Contract Management Platform The Ultimate Guide

As a result, we have put this guide together to help both beginners understand what contract management means and what Online Contract Management Software actually does - as well as seasoned pros who want a few more tips on implementing one, and to learn more about the benefits.

For instance, a Contract Management Platform can be seen as an online piece of Software, or platform, that helps organisations create, track, and manage their contracts efficiently throughout their lifecycle (known as Contract Lifecycle Management) - from starting them and drafting through to renewal or even contract termination if the project comes to an end or both parties part ways.

Consequently, the main goal of a Contract Management Lifecycle Platform, or Software, is to simplify the complexities associated with:

• Handling contracts

• Making it easier to ensure compliance

• Monitor deadlines

• Manage obligations

• and more.

Table of Contents

• Introduction to Contract Management Platforms and Software - What is It?

• Key Features of a Contract Management Platform

• How Has Contract Management Evolved Over The Years?

• Why Does A Business Even Need A Contract Management Platform?

• Understanding the Basics of Contract Management Software

• Integration Capabilities

• Security and Compliance of Contract Management Platforms

• Review & Redlining

• How Do Templates and Playbooks Work with a Contract Management Platform?

• What are Playbooks When it Comes to a Contract Management Platform?

• The Power of Automation in Contract Management

• Empowers Your Teams with Automated Templates

• Data Insights & Intelligence with Contract Management

• Contract Management Platform with AI - the PLAI Assistant

• eSigning & Approval

• Task Management in Contract Software

• Scaling Control and Speed in Contract Management

• Improves Your Compliance and Mitigates Your Risks

• How Do You Implement an Online Contract Management Platform or Software?

• Contract Management Examples of Them Being Used Well

• How Can a Contract Management Platform Help Different Types of Businesses and Organisations?

• Contract Management and Dispute Resolution

• Contract Management and Negotiation

• Why Does Your Business Need A Contract Management Platform?

Introduction to Contract Management Platforms and Software - What is It?

A Contract Management Platform helps you automate routine tasks around your contracts such as document storage, deadline alerts, compliance tracking and lots more that we will go through. 

Which, in turn, significantly reduces the chances of errors occurring in your legal contracts. 

As a result of improving their efficiency in the business.

For instance, it can allow your businesses to focus more on strategic decision-making rather than getting bogged down, unfortunately, by those routine administrative duties that come with them.

Moreover, Contract Management Platforms, such as Pocketlaw, provide you with a centralised platform where all your contract-related information and metadata, can be stored and accessed easily - improving collaboration across all your departments by doing so.

So, as you can see whether you are a small businesses or a large enterprises, this online software helps you better control your compliance and insight into your contractual agreements.

Key Features of a Contract Management Platform

Contract Management Platforms bring many features to bear for you. Some of which, for instance, can consist of the following:

Contract Repository

With their Contract Repositories, they give you a secure and centralised database where all your contracts are stored.

This makes it easy to search for and retrieve any documents over any time period as needed.

Document Management

The Document Management feature allows you to create, store, edit, and manage your contracts and related documents.

This also comes with built-in Contract / Document Version Control, which is a key component. It ensures that the most current version of a document is always accessible and that you can easily and quickly revert to a prior version if necessary.

Workflow Automation

With Workflow Automation, this feature automates the process of your contract creation, approval, and even sending and delivery to your clients, employees, and suppliers.

Furthermore, this can include things such as notifications, reminders, and even automatic routing to the appropriate personnel for approval before going out as well.

Template and Playbook Libraries

With the Templates and Playbook Libraries, you get pre-approved templates and legal Playbooks, which help you to standardise your contract creation, reducing errors and legal risks.

What is a Legal Playbook Regarding Contract Management?

When it comes to contract management, a legal Playbook gives you a reference guide that outlines the following:

• Processes

• Procedures

• Best practices

• Exact legal teams to use

• Who are the contract managers

• Other relevant stakeholders

This then ensures consistency, compliance, and efficiency in the contract management process within your whole organisation - a very powerful tool to have.

Contract Lifecycle Management

With a Contract Lifecycle Management feature, you can easily and with only a few presses of a couple of buttons manage every phase of your contract's life cycle - from initiation through negotiation, approval, renewal, and eventually even archiving - at scale.

Compliance Management

The compliance management side also helps that you and your organisation make sure that your contracts are compliant not only with your internal policies, guidelines and standards but also external regulations that you are governed by easily. 

This can, for instance, include monitoring terms to ensure they meet legal and regulatory requirements, to using pre-built templates that have been written and legally vetted by dedicated legal professionals, ready for you to take and deploy yourself.

Signature Integration

Adding digital, electronic signature, or eSigning capabilities that allow your contracts to be signed securely and quickly online can also help speed up your signing up process without the need for physical documents, with traditional ink signatures needing to be posted back to you in the mail.

Reporting and Analytics

Another benefit of a contract management platform is having advanced tools to track and analyse contract data. This feature, for instance, can help you analyse your contracts at scale to make more informed decisions about them moving forward, along with helping you make your compliance monitoring and auditing a lot simpler than it has been before.

Access Control and Security

Features that can control who can view, edit, or approve contracts are also a must. 

This helps to ensure that sensitive information is protected and that legal compliance standards are 100% met.

Alerts and Notifications

Automated alerts to notify relevant parties about key dates like contract expiries and renewal deadlines, ensuring that no critical deadlines are missed, are also a key feature that you will find invaluable.

How Has Contract Management Evolved Over The Years?

As you know by now, contract management involves creating contracts, ensuring they are followed, and dealing with any issues that arise. 

As a result, over time, how we manage contracts has changed a lot - mainly because of advances in technology and new regulations making the process more legally compliant. For instance, the days when paper forms would be sent out asking for customers' credit card information to be filled in and mailed back are long gone.

Early Days of Contract Management

So, in the beginning, contract management was all done by hand. People wrote contracts on paper and stored them in big filing cabinets. As a result, this made it hard to find and update contracts easily, as everything had to be done in person - or through mail - which we all know takes a lot of time.

The Digital Age

Today, though, those days are long gone, so much so that we have even more advanced tools, like online contract management software, such as Pocketlaw.

This online Software allows people in your organisation to create, sign, and manage your contracts all in one place online. 

It also lets your teams set reminders for when contracts need to be reviewed or updated, making it easier for them to work together on contracts at the same time - even if they are in different locations around the world.

Overall, contract management has evolved from a very manual process to a highly automated one. Why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today?

Why Does A Business Even Need A Contract Management Platform?

Okay, so I understand the features, but why is a contract management platform important for my business in terms of deliverables, you may ask?

Well, this is because it helps make sure that all the agreements or deals made with other companies - or people are correctly done.

This process alone allows you to keep track of all the details in a contract to make sure everyone does what they agreed to do - but, more importantly, at scale over thousands of documents simultaneously.

Furthermore, Contract Management Platforms also bring about:

Clarity and Organisation

For instance, they can help everyone involved quickly and easily understand the terms clearly while keeping all contract-related documents in order as well - which in turn avoids confusion and mistakes from cropping up.

Meeting Deadlines

It further helps your organisation by ensuring that all your tasks and deliverables- which are part of the contract - are completed on time. 

Which, in turn, helps you maintain good relationships between your business providers and your direct employees or contractors.

Helps To Avoid Problems From Arising

Good contract management can help you identify issues early before they become more significant problems - contracts coming to an end and needing to be revised before they do, for example.

Which, in turn, can save you money and time by reducing your client churn.

Following Regulations

They can also help ensure that the contract follows legal rules and regulations - especially when using pre-built legal templates - which can protect a company from legal trouble down the road.

Saving Money

It helps you manage your costs and avoid extra expenses by ensuring that the terms of the contract are followed - and this occurs at scale as well.

So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can reduce your legal costs today?

Understanding the Basics of Contract Management Software

Understanding the basics of contract management, for instance, involves more than just overseeing your agreements from start to finish to ensure everything runs as smoothly as it can.

For instance, this process is actually more detailed and can be broken down into several key areas, which include:

Creation Stage

This step involves developing a contract that clearly outlines the responsibilities, timelines, and terms for all parties involved.

Execution Stage

During this stage, both sides agree to and sign the contract, making it official. For a quicker sign-off process, this can, for instance, also be done via eSigning.

Contract Monitoring Stage

During this phase, the platform moves from creating, sending, and tracking sign-offs to monitoring the contract’s progress to ensure it isn't about to lapse or need renewing. 

Contract Modification Stage

Sometimes, mainly when you then use the Data Analysis features that they come with, or changes in regulations or project scopes occur, changes may need to be made to the contract. 

These adjustments must be agreed upon by everyone involved and appropriately documented. Consequently, a contract management platform, like Pockelaw, allows you to adjust these at scale quickly.

So as you can see effective contract management ensures that all parties meet their obligations - which in turn helps your projects succeed and also helps to prevent disputes that could have been easily avoided from occurring. So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today.

Automation of Your Contract Lifecycle Management Process

Automating your Contract Lifecycle Management also makes the entire process of handling your contracts easier and faster at the same time. 

For instance, this automation helps you to organise your contract processes instead of dealing with reams of papers and manual tasks - everything becomes digital and handled in the Cloud as a result allowing for tasks to be fully automated. 

As a result, this means you can create contracts, share them, and manage them all in one place, which saves you time because you do not have to physically move documents from one person to another. 

Everything is done on the computer - via the Cloud - which reduces errors and speeds up your process.

From Creation to eSigning

Once the contract is approved, it's ready for signing, and this is where Electronic signatures (also known as eSigning) make this final step quick and legal.

As all parties involved can sign the contract from anywhere in the world at, or even near, the same time, using their computer or mobile device.

This then eliminates the need for in-person meetings just to sign a document.

So, as you can see automating these steps saves you a lot of time, making your contract management way more efficient and less prone to errors as a result. 

So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and 

start reducing your legal costs today.

Integration Capabilities

Contract Management Platforms, are not just an isolated piece of online Software, for instance they can easily integrate with your other tools such as Salesforce to give you a combined powerful tool that helps your company manage your customer information, sales, and more even faster than without the integration.

These are really simple to set, and for instance, they can be as easy as:

Ease of Making the Integration Connection

For instance with just a click of a few buttons, this means you can see all your customer data in one place, which then helps with Data and Contract Metadata labelling, which in turn help you find contracts that match certain criteria with ease.

Allows for Real-Time Updates

When third party data platforms are integrated with systems such as Pocketlaw, the data swap can be updated almost in real-time. 

This means that if a customer's information changes, it is almost immediately updated in Pocketlaw, for instance, and that metadata can then be updated accordingly as well.

Better Reporting

With all your data connected, reporting becomes even more powerful and accurate. As you can get a complete view of your customers from all angles using this external data - helping you make better business decisions.

Security and Compliance of Contract Management Platforms

Another critical area of the Contract Management System that you need to be aware of is the security side of things.

As you know many regulations now contains clauses around your customers data security and how contracts are stored and handled - which depending on how your organisation is setup can be a headache to accomplish well.

Enter Contract Management Systems which can help to:

Keep Your Data Safe

Contract management platforms come with strong security measures built in - such as conforming to ISO 27001 compliance standards which ensures that all your important contracts are safely stored inline with a regulated process of doing so automatically for you.

This means that only people who are supposed to see those documents can access them - this goes from employee access control, who can only have access to certain documents or contracts, to third parties who should only have access to their own - or none at all.

This also helps you remain safe as it protects your data from hackers and other unauthorised people who manage to break in to your physical premises, or remotely access your local computer by encrypting the process and securing them online in the Cloud.

Helps to Reduce Mistakes Around Compliance

When your contract management system is compliant with legal standards, it also helps you to reduce errors in your contract flow.

So, having strong security and compliance in your contract management platform helps keep your data safe, while helping you to ensure that you follow necessary laws, reduce your mistakes, while also building trust with your clients that their data is secure, all at the same time.

Interesting to find out more, then book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform today to learn more.

Review & Redlining

When managing contracts through an online platform, the process of reviewing and redlining is also made very easy.

For instance, instead of having to deal with piles of paper, everything is online allowing collaboration to occur - even at the same time in real time.

You can then quickly find the contract you need to make changes directly in the document and save it.

This saves a lot of time because you don’t have to retype - or rewrite - entire documents. Just make the updates where necessary.

The Role of Redlining in a Contract Management Platform

Redlining is a legal feature that lets people mark changes in the contract so that everyone can see them. 

It then shows you and all parties precisely what's been changed, added, or removed - making it clear what the new terms are. 

This is really helpful during negotiations especially because it keeps everything transparent, as everyone involved can see the changes, agree on them, and move forward with a clear understanding of what’s been agreed upon. This then helps prevent misunderstandings and conflicts later on from occurring.

How Do Templates and Playbooks Work with a Contract Management Platform?

Using pre-built legal templates and Playbooks that come as part of your contract management platform - as they can on Pocketlaw - can greatly simplify the process of you creating your contracts. 

For instance, they can easily allow you to:

Easy to Implement a Pre-made Legally Vetted Contract Structure

Templates provide you with a pre-made structure for your contracts. This means you do not have to start from scratch every time you need to make a new contract. 

Consequently, these are more like you having a blueprint that you can fill out - which saves you a lot of time and effort over having to create one from scratch yourself.

Document Consistency

These templates then help you keep your contracts consistent across your whole organisation, as every contract will follow the same format - which makes it easier for everyone involved to understand the terms and therefore reduces the chances of mistakes from occurring.

Customisable to Your Organisation

Playbooks and templates also offer guidelines for people who are creating the contract on how to adjust their templates for different situations.

This means you can modify your contracts to better fit specific deals while still keeping the overall structure intact and on brand.

Faster Process to Market

With templates and playbooks, you can also create contracts much faster, as this speed helps your business react quickly to opportunities and close your deals sooner.

Reduces Errors

Using a standardised template reduces the chances of making errors in your contracts. Since the basic elements are pre-set, you are less likely to forget important details as a result.

So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today.

What are Playbooks When it Comes to a Contract Management Platform?

When it comes to Contract Management Platforms, Playbooks are simply a set of rules - or guidelines - that help you decide how to handle different contracting situations. 

Better Decision Making

Due to the fact that they provide clear instructions on what to do in various scenarios, they in turn help you and your organisation make better decisions quickly and correctly.

Improve Your Efficiency

Playbooks are also a good addition to your toolbelt as they help streamline the process of creating and managing your contracts. 

For instance, you won’t have to guess what to do next; the playbook guides you through it, which is their biggest strength.

Training Tool

Playbooks are also great for training new employees. As new staff can follow the playbook to learn how to manage contracts the right way - getting them up to speed with the processes much faster than otherwise.

All in all, this means you can focus more on other important parts of your business over the more mundane paperwork side, freeing your teams up to do more.

So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today.

The Power of Automation in Contract Management

When it comes to managing contracts, automation is the real game-changer here, as legal automation speeds up how your contracts are made and managed. 

So, instead of writing everything by hand and checking each detail one by one, our automated tools do most of the work quickly and accurately for you on your behalf.

This means that your contracts get signed faster, and you can start new projects much quicker than otherwise.

Fewer Mistakes

Humans can make errors, especially when they are tired - or have a lot to do. 

Automated systems follow strict rules set by our Software, so they are less likely to make mistakes. 

This means the contracts will be more accurate, reducing the risk of problems later on over having them done more manually.

Easier to Keep Track

Furthermore, automation helps you keep all your contracts organised.

You can then see all your contracts in one place without having to dig through files or folders to find that one contract from 4 years ago, for instance.

It is also especially handy when you need to find specific details quickly - whether for an update, a review, or a negotiation of an existing contract.

Saves Time

With contract automation, you do not need to spend as much time on routine tasks - like sending reminders for signatures or checking if terms are met. 

The system does those routing tasks for you which frees up your time to focus on more important things - like growing your business or improving your service offering overall as a result.

Provides You With Consistent Standards

Automated systems also use the same process every time - which means every contract is handled the same way which helps you ensure that every agreement meets your company’s standards and legal requirements as a result.

So as you can see, the level of automation provided by a Contract Management Platform makes your processes much faster, further helps to reduce errors, all while helping you keep things organised, saving you time, and maintaining consistent standards throughout your organisation.

All of these benefits together can make a big difference in how efficiently and effectively you can manage contracts. So book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can start using these benefits today.

Empowers Your Teams with Automated Templates

You may think with an online Contract Management Platform, that by implementing one could take the power and control away from your teams. 

However, this couldn't be further from the truth, as implementing automation in your contract management can significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your teams across an organisation - empowering them to do more and having more oversight than ever before due to several reasons. 

Streamlined Contract Creation

Automated templates, for instance, simplify the process of creating new contracts as you can see.

So, instead of starting from scratch each time, your teams can use pre-designed templates that include standard terms and clauses that have already been vetted by the wider business.

This not only saves them time but also reduces the likelihood of errors, in the contracts therefore ensuring all the contracts that go out of the door are consistent and reliable.

Increased Productivity

Further to streamlining your process, automation speeds up the contract lifecycle overall by automating routine tasks such as data entry, document generation, and approval workflows, to name but a few.

This then in turn allows your team members to focus more on the their roles - such as negotiation and relationship management over paperwork.

Enhanced Team Collaboration

In fact automation tools often lead to more collaboration, not less, as features that enable your team members to work together more effectively become available that they didn't have use of prior. 

So, whether they are in the same office or geographically dispersed, your teams can simultaneously view, edit, and comment on contract documents in real time - leading to faster consensus and decision-making than ever before, not less.

Scalability

As you know, as your business grows, its contract management needs become even more complex every day.

This is where automation really shines, as it allows your company to handle an increasing volume of contracts, without compromising on the speed or quality of their content as you know it will remain consistent. 

This scalability then ensures that the contract management process remains efficient regardless of the company size, empowering your existing teams to do a lot more than they could have prior.

Data Insights and Control

With automated contract management, your organisation gains much better visibility into your contract data.

For instance, it allows you to track metrics that you wouldn't have been able to do before, such as contract performance, acceptance rates, and expiry dates at scale, to name only a few.

This data then becomes invaluable for making business decisions and for you to maintain control over your entire contract lifecycle simultaneously.

So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today.

Data Insights & Intelligence with Contract Management

When using a contract management platform, one of the biggest benefits is around data insights and intelligence. 

This is due to the fact that you can see and understand lots of information that you couldn't prior very quickly. Which in turn helps you and your teams make smarter choices that you couldn't have done prior. 

Making Informed Decisions with Real-Time Data

For instance, with a contract platform, you get access to real-time data. Which for example, lets you track which contracts are about to end or see how changes in one contract might affect others. 

This quick access to data then means you can respond faster and more effectively than ever before.

Impact of Data on Contract Management

Having lots of data at your fingertips can also change the way you handle contracts across the board as well.

For instance, you can spot trends, such as if certain kinds of contracts often run into the same problems, or if some terms are better than others. 

As a result of this, this then helps you understand what works well and what does not. Which in turn, allows you to make better contracts in the future, which might save you time, money, avoid headaches, and get more signed off, with less churn from existing contracts coming to an end.

This can then make a big difference as it helps you stay organised and proactive as a consequence. So, if you are ready to make that big difference, why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today?

So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today.

Contract Management Platform with AI - the PLAI Assistant

Using an AI assistant with your contract management platform can make drafting and reviewing contracts even more easier and faster. 

This is due to the fact that AI can create and check contracts very quickly and at scale.

It also learns from lots of examples, so it can do tasks like filling in names, dates, and other details almost instantly for you - especially when combined with an integration with the likes of Salesforce - please see above.

Improves Accuracy of Your Contracts

AI, like our own PLAI Asssitant helps you and your teams to reduce mistakes, by keeping an eye out looking for errors that people might miss, such as spelling mistakes or missing information - which makes the contract more reliable than ever before.

Simplifies Contract Summarisation with a Document Summarizer

An AI assistant with your contract management also makes it much easier to understand what's in a contract.

For instance, an AI Document Summarizer can read through long and complex documents and pick out the most important parts for you.

This means you can quickly see the key details like dates, amounts of money, and what each person promises to do without reading everything word for word. 

All in all, this saves you a lot of time and reduces the chances of you missing important information - even in the small print. As a result, with this tool, you can handle contracts much more efficiently while making sure everything is in order at the same time.

So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today.

eSigning & Approval

When managing contracts, using an eSigning and approval feature on a contract management platform directly can be very beneficial. 

This is for several reasons, such as:

Integrated Contract Approval Processes

Having this feature allows everyone involved in the contract to review and approve it on a single platform, which simplifies the process by keeping all steps in one place. 

As a result, you do not need to print documents - or send emails back and forth and the Contract Management Platform even keeps a full audit log of when things where sent, and actioned as well. 

Instead, everyone can see the contract's progress, make necessary changes, and approve it online, which not only saves you a lot of time but also reduces the chance of errors or you losing the contract down the line - which can be very costly.

eSigning Makes Contract Sign-off Quick and Easy

eSigning makes signing contracts quick and easy. For instance, you can sign documents from anywhere, using any device, be it a computer, tablet, or even straight from your phone.

Which in turn, makes this much faster than traditional methods where you would need to physically meet to get the signature, or wait for documents to be mailed back to you to get the signatures.

It also means contracts can be completed and become effective much more quickly, which is helpful for getting projects started - or deals closed without delay. 

Task Management in Contract Software

Contract Management Platforms also come equipped with things such as Pocketlaw's task management tools, which bring you a lot of benefits to your business on top of just storing, signing and reading contracts - all of which make you and your teams everyday workloads smoother and more efficient as a consequence.

For instance, these can be focused around:

Streamlined Workflows

These task management tools help you organise all your contract-related tasks in one place. 

This means you can easily see what needs to be done, who is supposed to do it, and by when. 

They also help you in moving contracts through their different stages easily, from drafting to signing, without any delays whatsoever.

Automated Reminders

One of the biggest advantages is that a Contract Management Platform can automatically remind you and your teams about important deadlines. 

This ensures that no important dates are missed, like contract renewals or review periods for instance - which can save you a lot of time and prevent costly mistakes from occurring as a result.

Improved Collaboration

These tools also allow your team members to work together more effectively. 

So, whether people are in the same office or spread across different locations, everyone can stay updated on the contract's progress. You can, for instance, even share updates, tag team members, and handle issues all within the platform itself.

Time-Saving

By having all tasks related to contract management in one place - and automating routine tasks - these tools save you a lot of time that is no doubt.

Which, as a consequence, allows you and your team to focus on more important aspects rather than getting bogged down by manual processes - making everybody more efficient at the same time.

Provides You With Better Tracking and Reporting

With all tasks and their statuses tracked, it becomes even easier to generate reports that provide you with insights into the contract processes, which can help you identify bottlenecks and improve your processes over time as a result.

So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today.

Scaling Control and Speed in Contract Management

A Contract Management Platform really aids you in scaling and at speed as well. This is due to the fact that is helps you keep all your contracts organised in one place. 

Which in turn, makes it easier to find any contract quickly, saving you time and reducing your stresses, especially when dealing with hundreds if not thousands of contracts.

Improved Control Over Your Contracts

With a Contract Management Platform, you can see all the details about every contract, such as who signed it - and when it expires.

This, in turn, gives you better control because you always know the status of each contract and can manage them more effectively as a result.

Faster Contract Processing

As you can see above, the platform can also automate many steps in the overall contract process, such as creating contracts using templates and getting electronic signatures. 

Which in turn, speeds up how fast contracts are made and signed - which on its own is really helpful when you need to handle many contracts quickly.

Scalability

As you know, as your business grows, you will deal with more and more contracts, which can slow you down substantially.

This is not a problem with a contract management platform, as these can handle this increase really smoothly - allowing you to manage more contracts without losing quality in them or your control at the same time, as well.

So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today.

Improves Your Compliance and Mitigates Your Risks

When a company uses a Contract Management Platform, it helps you make sure that you follow all the rules and regulations related to how you store your agreements, with full audit logs available when you need it. 

Keeps Track of Details

For instance, the platform can keep track of all the details in the contracts, such as deadlines and legal requirements, along with alerting your when these need attention, avoiding you indirectly breaking any rules - which can lead to fines or legal problems for being out of contract as a result.

Mitigates Risk

Additionally, this platform helps you mitigate risks by reducing the chances of things going wrong, by carefully monitoring the contracts and using data to predict potential issues before they become serious problems that manual process would easily miss. 

For example, if a contract is about to expire or if there are terms that could cause conflicts, the platform can alert you.

How Do You Implement an Online Contract Management Platform or Software?

How to audit the right contract management software, to choose the correct one for you is key for streamlining your contract processes.

For instance, these can consist around:

Plan Carefully

Before starting, make sure you understand what your organisational needs actually are.

This could be as simple as identifying the different types of contracts you manage, the problems you face with your current processes, and what you hope to achieve with the new system.

Choose the Right Tool

For instance, you want to select a platform that fits your needs. It should handle the complexities of your contracts and integrate well with other tools you use, along with being user-friendly so everyone can use it easily.

This could consist of, for instance, a tool that offers you features such as:

• Contract Lifecycle Management

• AI legal document assistant

• Legal document collaboration & compliance

• Automated contract creation & generation

• eSignature solutions

• Contract storage & management

• Legal data analysis & workflow management

• Task management to automate your legal documents

• Legal templates that have been legally pre-written

So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today.

Setup

This process is normally really straightforward. Once users have been granted and your existing contracts integrated, you just need to establish your brand rules, and other organisational rules that pull through to your templates, to make them consistent, then you move on to training your team on how to use it moving forward.

Train Your Team

Then once the basics are implemented, you just need to teach your team how to use the platform. This can be via you showing them, of via training sessions provided by the creators.

As good training then helps everyone understand how to make the best use of these new tools, which in turn reduces mistakes and helps your team manage contracts a lot more efficiently.

Set Up Processes

This step should see you define clear processes for how your contracts will be created, reviewed, approved, and renewed on the platform. Standardising this process helps you to prevent errors and saves time while getting everybody on the same page on how to use the online software consistently.

Review and Improve

After using the system for a while, you should then check what's working and what's not - maybe not every contract is being stored - maybe some are still being sent the old fashioned way perhaps - then make changes to improve your processes and training as needed.

Consequently, by following these steps, your organisation can smoothly transition to using a contract management platform and start seeing benefits like better organisation, more accessible access to your contracts at scale, and more efficient contract handling all at the same time.

So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today?

Contract Management Examples of Them Being Used Well

Sometimes, reading about a platform's features and seeing how it has been implemented gives you a different perspective.

For instance, a couple of case studies of this platform being used could be:

Teya, Who Moved From a Fragmented System to a Streamlined Workflow

Teya, the Card Payments Solutions for Businesses Platform, has transformed its legal operations from a fragmented and time-consuming system to a streamlined and efficient workflow in just months. Here is how they managed to achieve it, for instance. 

Teya's Senior Legal Counsel, Lorna Khemraz, wanted to enable her and the team to focus on supporting internal business matters and improving their legal operational efficiency. 

Consequently, by leveraging Pocketlaw, Teya has been able to:

1. Standardise and maintain control over their most standard contracts, such as partnership and intra-group agreements.

2. Increase control over legal documentation by providing a legal source of truth. 

3. Significantly reduce the time required for document creation, review and signing.

With 51 active users

Pocketlaw has helped to create seamless collaboration, communication, and document sharing within their legal team - and all other departments involved in legal matters. 

With 51 active users, the legal team have been able to delegate legal tasks, and needs, while maintaining control over legal quality and processes. 

For instance, here is what Lorna has to say about Contract Management with the Pocketlaw Platform:

“We standardised the contracting process for the partnerships team by preparing a set of template terms and providing access to [Pocketlaw]. Now, simple agreements require 15 mins of legal time. More complex agreements require 1 hour of legal time max.”

Lorna Khemraz, Senior Legal Counsel at Teya

Williams Stanley & Co Legal Transformation

Williams Stanley and Co have been established to specialise in the hospitality sector by providing bookkeeping, payroll and accounts services, and offering those clients bespoke advice and support across the UK. 

Williams Stanley & Co is now in total control of all their legal matters thanks to Pocketlaw's Contract Management Platform.

What Do They Mainly Use PocketLaw For?

"Pocketlaw has automated a selection of our contracts that we regularly use for our customers. Previously we were using word templates to create documents and inevitably the wrong contract would be used, or a mistake would be made. With Pocketlaw we can be confident in the quality of the documents we are producing.

We have also used PocketLaw for our internal agreements and have particularly benefited from the depth of the HR offering."

So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today.

How Can a Contract Management Platform Help Different Types of Businesses and Organisations?

Contract Management, as you have seen above has many features for business, and this can help many different types of businesses with their contractual requirements, in different ways. 

This can, for instance, be based on:

Contract Management for Legal Departments

Contract management for legal departments helps you streamline the your workload by automating the contract creation stage, then how it is executed as well.

This also enhances your compliance with legal standards and regulations, which you can find out more about at the ICO's website for UK compliance and the EU Commission website for EU compliance, which helps you reduce the risk of disputes and saves time and costs associated with manual data handling especially.

This in turn allows your legal professionals to focus more on more strategic or tactical activities rather than administrative and operational level tasks.

Why is Contract Management Ideal in Procurement?

In procurement use cases, good Contract Management can be more based on how this helps you and your team, optimises your processes by ensuring that your agreements are cost-effective, comply with legal standards as above, to make sure deadlines in supplier relationships are not coming to an end, and to align with your company's goals.

Furthermore, they also enable you to monitor the past performance of your contracts - via the use of data analysis. This data analysis then helps you to implement negotiations quicker before a contract comes to an end and give you more time to get better renewals signed off with your suppliers. 

All while minimising the risks associated with your supplier partnerships through the user of automated alerts and contract end date notifications for example. 

Contract Management for Government Uses

For government entities, contract management is more crucial in upholding your transparency and accountability remits in the use of public funds especially. It does this indirectly by simplifying the tracking of your agreements across multiple departments allowing you to know if you are getting the most return for your expenditure - which in turn helps you maintain the publics trust.

Contract Management for Small Business

For small businesses, it may not be cost effective to hire a dedicated legal professional to keep track of all your contracts, while you need someone who can also reduce your paperwork for you. This is where an automated contract management platform especially comes in, by allowing you to manage more limited resources effectively while helping you to remain compliant, all without needing to hire that legal professional just yet.

Contract Management for Construction Companies

In construction, as you know you have to handle very complex projects involving multiple stakeholders. 

This is where contract management can shine, as it not only allows you to keep track of your outstanding contracts, and when these need revisiting; but, also by allowing multiple stake holders to work on the same contracts simultaneously, and take up features such as contract Redlining.

Contract Management for Healthcare

For Healthcare sectors that have many contracts in place, utilising contract management can easily help you streamline the complex regulations and compliance requirements unique to the industry.

This for instance, is ideal by helping you manage your contracts, agreements, and vendor relationships, all while ensuring your compliance with health laws - and reducing your operational risks simultaneously.

Contract Management for Nonprofits

For nonprofits, contract management can help you maximise your limited resources by ensuring that partner agreements are efficient and transparent, while helping you remaining regulatory compliant and operational efficient - which are key to maximising your funding.

Contract Management and Dispute Resolution

When it comes to Dispute Resolution, contract management involves overseeing agreements from start to finish.

This then ensures that all parties meet their commitments and that the terms are clear and beneficial. 

Consequently, Dispute Resolution is a key part of this process because when disagreements arise, effective methods like mediation, arbitration, or litigation are then used to resolve them. The platform can then be used as a fallback to pull reports about when contracts were signed, what their terms were, and a full audit log.

Which, in turn, can help both parties resolve disputes much faster than needing to go down the legal route to do so. If legal resources are required, then the platform will give you the total audit logs detailing what was agreed upon. 

Contract Management and Negotiation

When it comes to contract negotiations, a Contract Management Platform can be key to successful business deals. 

This is due to this platform tend to being a key element when negotiation starts as both parties can collaborate and adjust contracts quickly a discuss terms to find mutually agreeable conditions.

Then, once a deal is reached, the platform takes over managing the contract as well.

Why Does Your Business Need A Contract Management Platform?

As you can see, choosing the right contract management platform can change how your organisation handles your contracts drastically.

These platforms not only save you time by automating routine tasks but also reduce errors, ensure compliance, and improve your overall contract visibility to your key stakeholders, to name only a few.

So why not book a free demo of the Pocketlaw platform to see how you can get started and start reducing your legal costs today.

Disclaimer:
Please note: Pocketlaw is not a substitute for an attorney or law firm. So, should you have any legal questions on the content of this page, please get in touch with a qualified legal professional.