From Chaos to Order: How to Streamline Contract Workflows

Contracts are the foundation of business success and impact every aspect of operations: from hiring top talent and building partnerships, to selling products and renting equipment. office spaces. They build trust, protect interests, manage risk and enable smooth operations within an organization.

But here's the thing. Traditional contract management methods are chaotic. Managing manual processes, physical documents and endless email exchanges slows everything down and opens the door to mistakes and missed opportunities.

Fortunately, there is a solution: contract workflows.

By embracing automation, centralizing contract repositories, and utilizing electronic signatures, companies can bring order to their contract management processes and improve overall efficiency.

This article explores contract workflows and ways to streamline them to capitalize on opportunities quickly and efficiently.

What are contract workflows?

A contract workflow is the steps involved in the journey of a contract, from creation to completion. This typically includes drafting, editing, routing approvals, e-signing, tracking, and storing contracts.

By implementing a structured contract workflow, companies can improve efficiency, ensure compliance, improve collaboration, and reduce errors and delays. Challenges with Traditional Contract Workflows

Traditional contract management methods are often inefficient and have a huge impact on a company's bottom line. Studies show that companies can lose up to 9% of their profits due to inefficient contract management.

Some common challenges associated with traditional contract management include:

1. Inefficient processes

Manual processes are time-consuming, often causing delays in contract execution, leading to longer lead times and missed opportunities. Browsing through piles of documents, creating contracts from scratch, managing versions, or searching for approvals consume valuable time and drain resources that could be better used elsewhere.

2. Lack of visibility and follow-up

Without a centralized system, it becomes difficult to have an overview of the status and progress of contracts at each stage. Tracking contract versions, changes, and negotiations can be difficult, leading to potential errors and misunderstandings. Companies often struggle with scattered contract information, which makes it difficult to keep everyone on the same page.

3. Security risks and compliance issues

Relying on physical documents presents risks such as loss, damage or unauthorized access. These risks compromise the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive contractual information. Additionally, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA), industry standards (HIPAA, ISO 27001) and legal requirements is becoming increasingly difficult when it comes to physical documents. .

4. Limited collaboration and communication

Manual transfers and the physical circulation of documents in contract workflows lead to communication delays and inefficiencies. Coordinating contract reviews, changes, and approvals between departments and stakeholders is time-consuming and error-prone. This can lead to missed deadlines and communication issues.

5. Cost and resource inefficiencies

Manual contract processes have several associated costs that can impact a company's budget. Expenses such as printing, paper storage, postage, administrative tasks and physical interactions with customers add up. Additionally, travel costs can be significant, including transportation and accommodation for face-to-face meetings and signing contracts. Time spent traveling to meet with clients and conducting face-to-face negotiations further adds to resource inefficiency.

6 Ways to Streamline Contract Workflows

Streamlining contract workflows means automating and standardizing the steps involved in managing contracts. This involves using workflows to organize tasks and actions, ensuring the right people have the right documents at the right time. The goal is to simplify the process as efficiently and accurately as possible.

Here are six ways to streamline contract workflows in your organization.

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