For decades now research houses, consultants and software vendors have been preaching the benefits of contract management, often quoting Governance and compliance, collecting all revenue due, shortening the sales cycle, saving money by identifying unwanted contracts, as reasons to adopt a contract management solution or practice.
Simply miss a key date on a strategic contract, and that gets management’s attention, but for the rest it can become a grudge purchase, which is why despite all the good things it brings, adoption levels globally remain relatively low. Just make it someone’s KPI and give legal the responsibility to store the agreements, or for mass consumer agreements, don’t even bother, let the billing system handle it.
The problem with this approach, especially in a paper based environment, is that all that fantastic, valuable data sits in filing cabinets across the organisation. It makes managing the relationships harder, missing key information or dates easier, benchmarking and reporting a major exercise with a proliferation of excel spreadsheets.
But what if we moved away from paper, and thought about capturing this information digitally from the start? Would that not make contract management easier, no more laborious data capture and endless scanning of documents?
Automated processes with digital forms and contracts layered over a contract management database with built in best practice, surely that’s the way of the future?
What could we achieve?
- An improved customer journey
- Less back office staff
- Faster contracting times
- A contract management system built from daily processes
- Real time reporting and valuable information
Then it wouldn’t be so hard.
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