Automation has been one of the most important drivers of efficiency in the digital age.
Research suggests that by digitising the most information-intensive processes, businesses can cut costs by up to 90% and significantly speed up turnaround times.
One area you might not have considered digitising is contract management, and in this post, we’re going to look at the surprising benefits of doing so.
1. Digitising the past, present and future
Digital contract management is far lighter on its feet than it’s manual predecessor.
By implementing the right solution, businesses can easily digitise records of past, current and future contracts. This enables continual updates and changes to be made as they happen and without duplication of effort.
Full digitisation of all contracts also provides the business with a full audit trail of any amendments. Key changes can therefore be more easily found and attributed to specific authors.
2. Automated contract renewals
A key problem with manual contract management resides with renewals that are missed or overlooked due to human error.
With an automated contract management system in place, your business won’t miss these key dates, ensuring that service provision remains uninterrupted.
This has legal and strategic benefits too, with exposure to out-of-contract penalties becoming a thing of the past and more time made available to negotiate better deals.
3. Significant workflow improvements
Dealing with contracts manually is an unenviable task, but with the right contract management solution in place, organisations can substantially reduce or eliminate entirely the processes involved in managing, tracking and administering agreements.
Once a contract has been signed, it is retained in the digital domain - an environment which ensures it is easily retrievable, backed-up and able to tell the story of any amendments made.
4. Removing needles from giant haystacks
Research by the Institute of Supply Management discovered that the average Fortune 1000 company retains anywhere between 20,000 to 40,000 contractual files.
Those colossal numbers neatly illustrate how big a task managing such documentation is likely to be when undertaken manually. Similarly, few businesses have the time or resources to devote to something that appears to offer no immediate benefit.
However, if left unmanaged, that stockpile of contractual material is capable of creating significant legal issues, and may put the business that owns it at a serious commercial disadvantage.
By digitising the contract management aspect of your business, you’ll gain peace of mind that some of the most important documents in your organisation are managed cost-effectively.