Successful contract management requires you to embrace a centralised and secure process. Manual contract management methods – such as filing cabinets for paper documentation, spreadsheets, emails and disorganised digital storage – won’t cut it as your contract portfolio grows. These methods make it nearly impossible for your organisation to maintain version control, keep contracts and data secure, stay on top of key dates and milestones, and enforce contract archiving and retention rules. Your organisation can scrap these outdated methods in favour of something better. As such, here are the benefits of a secure contract repository within leading, AI-powered contract management software.
Data extraction and data identification
With a modern contract repository backed by contract artificial intelligence, your organisation’s contract management processes can be streamlined and automated. Your organisation can trust a proven system for contract analysis and transforming static documents into dynamic building blocks for improved contract oversight, proactive opportunity identification, and pre-emptive risk mitigation. Contract AI and machine learning within a robust contract management software platform can help your organisation get the most out of its contract document repository. Key contract information within imported contract documents can be intelligently mapped to the system or user-defined fields. As such, data within your contract repository is organized, easy-to-navigate, and easily searchable – with relevant documents attached for easy access as well.
Protection of sensitive data
Your organisation can trust that sensitive data is protected and secure with a robust contract repository within leading contract lifecycle management software. This data protection is helpful no matter which industry your organization hails from – but is perhaps most important for highly regulated industries such as government, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals. You can identify critical data such as key dates, milestones, clauses, counterparty information, locations, emails, phone numbers, financial information and more – thus eliminating the need for monotonous, time-wasting and error-prone manual data field entry.
A single source of truth
A single source of truth refers to having one central repository that holds the most up-to-date and accurate version of a contract. It virtually eliminates confusion and ensures that all stakeholders have access to the same information, reducing the risk of errors, disputes, and misunderstandings. By having a single source of truth, you can ensure that all parties involved are working with the same version of a contract. This decreases the possibility of outdated or conflicting information, ensuring consistency and accuracy in contract terms, conditions, and obligations.
Searching for contracts across various platforms or physical storage can be a time-consuming and inefficient process. With a central location, you can easily locate and retrieve contracts, saving valuable time and reducing administrative costs. This streamlined access also facilitates contract reviews, renewals and audits. A digital contract repository also enables seamless collaboration among team members, departments and external stakeholders. With a single source of truth, everyone can access the latest version of a contract, making it easier to collaborate, share feedback, and make informed decisions. This promotes effective communication and strengthens relationships with clients and partners.
Physical storage of contracts or scattered digital files can pose significant security risks, such as unauthorised access, loss or damage. A secure contract repository provides robust security measures, including access controls and audit trails, essentially ensuring the confidentiality, integrity and availability of your contract data. A single source of truth also allows you to track and manage contract obligations, deadlines and key milestones, reducing the risk of non-compliance and potential legal disputes. It also facilitates risk management by providing visibility into contract terms and conditions.
Contract repository oversight and user permissions
User permissions oversight and centralised control of a web-enabled contract repository allow contracts to be safely stored. Your contract professionals can organise contracts, oversee permissions, ensure version control, keep track of contract status, quickly search for existing contracts and centralise collaboration.
Confidential and sensitive information is stored and tracked within a contract repository solution throughout the contract lifecycle. Your software end-users may not have need to edit contracts other than those they’ve drafted themselves. With a role-based permissions process, your organisation can easily prevent instances of sensitive data from being accessed by unauthorised personnel.
A secure online repository can help your business by:
- safeguarding the organisation, location, protection, sharing and searching of contracts.
- improving accountability
- centralising control
- increasing productivity
- streamlining contract management.
Contract repository use case scenarios
Let’s explore three practical examples of a contract repository at work.
Handling sensitive data: Imagine you work for a law firm that handles sensitive client contracts. Ensuring the security and confidentiality of these contracts is of utmost importance. A contract repository offers secure contract storage and access controls, allowing you to protect confidential information. You can set permissions and restrictions to ensure only authorised individuals can view or modify specific contracts. Additionally, a contract repository provides a centralised platform accessible virtually anywhere, enabling remote collaboration and ensuring that important contracts are always accessible when needed.
Collaboration and version control: Consider a scenario where you’re part of a legal team working on a complex contract negotiation. Multiple team members need to review and provide input on the contract, leading to numerous versions and iterations.
A contract repository facilitates seamless collaboration by providing a centralised platform where team members can access and edit the contract with check-in and check-out functionality so no edits go unsaved. It allows for version control, ensuring that everyone is working on the latest version and can track changes made by others. This basically eliminates the confusion of managing multiple document versions and minimises the risk of errors or conflicting edits.
Compliance and audits: You probably don’t need to imagine that your organisation is subject to regulatory compliance requirements or undergoes periodic audits. This is a likely real-life scenario. Without a contract repository, demonstrating compliance and providing an audit trail can be daunting.
A contract repository maintains a comprehensive audit trail, capturing all contract creation, modification and approval activities. This virtually ensures transparency and accountability, making it easier to demonstrate compliance during audits. Additionally, many contract repositories can integrate with other compliance tools or workflows, further streamlining the compliance management process.
Enjoy a powerful contract repository with contract management software
Now that you know the many benefits of a robust contract repository, it is time to introduce the best possible CLM solution for contract security and centralisation: Contract Insight
Contract Insight is an award-winning, widely trusted contract lifecycle management software. The highly acclaimed source-to-contract management software suite has helped thousands of organisations from industries within both the public and private sectors to optimise the contract management process, boost revenue, promote productivity, centralise CLM processes, and reap the most value from contracts.
Contract Insight is an award-winning, widely-trusted contract lifecycle management software solution, which has helped thousands of organisations from a vast array of industries within both the public and private sectors to optimise the contract process, boost revenue, promote productivity, centralise CLM processes, and reap the most value from contracts.
To learn how to more easily draft contracts, get contracts reviewed, collaborate on negotiations, and much more to improve contract management processes, book a free demo of Contract Insight® contract management and eProcurement software today!
Contact John O’Brien, CEO at Four Business Solutions – global business consultants and software integrators specialising in business process improvement.
