can function as a source of truth of your business dealings and serves as a source where non-compliance occurrences can be identified and then corrected.

Conclusion

A centralized contract repository will give your business the best possible results in your contract management process by effectively storing and managing contracts and documents in a single, secure place. Implementing a contract repository will also increase visibility and transparency across your organization, massively improving your contract management approach.

With the Dock 365 Contract Management System, you can up-level your business strategy and increase the value of your experiences with clients and vendors alike. To learn more about how Dock 365 can enhance your contract management processes with our centralized contract repository feature, click here and schedule a free demo today.

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How To Use A Contract Repository: The Benefits and Functions | Dock 365 Blog

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The Dock 365 Contract Management System (CMS) uses a centralized contract repository. In this repository, you can create, store, sort, and manage contracts in one location, allowing you to find contracts quickly while increasing visibility. The contract repository includes an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capability to convert old contracts and make them searchable within the database.

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How to Configure and Manage Vendor Collaboration in Office 365

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How to Configure and Manage Vendor Collaboration in Office 365

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It is critical to care about your vendor process regardless of the industry in which your company operates. Whether you're purchasing basic office supplies or dealing with large manufacturing deals, you should be tracking your company's adherence to proper vendor procedures and processes. You rely on your vendors to complete your work. That is why it makes sense to devote time to ensuring that everything runs smoothly. In this free webinar, we'll talk about vendor management and how it can help your business.

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Free Webinar | Why Vendor Compliance is Necessary for Business Success

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In this free webinar, we'll take a look at Why Vendor Compliance is Necessary for Business Success

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Dynamics 365 is designed to help you flawlessly organize your customer interaction operations. You will be able to consistently please your clients by generating beneficial connections and engagement, as well as delivering results that matter to the users. Your company will be able to provide more engaging user experiences while also ensuring operational excellence at all levels. Dynamics 365 can assist you in better organizing your customer engagement operations. By interacting positively with your customers and delivering results that are important to them, you can consistently delight them. Your organization will achieve operational excellence on all levels while improving user experiences.

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Why Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 from Microsoft can be altered to suit the needs of each company. It offers a variety of CRM technologies that may be used to create an integrated solution or used independently for a particular business function.

Modern sellers are overburdened with processes, information, tools, and repetitive tasks. Sales cycles today tend to be long and complicated. There are a lot of steps in the process, a lot of back-and-forth conversation, a lot of prepping content, consulting stakeholders and colleagues, etc. Productive sales organizations are now looking for ways to free up sellers’ time with intelligent automation of routine, repetitive tasks, and seamless tools that streamline processes, so sellers have more time for selling.

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Dynamics365 Sales Contract Management Integration | Dock 365 Inc.

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Create, manage, and execute contracts effortlessly within your Microsoft Dynamics 365 using Dock's built-in integration.

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The Importance of Flexibility in Automated Contract Workflows

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The Importance of Flexibility in Automated Contract Workflows

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With the Dock 365 Contract Management System, we provide solutions that will assist your contract management team in meeting key objectives and maximizing results while utilizing our collaborative software.

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Importance of Flexibility in Automated Contract Workflows | Dock365 Blog

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Having flexibility in your automated contract workflows is key to making quick changes that allow your business to adapt to unforeseen circumstances.

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Vendor management is essential for reducing risks and ensuring that services are delivered on time and to high standards. The better your relationship with your vendor, the easier it will be to negotiate lower rates and maintain a good business-to-business working relationship. This is a summary of an efficient and effective vendor contract management process. The Dock 365 Vendor Management System is an excellent tool for automating vendor management tasks.

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Managing vendors is key to risk mitigation and to securing that services are supplied at the right time and to high standards. The better the relationship is between your company and your vendor, the more likely you can negotiate more cost-effective rates and continue to build a stronger business-to-vendor working relationship. This summarizes what an effective and efficient vendor contract management process looks like. The Dock 365 Vendor Management System is an excellent tool to streamline your vendor management processes.

Vendor Management Defined

Vendor management is the system that a company, organization, or business will use to manage vendors (suppliers).

During the vendor contract management best practises, various activities are performed including the following:

vendor selection

vendor onboarding

contract negotiation

risk mitigation and management

conflict resolution

service/product delivery

cost management

performance monitoring

reporting

payment

The Difference Between Vendor Management and Contract Management

Vendor contract management best practises involves a business-supplier relationship. A vendor manager primarily focuses on maximizing results for a business by improving the supplier relationship. Vendor managers take a comprehensive approach with their supplier relationships that span across various projects and multiple contracts. The vendor manager most likely has several different points of contact they communicate with in the supplier company.

Contract management is simply focused on contracts. A contract manager works with both suppliers and the contract management team to achieve business goals. Contract managers also understand and follow contract requirements while focusing on supplier relationships through the lens of the needs and terms of a single contract.

3 Ways to Measure Vendor Compliance

There are three significant ways to measure how a vendor is performing on the basis on compliance with every contract they sign:

1. Monitor:contract managers conduct on-site visits to assess vendor progress and ensure that terms are being carried out appropriately by the vendor per contract.

2. Report:vendors submit progress reports to your business's contract manager for a performance evaluation.

3. Evaluate:businesses adopt an evaluation system to effectively evaluate vendor performance. Evaluations take place during the contract and after the contract's completion. Using a standardized evaluation system can help your business determine if a particular vendor should be used again moving forward.

Benefits of Vendor Management

Cost-effective rates

Risk reduction (i.e., supply chain disruption)

Time-efficient

Quicker vendor onboarding

Improved vendor options

Financially friendly

Better business-vendor relationships

Importance of Vendor Compliance

One of the greatest challenges in vendor management is non-compliance of vendors. By creating appropriate standards prior to working with a vendor, your business can save itself time, money, and unnecessary headaches.

While some vendors conduct their activities well and perform excellently, others might not be the right fit your company or simply do not deliver quality service. Vendor contract management compliance is very important because choosing the proper vendor for your business activity means that you can reach business goals while receiving an excellent service, strengthening your business-vendor relationship, and having organizational standards met at the same time.

How do I ensure vendors are compliant to contracts?

The best way to make certain that a vendor is following contract terms and staying contract compliant is by utilizing audits and recurrent performance reviews. Contract managers should schedule regularly occurring performance reviews and use their findings to decide if moving forward with the vendor is the best decision to reach future business goals. Performance reviews work similarly to a stoplight - a shining performance review could be your green light to continue a partnership with a vendor.

On the contrary, if there are apparent red flags in your vendor's performance review, it might as well be the red light guiding you to terminate your relationship with the vendor. Rather than reap the negative effects of their performance until the completion date of a contract with a poorly performing vendor, we recommend writing performance reviews into contracts. In this way, the performance reviews can allow both parties to determine if terms have been successfully followed - directly impacting vendor contract compliance.

8 Ways to Improve Your Vendor Management Approach

Here are some of the best practices to accompany your vendor management process:

1. Achievebetter business-vendor relationshipsfor the long-term

2. Ensurecontract complianceduring your business-vendor relationship

Refine Vendor Evaluation With Vendor Scorecards

TheDock 365 Vendor Management System (VMS)is fully equipped with all the tools your business needs to make certain that vendors are compliant. TheDock 365 VMSincludes a Vendor Scorecard feature so you can evaluate every vendor based on several categories, select a rating, and then gain a detailed understanding of vendor performance and effectiveness based on your own experience working with them. Maximize your business objectives by analyzing vendor data and performance reports so you can make the most informed decision in your future projects.

Conclusion

Vendor contract management and vendor compliance are crucial to successful contract management processes. Today, there are numerous opportunities to collaborate with vendors globally. Businesses and organizations today conduct working relationships with vendors across the world as technological advancements have grown and as geographical barriers have reduced.

Instituting a well-designed and functional vendor management system is imperative for ensuring maximum success in your business dealings with selected vendors. The major key to note is that vendor performance directly impacts business performance. By understanding the challenges associated with vendor management and vendor compliance, you can strategically plan ahead for potential difficulties and have solutions prepared for implementation.

Leveraging vendor management software will allow you to manage all vendor activities and improve the quality and coherence of your vendor management strategy. You will improve long-term business-vendor relationships, reduce costs, maximize results, and achieve business objectives more efficiently with vendor management software as a part of your strategy. Are you ready for an effortless and efficient approach to vendor management? Schedule a free demo of the Dock 365 Vendor Management System today!

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Importance Of Vendor Management And Compliance In Contract Management | Dock 365 Blog

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Managing vendors is key to risk mitigation and to securing that services are supplied at the right time and to high standards. The better the relationship is between your company and your vendor, the more likely you can negotiate more cost-effective rates and continue to build a stronger business-to-vendor working relationship.

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Finding a contract management system that aligns with your business's needs and objectives is critical to maximizing long-term success and growth.

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To have the most success in the contract lifecycle management department of your business, it's important to find a method that works seamlessly while simultaneously developing and improving client and vendor relationships. To maximize the success and growth of your business in the long-term, finding a contract management system that aligns with your business's needs and objectives is crucial.

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To increase client retention, you must adhere to and stay compliant to every contract created. Additionally, you want to ensure that critical dates are not missed and are instead planned and prepared for ahead of time - think renewals and expirations. Due to the intricate and legal nature of contracts, developing an expert understanding of all the details pertaining to contract management is imperative if you want to conductcontract managementprocesses successfully within your business.

To increase client retention, it is very important that you have a contract management process that provides confidence, security, and keeps the client returning to your business. Start by asking yourself if you were the client, would you return to your business for your future contract management needs? Was the process efficient, seamless, and full of clear communication across all parties? Take an assessment of the current functionality of your current contract management system and identify where areas of improvement might exist.

If you handle contracts expertly with the client in mind, you will certainly increase client retention by providing a positive experience. A great way to ensure client happiness and to increase their satisfaction is by conducting contract management activities with efficiency, attention to detail, organization, and timeliness. If your contract management process is subpar, unorganized, and unnecessarily delayed, you risk bittering client relationships by breaking their trust and confidence in your system and operations.

However: You're in luck.

There are incredibly advanced tools to help you create the best possible solution for your unique business needs and goals. You can both improve your contract management process and your working relationships with clients and vendors. The#1 tool we recommend implementing iscontract management softwareto increase productivity, efficiency, and return on investment. If one of your many business goals is to increase client retention and acquisition, adopting a revolutionary contract management software will set you up for success.

What is contract management software?

Contract management softwareis software that designed for the management, storage, and tracking of contracts. Contract management softwarehelps businesses efficiently take contracts through each stage of the contract lifecycle. Additionally, contract management software is designed specifically for the various functions pertaining to legal contracts.

These functions include:

The best contract management software will streamline the entire process of managing contracts through their lifecycles while increasing internal collaboration and communication - making it an efficient process for your entire contract management team or department.
Contract management software simplifies; previous contract management methods tend to complicate.
Witha contract management solutionlike our Dock 365 Contract Management System, you can create an organized and methodical approach to your contract management process. You will improve client and vendor relationships by making the contracting process more efficient both for your team and for theirs, creating more confidence and trust in your practices. By using contract management software, you increase the likelihood of gaining more accuracy in your renewals and approvals while speeding up their rates.

According to Forrester, implementing contract management softwarecan reduce your contract approval time by an average of 82%.

Increasing the quantity of well-structured renewals and approvals can result in maximized client satisfaction, increased productivity, and decreased working stress within your business. By combining contract management software withcustomer relationship software, you can be fully aware of both your contracting processes and how your clients are responding to the way your systems are operating.

Why Contract Management Software is Essential to Your Business's Success

The modernization of today's contract management softwarehelps companies and industry leaders globally up-level and advance their contract managementsystems. By leveraging the capabilities of leading contract management software, you gain the upper hand on your competitors and outperform them with more efficiency and productivity. Contract management softwareallows you to automate workflows, making contract management software a game-changer for collaboration and communication.

It's interesting to note that today, it's common to measure a business's success by how and by if they incorporate automation in their day-to-day operations.

According to SalesForce, 81% of top IT professionals find that the percent of automated processes within an organization is a crucial KPI for the organization to track.

By introducing automation into your contract management processes, you can streamline contract lifecycles by creating smooth transitions for the contracts as they move in and out of the stages of their lifecycles. When regularly working with massive quantities ofmetadata, automated contract workflows can increase efficiency, accuracy, and timeliness of your contract lifecycle management processes - taking it to a whole new level.

9 Reasons Your Business Needs Contract Management Software with Contract Automation Capabilities

The contract management softwareyour business chooses should have automation features so you can completely transform your contract management process for the better. Maximize results, reduce risk, increase profits, and improve workplace efficiency with workflow automation-enabled contract management software.

In a study by Aberdeen Research, administrative costs of contracts reduce by 25%-30% by employing an automated contract management system.

Here are nine reasons your contract management software needs contract automation included:

1. Drastically increase efficiency and reduce cost

2. Filtered and customizable searches in a centralized repository

3. Draft contracts with customizable templates

4. Digital workflow automation

5. Automated reminders, alerts, and notifications

6. Increased visibility

7. ESignature integration

8. Conduct data analysis

9. Create custom reports

Contract Management Software Gives Your Business the Competitive Edge

Put your company ahead of your competitors by leveraging all the features of our Dock 365 Contract Management Software.

Here are 20 advantages of implementing our software solution:

1. Ensure organization

2. Improve client acquisition, retention, and satisfaction

3. Increase time-efficiency

4. Contract template library

5. Clause library

6. Effectively manage high contract volumes

7. Reduction in human error

8. Utilize real-time updates

9. Improve accuracy and speed of contract renewals,approvals, andproposals

10. Automate workflows and tasks

11. Sort documents and contracts in a centralized repository

12. Improve contract collaboration

13. Employ thecustom filtered searchfunction

14. Create more accurate reports

15. Conduct detaileddata analysis

16. Contract archiving andtracking

17. Microsoft 365 and SharePoint integrations

18. Sertifi ESignature integration

19. Increased security

20. Single Sign-On (SSO) feature

Conclusion

Contract management softwareoffers numerous benefits to your company. With such software, you can allocate your time and resources in a manner more conducive to achieving business objectives. Reduce turnaround times and increase client satisfaction and trust with improved contract lifecycle management by way of contract management software. Choosing to adopt contract management software is easy - the advantages are rather undeniable.

OurDock 365 Contract Management Systemtakes your business's needs and goals seriously, and we will work with you to create a unique solution designed specifically for your business.

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How To Find the Best Contract Management Software for Your Business | Dock365 Blog

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To have the most success in the contract lifecycle management department of your business, it's important to find a method that works seamlessly while simultaneously developing and improving client and vendor relationships. To maximize the success and growth of your business in the long-term, finding a contract management system that aligns with your business's needs and objectives is crucial.

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Why Online Contract Management is Beneficial for Businesses

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Why Online Contract Management is Beneficial for Businesses

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Businesses must think and act strategically to remain competitive and grow at a steady rate. To achieve the desired efficiency, it is critical to make changes to the way you do business and process work as market conditions change. Adopting cutting-edge business technologies to boost productivity and efficiency throughout your business process is critical. The era of on-premise software solutions is long gone, and it is online/cloud solutions that are propelling businesses forward today. In this blog, we will discuss ten reasons why online contract management is beneficial to businesses.

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Businesses need to think and act smart to stay competitive and keep growing at a steady pace. As the market conditions change, it is essential to bring changes to the way you do business and process work to achieve the desired efficiency. Embracing the latest business technologies to increase productivity and efficiency throughout your business process is crucial. The age of on-prem software solutions is long gone, it is the online/cloud solutions that are taking businesses to new heights today. In this blog, we will tell you about 10 reasons why online contract management is beneficial for businesses.

Strengthening contract management means, your business will be able to save resources, time, cost, etc. that you are spending on managing contracts right now. As contracts are critical in the smooth running of your business, you need to achieve this without compromising on quality and accuracy. Contract Management Software's today let you do things a lot more effortlessly to make things better. Here are some of the best benefits a cloud-based CMS can offer your business.

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Faster Approvals to Save Time

The main objective of CMS solutions is to automate contract related processes and create customizable workflows to meet the requirements of each business. By doing this a Contract Management Software makes it easier to process approval requests and saves a lot of time that is taken by repeated processes.

Comprehensive Report Generation Options

As you know, the CMS will let you save all kinds of information regarding contracts in your organization. It includes both active, inactive, and upcoming contracts. There will be different vendors associated with each contract, and each of them has different characteristics like validity period, revenue, etc. With the ability to generate comprehensive reports based on various characteristics, your business can make smarter evaluations and decisions instantly.

It is one amazing highlight of the numerouscontract management tools you get to explore in an online CMS.

Increased Contract Awareness with Timely Notifications

You can set up notification rules based on your requirements. Want to get notified a week before the renewal date? Dock 365's Contract Management System allows you to customize notifications based on your needs. This allows you to gain better contract awareness, and receive timely notifications prompting for the right actions.

Guaranteed Contract Compliance

It is important to meet the compliance standards while managing each contract. Contract Management Software powered by Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365 allows you to work with Office Apps natively. This lets you utilize features like versioning and secured sharing facilities. This will enable you to take total control over compliance measures needed for every contract.

Higher Contract Visibility

With a modern CMS, you can store all your contract-related data in one place. This includes new contract templates, other clauses, etc. It will be easier to ensure that all your employees are on the same page when it comes to handling contracts. Moreover, with a quick search, finding contracts will be made easier. Remote access is another benefit too. With all thesecontract management tools you will be able to make better moves and strategies regarding contracts.

Cut Costs

You can reduce costs by changing from paper contracts management to an online digital contract management facility. With an Office 365 subscription, you can make it very easy to handle storage spaces, and facilities like electronic signature integration make it easier to sign contracts.

User Friendly UI

A simple and well-thought user interface is another advantage of an online contract management solution. At Dock, we have further customized and simplified the UI of our CMS to make it easier for the users to understand and adopt to the new system. It just needs very minimal training for anyone to get started with managing contracts. You can even restrict options, permissions, and abilities of accounts based on user groups. With just the required options and contract details provided to each user, they will find processing tasks easily without confusion.

Uncompromised Security and Privacy

Working on a cloud-based CMS might sound strange but Microsoft cloud solutions are the best when it comes to providing the ideal security and privacy for users. Features like data encryption and two-factor authentication login make these systems excellent in terms of a business standard security.

All Documents Regarding Contracts in One Place

Along with contract-related information, you can also upload documents and files along with each contract page. You can view all files regarding a contract in a separate view. This makes it easy to find files regarding a contract and make changes or decisions without delay.

Be Ready for Growth

Your business will not be in the same size and process for a long time. It will grow! As a result, the number of contracts and the workflows will also change. When you have a lesser number of contracts and simple workflows, it will be easy to switch to a digital contract management software. By making this move, when you expand in the future, you can make your team and resources ready for the growth no matter how big or complicated the workflows are at that time. The contract management tools available in an online/cloud solution is so amazing that you will find contract management easier in such a platform.

We know you will not be 100% convinced even after reading about all these points. That is because we are providing a free demo of our Contract Management Software for all our readers. Book a free demo now to see how it works and how easy it will be for you to handle contracts.

Hope you got a better awareness of the reasons why online contract management is beneficial for businesses. Keep coming back for more interesting business solution blogs.

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10 Reasons Why Online Contract Management is Beneficial for Businesses | Dock 365 Blog

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Businesses need to think and act smart to stay competitive and keep growing at a steady pace. As the market conditions change, it is essential to bring changes to the way you do business and process work to achieve the desired efficiency. Embracing the latest business technologies to increase productivity and efficiency throughout your business process is crucial.

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Cloud based contract management software

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Cloud based contract management software

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The most effective way for your company to gain a competitive advantage while assisting all departments throughout the contract lifecycle is to implement cloud-based contract management software. Cloud-based contract management makes contract collaboration and communication more user-friendly, greatly assisting contract evaluations, discussions, and approvals in a centralized digital platform. Contract automation features are also available in cloud-based contract management solutions, allowing you to create rules-based automated workflows that can significantly accelerate your organization's negotiating procedures.

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Contracts are at the core of any organization, and proper management of these important documents can lead to some pretty incredible outcomes. However, poor contract management strategies can put your organization on the fast track to bottlenecks, increased risk potential, and failure to follow through on contracted obligations. The Institute for Supply Management reports that written agreements oversee between 60 and 80 percent of business-to-business transactions. Their report additionally notes how Fortune 1000 companies typically manage anywhere from 20 thousand to 40 thousand contracts at all times.

It's important to have a clear understanding of the role that contracts play within a business, and given this understanding, you'll find yourself reaching towards any method that supports the optimization of your contract management processes. Be it contract automation, electronic signature integrations, simplified contract authoring strategies - the more efficiency involved in your contracting, the more you'll get out of each agreement.

Adopting a cloud-based contract management system is the #1 way that your business will gain the competitive edge while supporting your company's departments through every stage of the contract lifecycle. Cloud-based contract management allows for user-friendly contract collaboration and communication that greatly assists contract reviews, negotiations, and approvals in a centralized digital portal. Additionally, cloud-based contract management systems are equipped with contract automation capabilities, allowing you to configure rules-based automated workflows that can dramatically expedite your organization's negotiation processes.

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An Introduction to Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has changed and evolved massively in recent years, serving as a precursor to many technological advancements in the business world. For example, cloud computing provides businesses with several powerful solutions that give them the ability to focus on business processes rather than computing capabilities. Hosted contract management software, hosted email systems, and hosted IT serves are just three examples of how cloud computing is infused in regular business systems. Leveraging cloud computing as a part of your contract management solution can benefit your organization in several ways, and particularly so if your employees work partially or completely remote. In addition, storing data within a cloud allows users to be connected on demand to all company contracts within the cloud.

For any organization, the goal of contract management is to effectively oversee that all contracted obligations and commitments to vendors, clients, and suppliers are both delivered upon and are visible at any given time to authorized employees. A cloud-based contract management system serves organizations with a systematic, standardized method to managing and storing business contracts. These solutions include advanced features for collaboration, automation, and signing that streamline every stage of the contract lifecycle - from contract intake, to contract renewal.

The Advantages of A Cloud-Based Contract Management System

A contract management system with cloud storage and security offers your business simplified data collection capabilities, mobile contract access, configurable automated workflows, and several other competitive features.

Now, let's take a closer look at some key advantages of a cloud-based contract management system.

Remote Data Collection

A cloud-based contract management system provides your employees with features that allow them to save time and energy from manual data collection and data entry. With remote data collection, you create an efficient, streamlined approach to contract management that reduces the need to use outdated, manual contracting methods. With automated contract workflows and a preapproved contract template and clause library, your employees working remotely can work independently in a compliant and risk-mitigative manner.

Mobile Data Accessibility

With cloud technology, reviewing contract data and generating custom reports is both simple and secure. You can access your company's contract data and create reports on your web browser for streamlined contract management, data analysis, reviews, negotiations, approvals, renewals, and more. Your cloud-based contract management system allows your employees to access and review data from any location on any device - increasing visibility and accountability.

Cost-Efficiency

Cloud-based contract management systems save your organization time and money in the long-term. The best solutions are appropriately priced as well, and for more information on the cost of contract management software, clickhere. The best cloud-based contract management service providers such as us here at Dock 365 support businesses through implementing and deployment of the system, ensuring that employees get started on the right foot. Costs pertaining to manual contract management procedures, missed contract obligations, forgotten (and unfavorable) auto renewed contracts, and failed contract compliance are mitigated with a reliable and easy to use contract management system.

Increased Flexibility

A cloud-based contract management system allows companies to add valuable integrations and features as well as eliminate unneeded resources at any time. Cloud computing is flexible due to the fact that you can easily allocate any server maintenance issues to a respectable service provider. And in this way, your software solution can be adapted to your company's unique branding, objectives, and needs.

Conclusion

To take your contract lifecycle management to the next level, choose a cloud-based contract management system. Today, more companies than ever have discovered the utility of cloud-based contract management systems - so maintain competitiveness by adopting one yourself! An inefficient method of managing your company's contracts will only result in a host of issues that otherwise could've been prevented. From wasted time and money, to lost and missing contracts, to data breaches - it's clear that a cloud-based contract management system is the safe and secure way to go.

Today, you can transition your company to a digital, cloud secure contract management system to gain contract control and peace of mind. To optimize your contracts, our Dock 365 Contract Management System providers all that you need. Here at Dock, we leverage your existing Office 365 and SharePoint infrastructure, allowing you to implement your software and maximize your Microsoft subscriptions. As a Microsoft partner, we have extensive experience in supporting large and small businesses in optimizing contract management with the help of Microsoft tools and integrated business solutions.

For a cost-efficient, powerful, and productive contract management, we're here to help.

Interested in ourDock 365 Contract Management System? Click here.

Want to learn more aboutContract Lifecyle Management (CLM) Software? Click here.

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The Benefits of A Cloud-Based Contract Management System

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Contracts are at the core of any organization, and proper management of these important documents can lead to some pretty incredible outcomes. However, poor contract management strategies can put your organization on the fast track to bottlenecks, increased risk potential, and failure to follow through on contracted obligations.

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An Overview of Contract Clause Types and Effective Clause Management

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An Overview of Contract Clause Types and Effective Clause Management

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Every business utilizes contracts to partner with customers and vendors, as well as when hiring employees. However, you might be wondering what all goes into a contract. In this blog, we will discuss some of the clauses that you will commonly find within a contract, and we will also discuss how to properly manage your contract clauses throughout contract lifecycles. Managing clauses can be difficult for any contract administrator or legalprofessional, so learning more about these processes can help you effectively oversee your clauses. And with disconnected processes like spreadsheets, shared drives, and emails, clause management can become that much more taxing.

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With proper clause management, you can generate compliant and standardized legal agreements with your preapproved contract clauses to efficiently and effectively speed-up your approvalsand drafting. Your contract clauses will enhance your organizational policies and mitigate risks when properly implemented, and this can lead to numerous positive impacts in your contracting strategy. Now let's go ahead and discuss how you can master your organization's contract clauses.

An Introduction to Contract Clauses

The concept of a contract clause is relatively simple. In general, a clause is a predefined and preapproved piece of text that can be selected and inserted into your contracts and supporting documentation by your contract management team. With effective clause management and proper clause development, you can save time, reduce human error, and mitigate risk when authoring your legal agreements and contracts. Standardized clauses and centralized clause management will help you create accurate contracts and will inevitably help you increase compliance.

In every business in every industry, you will find contracts. And within contracts, you will find clauses. There are several contracts clause types that you will likely find in nearly every contract. Let's discuss them in a bit more detail below.

Common Contract Clause Types
Confidentiality
For two or more parties to successfully enter into a contract, there will need to be a comprehensive approach to the communication in order for each party to properly understand and carry out contractual obligations. Contracts must contain a detailed confidentiality clause that describes necessary information regarding each parties contracted terms. A confidentiality clause ensures that parties refrain from sharing any confidential information that is communicated during a transaction. This is especially critical when concerning intellectual property.
Force Majeure
A force majeure clause is included in commercial contracts to safeguard contractual parties from uncontrollable circumstances that could impact the contract. In the case of a natural disaster, certain contractual obligations might not be able to be upheld. In essence, this clause helps to ensure that the failure to carry out your contract is because of an unforeseeable circumstance beyond your control, rather than a breach of contract.
Damages
Contract breaches can result in significant, negative impacts for any organization. Because contract breaches tend to occur more often than you might think, it's key to include a clause pertaining to damages. Liquidated damages clauses are often found in commercial contracts, and they typically discuss a predetermined amount of money owed if one party does not uphold their contract. Depending upon the nature of the breach and size of its impact, a court might award additional damages.
Jurisdiction
Location, location, location. In today's day and age, business transactions are often conducted digitally so that organizations can capitalize upon potential opportunities that exist miles away. Completing transactions that cross borders is a common occurrence, both domestically and internationally. If contractual parties are located among several states or countries, it's necessary to clarify which state's or country's laws will govern the legal agreement. In this manner, commercial contracts must provide details regarding which state holds jurisdiction so that it is clearly understood which laws apply to the agreement.
Termination
A termination clause is important for businesses who wish to end a contract when it is not performing as initially perceived. By including a termination clause in a contract, you can clearly detail and inform which circumstances allow for either one party or both parties to terminate the contract no matter how much time is left within the agreement.
Dispute Resolution
No matter how much time and effort you put into drafting your contracts, you'll experience conflict at some point. It's important to describe what dispute resolution will look like in action for the contractual parties if an issue were to occur. In the majority of today's contracts, firms will often include an arbitration clause that contractual parties must follow as opposed to going the litigation route. This can be a faster and more cost-efficient way to find a solution to contract issues.

The Pain Points of Poor Clause Management

Poor clause management is a major pitfall found in the contract management strategy of many companies today. Failure to properly manage your company's clauses can lead to inaccuracies in your contracts, low compliance, increased risk, delays, and slow contract execution. By taking control of your contract clauses, you can greatly increase the quality of your contract lifecycle management and speed up your contract review, approval, and execution.

By centralizing your contract lifecycle management, you can use integrated tools and capabilities to collaborate and communicate on your contracts. Digital contract lifecycle management allows you to increase the speed of contract authoring and lifecycles, boost transparency, enhance collaboration, improve security, raise compliance, mitigate risk, and close more deals - faster.

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) software can help you edit and track various versions of your documents so that you can ensure you are working on and with the right clauses at the right times. Poor version control can cause you to develop different clauses unnecessarily and store them in a variety of places, which can lead to a lack of compliance and annoying delays when drafts need to be reviewed by your legal department. A user-friendly library of compliant, preapproved contract clauses will seriously help you during several stages of contract lifecycle management.

Gain Results With Simplified Clause Management

Manage your clauses better than ever with Dock 365. Draft and build contracts and legal agreements effortlessly with your library of contract templates and preapproved contract clauses with the Dock 365 Contract Management System. Our solution is equipped with several advanced contract authoring features including:

Contract data fields that merge with your company's contract templates

Flexible and customizable automated contract workflows

Automated task reminders and alerts

Field and clause merging to simplify contract drafting

Version tracking capabilities with timestamped histories

Counterparty collaboration features

Electronic signature integrations to speed-up approvals and contract execution

Conclusion

Contract clause management is often an overlooked concept in contract lifecycle management. We highly recommend leveraging a software solution that allows you to oversee all of your company's clauses so that you can increase compliance, productivity, and efficiency throughout the course of your contract lifecycles. With new knowledge of contract clauses, various clause types, and how contract lifecycle management software can help, we hope you feel empowered to take action to optimize your contracting systems.

Dock offers an affordable and user-friendly approach to contract management that leverages your existing Microsoft 365 infrastructure. If you're in the market for a dedicated contract lifecycle management software solution, reach out and we would love to assist you with a complimentary demo of our solution.

Learn more about our Dock 365 Contract Management System here.

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An Overview of Contract Clause Types and Effective Clause Management | Dock 365 Blog

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Every business utilizes contracts to partner with customers and vendors, as well as when hiring employees. However, you might be wondering what all goes into a contract. In this blog, we will discuss some of the clauses that you will commonly find within a contract, and we will also discuss how to properly manage your contract clauses throughout contract lifecycles.

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How Adopting a Contract Management System Can Help Your Organization in 2022

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How Adopting a Contract Management System Can Help Your Organization in 2022

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We're nearly halfway through 2022, which means it's time to start thinking about 2023. Now is a great time to start looking for tools and resources that can help you in the next year. A Contract Management System, more than any other instrument, may be able to assist.

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Overview

We're over halfway through 2021, which means it's time to start planning for 2022. Now is the perfect time to be on the lookout for tools and resources that might benefit you in the New Year. One tool that might be able to help more than any other is a Contract Management System.

It's not secret that contract management can be a headache. At best it's a tedious process and at worst it's a compliance nightmare. That's why a contract management tool might just be the perfect thing for your company to look into for 2022. In this free webinar, we'll be taking a look at all of the ways that adopting a CMS can benefit you. We'll take a look at common contract management issues, how poor contract management harms businesses, and how a CMS can help you solve problems.

Webinar Agenda

Common Contract Management Issues

How Poor Contract Management Harms Businesses

How a Contract Management System Can Help Solve Problems

Q&A with Dock 365

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Free Webinar | How Adopting a Contract Management System Can Help Your Organization in 2022

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In this free webinar, we'll take a look at how a contract management system can help companies in 2022

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Contract management is an important part of any business. Contract management can be an intimidating and difficult task. Contract management software provides necessary information on contract data, facilitates collaboration between parties, saves time and money, and poses minimal risks. Your business requires modern contract maintenance software to effectively manage its contracts.

Modern contract maintenance software systems are loaded with amazing capabilities and features. This is not to say that all of them will yield the desired results. All Contract Maintenance Software must have a powerful workflow engine in order to effectively streamline all processes. It is also critical to be able to design and implement customized workflows.

Dock365's CMS includes powerful features that ensure your contract maintenance processes remain intact even if your company undergoes significant changes. You can save your company time and money by utilising our contract maintenance software while focusing your efforts on strategic initiatives.

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Contract Maintenance Software To Stay in Control | Dock 365 Inc.

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Contract maintenance software can easily let your business manage and monitor your business contracts. Stay in control of your contracts with Dock!