Importance of Integration

Contract accuracy is crucial, therefore if you don't have a strong connection between contract management and other areas like supplier management and procurement, as well as automated capabilities to speed things up, you're losing out on benefits and increasing risk. Here are three advantages you can obtain if you decide to upgrade your contract management process from a point solution or piecemeal suite to an integrated cloud solution.

Business cycles are sped up.

The contract process is streamlined and made to move rapidly from one phase to the next with the aid of an automated contract management solution with integrated data.

Cloud-based contract management enables you to build approval workflows, including parallel and serial ones, so that the process remains in motion, as opposed to the bottlenecks inherent in spreadsheets, indigenous systems, and constrained point solutions. A person further down the chain is automatically notified once an action has been done, such as approval or being sent back for revisions, thanks to dashboards that display where contracts, related documents, and addenda are in the approval path at a glance. An integrated contract management solution includes redlining, changes, signatures, trigger emails, and notifications.

Having the process under control streamlines, simplifies, and makes contracting smooth so you can take advantage of opportunities, whether it's speeding up end-of-quarter business orders or triggering a contract formation from an authorized sourcing event.

Risk is reduced.

The quality of the information used to make a contract depends on it. Data is validated and consistent from one process to the next, from one department or office to the next, across the entire company thanks to a single source of Master Data and metadata truth shared by solutions across a cloud platform.

Your business is exposed to numerous risks when your contracts contain inaccuracies. By capturing all the data for you during the request, authoring, and approval processes, a trustworthy contract management system can help you reduce this risk. As a result, teams can concentrate on expanding their business opportunities without having to worry about making mistakes that could result to missed contract renewals and missed opportunities, alowing them to  save money on discounts, obligations, and deliverables.

Data consistency and visibility is the ideal strategy to control risk from third parties for procurement businesses, especially those significantly reliant on procurement services like financial services, pharmaceutical or biotechnology and healthcare. Without precise, reliable information about your vendors, suppliers, and other service providers across all functions, you run the risk of opening your business exposed to risk.

Additionally, it is simpler to realize each contract's full value with an integrated and automated contract administration procedure. Fulfillment tracking, automated alerts linked to expirations, renewals, and important events, post-execution workflows, and sophisticated analytics and reporting are all features that many automated systems offer. These features give you the knowledge you need to make better business decisions at a higher level and reduce your risk.

Relationships with suppliers, partners, and clients are strengthened.

A wide variety of audit and reporting features, including compliance alerts, audit tracking at the field level, on-demand report production, one-click access from reports to contract records, and a simple interface with third-party reporting tools, are available with many contract management software. All of these technologies provide you with the information you need to manage and maintain better connections with clients, suppliers, and partners.

You are in a far better position to manage and track relationships as well as the risk and performance potential in them if you have tighter control over the information that is shared between you and outside businesses. Additionally, you are in a better position to recognize prospects for contract renewal so you can quickly design new contracts. Automated contract management for channel partners offers you the time to concentrate and manage your resources so you can get the most out of your channel connections.

Book a demo of the Lexagle platform to discover more about the benefits of integrated contract management that include process automation.