The importance of Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software in the age of working from home, and the inevitable digital drive that follows.
Much has been written about the impact that the Corona Virus has had as a result of global lock downs and staff being instructed to work from home.
Reports from some of the larger banking and insurance groups in South Africa indicate that as much as 80% of the workforce is currently working remotely.
Contract Management includes the creation of contracts, to their storage, extracting and sharing the valuable data therein, to standardising the different contractual obligations. This is one of the last areas of a business to be digitized.
Working from home or remotely without these tools exasperates the inefficiency of paper based, manual processes.
Here are a few examples:
Having access to a structured digital central repository. Contracts are often missing, incomplete, and either stored in filing cabinets somewhere or in an unstructured document management “dumping place”. Companies are looking to notify suppliers, and in some cases customers, in terms of force majeure clauses, with some urgency. You need fast, easy access to those contracts.
Creating, negotiating and signing contracts based on pre-approved templates provides business with the ability to widely distribute this function. In turn this will free up legal, allowing them to concentrate on more important tasks, especially while they are under significant pressure, like now. Supply chains have been interrupted, making new terms and conditions necessary. How do you rapidly achieve this without some form of automation?
Removing paper and manual signatures. Executives are finding existing paper-based systems extremely frustrating, the need to print, scan, manually sign, return and courier documents from home. Similarly asking your customers to do the same tortuous process doesn’t reflect well when solutions exist to make it all easier.
It is likely that remote working will become more commonplace past the lockdown period, as staff will have experienced more flexibility in their time. The daily commute will become something of the past and a cleaner environment looks promising and likely.
It will become imperative that organisations are able to supply their staff with the tools to work more efficiently. CLM software and processes are essential for anyone who has a role to play in contracts, that is, from sales to finance, governance to procurement and legal to the executive.
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