Novel Coronavirus (#covid19) brings unprecedented challenges and requires every organization to evolve and bring in 360-degree changes to remain in business and ensure there is a limited impact on life, business, and no community spread.
Looking at global trends, now it is quite clear that # COVID19 is going to stay for a longer time and it may take about 18 months to have an adequate medical support system like a vaccine, hospital support, and testing facilities in place.
As businesses are adopting the work-from-home concept, customer meetings are happening on a digital channel and the world has adopted “NAMASTE” instead of hand-shake for greeting friends, family, and business acquaintances, there is a strong case to go paperless for signing business contracts to stay protected from #covid19.
There are many legal tech companies have been championing the concept of digitization & automation of legal contracts and with the best internet facilities across the world, solutions for digital signatures like DocuSign, AdobeSign, the government-authorized USB tokens, and desire to have structured solutions for Contract Management, it is time now to digitize & automate the legal contract drafting, execution, and Management Process.
What is Contract LifeCycle Management Software?
Contract Lifecycle Management Software is a technology solution that allows businesses to draft legal contracts, communicate, approve, sign, and manage legal contracts. This software completely removes physical interactions, the printing of papers, and the manual signing process.
The concept has been in existence in the developed market with leading players like Apttus, Exari, and Icertis, however, in India, a few players like Volody have been at the forefront and building smart personalized solutions to digitize legal agreement processes for businesses. A good Contract LifeCycle Management Software normally has features including:
Easy, safe & faster deployment
Makes you ready to go with the immediate installation with on-cloud & on-premise models. Passing all Vulnerability Assessment & Penetration Testing (VAPT) criteria. Integration features of active directory, office emails, and Microsoft SharePoint make software enterprise-wide acceptable, safe, secure, and personalized.
Intelligent contract creation
Contract Management Software should intelligently automate contract drafting and allow users to smartly create contracts by answering basic questions and key terms of contracts. It avoids the mundane job of working on repeated contract drafts all the time. Also, its risk management features help to give alerts for contracts having riskier clauses.
One-click access dashboard
MIS & Dashboard are quite critical these days for decision-making. A good Contract Management Software gives role-based dashboards allowing the user to see what they should be seeing. Your landing screen gives you access to all Customer contracts, Vendor Contracts, Expiries, Renewals, Compliances, Contracts under discussion, contracts under approvals all MIS readily available, Obligations, Approvals status, etc.
Intelligent approval matrix
Every contract requires certain approval before signing be it regarding pricing, commitment, requirement, or budget. Contract Software is designed to understand the business’s internal approval matrix and adapt to make sure all contracts are approved before execution.
Audit Trail, Version control & compare documents
Governance requires Contract Management Software to have an updated audit trail for all contracts based on all actions, create multiple negotiation versions, and allow users to compare two documents to ensure nothing is falling through the cracks and there is complete information about all actions as an audit trail.
Legacy contracts digitization
Businesses & General Counsels take a longer time to decide on selecting a Contract LifeCycle Management Solution implementation partner due to a lack of support for legacy contracts. Solutions that use data science & machine learning tools and automatically create metadata for all contracts based on pre-defined models.
Risk Management
Data Science & Machine learning-driven models ensure that users are given alerts about possible risks in the contracts. Obligation & Compliance management feature allows businesses to prepare Obligation & Compliance Task Management report and ensure that all obligations and compliances are adhered to & complied with on or before time.
Smart Centralized repository
Centralized digital storage and access to all contracts anywhere from any device. Now access, search, and retrieve all your contract content including clauses with ease. User-based access feature gives restricted access to Contracts. A centralized contract repository ensures all the contract-related information is readily available in a single portal.
Clause Library
Every agreement requires various clauses to protect the interests of all parties. General Counsels & Business Users also look for alternate clauses to make the agreements tight. A standardized clause library allows businesses and legal teams to make changes to the contract without involving GCs, hence reducing the time in contract drafting and saving money.
Digital Signature
A contract gets completed only after the signature. Nowadays most of the Contract LifeCycle Management Software enables the signing of contracts digitally using legally authorized digital channels like DocuSign, Adobe Singer, Digital Signature Certificate (DSC fully approved by CCA-India), or Aadhar OTP method (for India customers) and reduces the pain of taking printouts, sending documents for signatures for all parties concerned.
Communication with stakeholders
A good Contract LifeCycle Management Software has an inbuilt feature to communicate with all the internal & external stakeholders to share documents & notes. It normally integrates with your email system and allows users to send & receive email notifications and communicate with other members of the company and people outside the organization smoothly.
In such unprecedented times, it is just not possible to continue business with traditional methods and not use technology-enabled smart solutions for signing legal contracts.
