Best Contract Management Software & Tools

What is Contract Management?

Contract management can be quite complex: Contracts need to be accurately set up for sufficient legal validity and sufficient persuasiveness, they must reach the right places with pinpoint accuracy, be signed on time, and be quickly findable for long-term traceability when archived. Almost always, additional important documents, such as emails, notes etc., accompany a contract, which also need managing. Especially when more than two parties are involved in a contract or generally in larger companies and those businesses that typically deal with many contracts, the relevant processes involve a lot of effort. Contract management software, also known as Contract Management Software, helps to make the approach much more efficient.

Good Contract Management Software brings with it the following features or advantages:

• Increasing efficiency in contract matters through digital centralization and automation of complex processes.
• Contract management software simplifies the management of contracts by allowing them to be created, organized, signed and stored in one central location.
• It improves communication and collaboration between internal and external teams on contracts.
• It enables an increase in customer acquisition and maintenance.
• Through analytics and reporting, it allows for proactive monitoring of risks and compliance.

These are well-known providers of contract management software:

• ContractHero

• Icertis

• ContractSafe

• Agiloft

• Inhubber

• Ironclad

• Zefort

• Gatekeeper

• ContractWorks

• Contractmanager

What is understood by Contract Management Software?

Contracts are important in every business area to seal the timely transfer of agreed goods or services. Contract management software is a tool that gives all parties involved in a contract a collaborative view of and handling of contract processes. This allows companies to accelerate the creation and editing of contracts by automating recurring processes. Contract management software helps in creating contracts, allows team collaboration, enables digital signatures as well as the archiving of all relevant documents, and can contribute to optimizing corresponding sequences through reporting. The complete management and processing of contracts takes place centrally in one application. There are no harmful media breaks. Contract management software provides contract databases that store and manage all contracts in one central location. These contract databases have integrated search functions that make it easier to find specific contracts, for example, for long-term traceability. Contract management software increases efficiency in contract matters, but also improves customer retention by contributing to making contracts more transparent. For instance, a contract management tool can highlight the parts that readers need to pay the most attention to. Contract parties are optimally guided through the contract process under the advantageous use of Contract Management Software. Although almost all companies have to create contracts, contract management software can particularly help those businesses in which the corresponding documents are part of the daily routine or for whom contract conclusions are typically complex and/or have a significant impact, such as health companies or law firms.

Why should you use Contract Management Software?

Some central advantages of using contract management tools have already been highlighted. These are differentiated and expanded here, which clearly underlines the relevance of contract management software. Contract management is part of Management Risk Control (MRC). MRC is in turn an important safety measure within companies, which should ensure a useful development of the business. As a part of the internal control system, MRC is necessary to correctly handle commercial and legal requirements/tasks. The primary goals of MRC involve the control and reduction of financial risks. Business contracts and their advantageous interpretation and handling, obviously play a major role. Professional contract management secures the overview and can significantly contribute to keeping the company financially on track, saving time, and freeing up resources. Intelligent contract management with a corresponding software system provides structured data. The information obtained from corresponding contract controlling ideally forms the basis for new assessments and further optimization of the contract processes themselves, but of course above all for the profitability of the business. Contract management software can lead to a significant increase in efficiency and particularly save costs. The latter especially concerns the costs that arise when contractual obligations such as deadlines or signatures are overlooked, and business decisions are made that turn out to be disadvantageous or where a thoughtful administration of accurate contracts or sufficient overview would have led to a different decision.

What functions does good Contract Management Software typically bring?

• Contract Creation: Users can create new contracts within the platform using integrated document creation functions. The production is sometimes facilitated by drag-and-drop features. Relevant statements about the contract can be easily identified and inserted.

• Contract templates: Contract management software often allows you to easily create and access templates, which make contract generation faster. Predesigned contract clauses and important fields are ready for immediate insertion. Companies can use the same type of contract template with multiple customers, which of course saves a lot of time.

• Contract Editing: Relevant contract participants can, for example, edit, compare and revise multiple versions of contracts.

• Contract Collaboration: Internal and external users can collaborate on contracts through a shared web portal, which can be equipped with messaging functions. This increases communication around the contract and ultimately its quality.

• Contract Attachments: Additional information, such as images, memos, invoices etc., can be attached as supplementary documents to contracts.

• Approval Processes: Contract management software streamlines contract approval processes so that the workflows of individual departments logically follow one another.

• Duties schedule: In the duties schedule, contractors can/should record the services offered down to a detailed specification of the delivery scope, including the procedure for fulfilling the agreement, in order to increase contract security, among other things. Corresponding documents can be comprehensively managed with good contract management software.

• Notifications and Reminders: The contract management tool allows users to receive notifications and plan reminders with warnings according to contract milestones. This helps to meet deadlines and ensure that the contract is signed on time.

• Contract Database: Contracts can be stored in a central online storage with integrated search functions. Companies save a lot of time by managing contracts digitally instead of manually.

• Integrations/APIs: Contract management software can be connected to CRM software, for example, to link contracts with customer data records, or with CPQ software, to feed calculated quote details into the contract.

• Reporting and Dashboards: Contract Management Software often allows various analytics and reports on contract status to be generated. It can contain live overviews of contract activities. Corresponding features or insights obtained from them contribute ideally significantly to securing profitability and optimize contract processes.

What types of Contract Management Software are there?

Contract management software is available in three basic technological orientations.

• Cloud-Based: Cloud-based contract management software allows companies to access their contracts via a hosted server. This allows access from any desktop instead of restricting them to one or a few specific computers. The main advantages of a cloud-based contract management software are remote access, comparatively low prices, and high security. If a computer's hard drive crashes and deletes all saved data, the data in the cloud is still available.

• Hybrid: With a hybrid contract management solution, the software can be used both in the cloud and on-premises. As a rule, hybrid contract management software is somewhat more expensive than cloud-based options.

• On-Premises: On-premises contract management tools are stored on local computers. The advantage of an on-site solution is that it does not require an internet connection. This helps when it may not always be possible to stay online or when the bandwidth is limited.

Who primarily uses Contract Management Software?

Contract management software can bring significant efficiency improvements to contract processes in almost any business context. The following areas primarily use such tools.

• Sales Teams: Contract management software enables the sharing of contracts, supports ensuring their security, and identifies contract issues. It helps sales teams to streamline the process of contract signing and minimizes delays in contract handling. Furthermore, sales teams can integrate contract management software with other business-critical products such as CRM, CPQ, and e-signature solutions, supporting the building and maintenance of good relationships with customers during the contract signing phase.

• Finance Teams: With contract management software, finance teams can more easily identify loopholes in language and recognize risky clauses that might lead to future legal issues for the company. The experts are able to improve the clarity of audit trails and ensure that the contract cannot be manipulated by customers.

• Legal Teams: Contract management software provides legal teams with contract databases in which they can effortlessly search for everything they need. Legal teams frequently need to renew or optimize contracts. Contract management software automates various processes here.