What is Cloud-based Contract Management?

What is Cloud-based Contract Management?

Contracts are the cornerstone of all businesses and organizations. And the more the organization grows, the more the number of contracts increases. The number of contracts can easily spike into tens of thousands - and managing all of them is a herculean task.

This process can start as early as negotiations, continues with overseeing obligations, and ultimately ends with contract termination. Contracts can also vary in complexity, which makes this activity even harder.

Failing to manage contracts properly can put your organization at risk. Among other things, you could experience less business efficiency, miss deadlines, have your deals fall through, have more expenses, have to invest additional time, etc.

And as if taking care of these legal processes wasn’t bad enough, the pandemic made the situation even worse. Overnight, remote work became the norm. Departments suddenly became fragmented - with every person working from the safety of their home. New issues arose, like accessibility and security. This was especially hard on organizations that still worked with and relied on hard-copy contracts.

Cloud-Based Contract Management

Cloud-based contract management is a contract lifecycle management (CLM) service that allows organizations to manage all their contracts in one centralized location (cloud). With such a solution you won’t need to have hard-copy contracts or files everywhere anymore - everything will be safely stored on a server. This is especially helpful if employees need to input data from a remote location (such as their home or any third location).

This helps teams collaborate more effectively and quickly. A role-based permission system defines who can make which changes to the files. You can have different teams (sales, finance, HR, legal, etc.) have different responsibilities pertinent to their role in the contract lifecycle. You can even give access to your business partners, or other third parties. These solutions often offer scalability, with unlimited users and storage. When the organization grows, so does the cloud.

With cloud-based contract management, all the changes are done directly in the cloud in real time. All files will constantly be up to date. That way you won’t have to worry about several different versions of the same file circulating around your organization. With this system, everybody is on the same page, because there is a single version of the truth, which is easy to access. You can search through the data quickly.

And in case of some confusion happening, cloud-based contract management provides revision history. You can check exactly when a change was made, and who made it. And, of course, everything is backed up, so there is no danger of a person deleting or misplacing a file by accident.

Cloud-based solutions help simplify and speed up the contract management process with standardization and automatization (e-signature, tracking, creation, termination, etc.). This will make your employees stop having to waste time on menial tasks and open their schedule for actual work. It will save time and money, and drive more value. And if your organization already uses some other file-managing software, cloud solutions can integrate with those easily so you won’t lose any time or data.

Benefits of Cloud-Based Contract Management

While the centralization of all contracts is the biggest draw of cloud-based contract management, organizations that implement it will find it offers many more benefits.

Data Accessibility

Users that have the necessary roles and permissions defined can access the data anytime they want. Even if they are on the move, they just need a device that is connected to the internet. So if anyone has to do an update, review, or revision to the contract, they can do it where and when it suits them. They don’t have to go on location anymore.

Saving Mmoney

Cloud-based solutions are usually very cost-effective. This is especially true when it comes to managing contracts. You don’t have to pay for on-premise solutions or hardware. And if you’re working with thousands of hard-copy contracts, storing them also becomes a challenge. You will need to invest valuable resources like time and location.

Business Flexibility

With cloud-based contract management, you will start saving resources. You will manage to achieve the same - or even better - results in less time with less cost. You will be free to reinvest these resources in any way you want.

Optimizing the CLM

Depending on the cloud solution you decide to implement, you will receive a lot of additional advanced tools. For example, you could integrate it with other business systems or third-party applications. You can use statistics and analytics to gain even better insight into your workflow and realize what to optimize. You should be able to utilize any possible tools to further streamline your CLM in all of its phases.

Conclusion

Managing contracts is something every organization should think about. This process only got more complicated after the pandemic. Cloud-based contract management is more than a decent alternative to paperwork and files all around the workplace.

One centralized cloud location means everyone can collaborate efficiently in real-time. These files are also accessible from any place at any time via any device. It optimizes the contract lifestyle management and frees up the organization’s resources so they can reinvest them however they want.

If you want to know more:

• visit our cloud migration service page;
• give us a call at +385 1 3141 562;
• contact our sales department at sales@heptabit.com.

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