When we think of tech trends today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) – which is both loved and feared – is pretty much up there. It encompasses most aspects of innovation today and unsurprisingly has implications for contract managers and contract administration.
As technological advance continues to speed up, forward-thinking organisations are thinking about how to harness the best of tech trends to better leverage contract management software for contract ROI. An unwavering commitment to process improvement through people and technology will allow organisations to reap the benefits of contract management software with a secure repository, version control, configurable permissions, contract process tracking, workflows, streamlined collaboration and negotiation, shortened contract timelines, and improved visibility and compliance.
As a contract management professional, you may aim to increase your skills and improve your value to excel in your current role or take the next step in your contract administration career. So, what will it take to achieve your goals? You must not only adapt to contract management AI, but embrace and leverage it to stay ahead of document transformation.
Robots Don’t Want Your Job
Resistance is futile. AI is here to stay, and adoption is fast becoming a requirement for most organisations and industries. Rest-assured, the intent of AI is not to eliminate employees from their roles, but to take over manual, error-prone tasks. When it comes to contract management, now is the time to take a proactive approach to redesigning your role, by shifting your focus to more efficient tasks and strategies that will significantly improve your overall contract management process.
Say Goodbye to the Mundane
Day-to-day, contract management professionals juggle tasks from drafting to execution. The challenge is that time-consuming tasks take up most of their time but provide little value. When contract managers leverage contract management software with AI, they can change corporate perceptions to ensure they’re seen as a value-added asset rather than an organisational expense.
The Face of Contract Management AI
Contract management software with advanced AI reduces risk, makes opportunity identification easy, and helps mitigate risk by automating data entry, conducting risk assessment mapping, providing statistical data analysis, and making recommendations based on real-time data. Imagine how much more you can achieve when you no longer need to manually import field data, waste time finding risk based on language and rules-based sentiment, analyse positive or negative facts about contracts, or pull data to elicit contract visibility?
Better Careers Backed by AI
In a 2018 CIO article, Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of MIT’s Initiative on Digital Economy and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management said – “The one thing that is certain is that there is going to be a lot of disruption over the next five to 10 years as these technologies work their way through each of your companies, through each of your industries and through each of your geographies… But if we understand better those effects and if we work to reinvent our business processes, we’re going to be able to take advantage of these technologies to create a lot of wealth, a lot of benefits for lots of different people.”
That’s reassuring. And the hours you reclaim in your day will allow you to recalibrate your efforts to:
• create and build internal and external relationships
• augment relevant technical knowledge, contract management strategy and team member mentorship initiatives
• effectively manage important and complex contracts while meeting objectives around contract formation, administration, negotiation, processes, and policies.
People, process, and technology are power players in all industries and will continue to hold steady in 2019 and beyond. Commit to staying on the cutting edge of document transformation. Contract management professionals should take advantage of this remarkable career opportunity to improve the contract management lifecycle, thus benefiting your career, your co-workers, your organisation, your business partners, and your customers.
Contract Insight from Four Business Solutions
Contract Insight – contract management Four Business Solutions – helps you better manage and secure your business. This post highlights key feature enhancements, but is not a full description of the new system update. If you’d like to find out more, or you’d like a free trial to understand how Contract Insight can help you, please call John O’Brien at Four Business Solutions on 0800 6250 025.
John O’Brien is the CEO at Four Business Solutions, global business consultants and software integrators providing business processes improvements in Finance, Supply Chain & Operations, across a broad range of industries.