With the rise of a company, its internal bureaucracy also grows stronger and bigger. When you work in a company of 3 people, you can simply tap Bruce Murdock (your manager) on the shoulder and ask him – “Could you sign up this contract”? But when Bruce has more than a thousand employees and each one taps him on the shoulder, we believe that Bruce’s business would get stuck. So, Bruce organizes his people in teams and departments, which is a normal process, and sets collaboration policies in order to make sure that they manage contract lifecycle effectively.
Unfortunately, policies frequently bring an increase in bureaucracy, which is not always supported by the improvement of informational technologies used in the company. You cannot tap your boss on the shoulder, but sometimes you must write many papers or send lots of emails before you achieve any results.
Real-life contract lifecycle example
Let’s take an example from real-life – the company “Gold Bridges” (which, of course, builds bridges) decided to create a corporate web-site. This task is assigned to a single member of its IT department – Kurt Knoxville. He creates the site on his own machine, describes to his manager that the site also needs to be hosted on some Web-Hosting and gets his funding request approved. Do you think that’s all? No – “Gold Bridges” still needs to sign the contract with the “Silver Web Hosting” company.
So, Kurt chose the “Silver Web Hosting” company as the hosting provider. He comes to his direct manager – Helena Hudson and they both fill out the necessary paperwork. Then Helena goes to Abraham Rosenblum from the Legal Department – his duty is to check the contract from a legal point of view. Abraham checks it and tells his assistant, Johan Manderly, to give it to the CFO of “Gold Bridges” – Peter Thomas. Peter checks if the company has enough money for this contract. He also makes corrections to the current quarter budget and transfers the approved papers to the CEO – John Bernstain. John…Oh no – we believe you’ve got the point and there’s no need to continue this story.Signing of the contract isn’t an easy process.
Contract management isn’t easy
Contract processing involves many people from many departments. At each step, the contract must be discussed and anyone can make changes to it. Some contracts can even be rejected by the person in charge of it . Papers can just get lost on someone’s desk and stay there forever. Abraham can be on vacation and Helena won’t know who is covering his work. Even if you use email instead of paper, the problems do not go away – emails also can get lost in the ‘Spam’ folder or John can simply ignore Peter’s email because he is too busy with other activities.
The situation covered above highlights the most common contract management challenges every company or department faces – keeping tabs on content and work flow, time sinks. You should note that this list is far from being full as many companies also have such contract management struggles as protecting data, remaining compliant, and more. Your team likely puts a lot of energy energy to have their work done, maintain organizational speed and stay above the water. But these never ending contract management struggles can easily bring your team energy down and you are likely to take 20 minutes to step back and check for a possible solution that will make the near-term difference for your business.
How to Choose Contract Management Solution
Below we’ve put together a checklist of essential features you’ll need to look for and think about when considering a contract management solution.- Remote access to contacts and contact approval tasks
- Notifications
- Secure document storage
- Custom reports
- User access permission management
- Easy scalability and adjustment
- Social collaboration
Contract approval app for consideration
One of the solutions for every company, which deals with contract approvals, contract management – is to use contract management software. Comindware Tracker is a streamlined web-based solution for this purpose. You can automate almost any process within your company, but some of the processes are already pre-designed by our professionals and are included in the current release. And, of course, it includes the “Contract approval” application that includes a template for the purchase request approval process. The template which includes contact approval workflow and the business rules for automated contract management, that can be changed in a snap by non-technical users. Here is how his workflow template looks like:
To install it, go to the “Menu” tab of Comindware Tracker UI and deploy Finance Management Solution by clicking “One-click Solution Setup”. This will create a workspace with several applications, including “Contracts”. How will this change the contract approval process? Instead of filling in the papers or sending an email, Kurt and Helena simply open the Comindware Tracker interface and single-click a special button to create the new “Contract Approval” process with the title “Web-hosting contract”. After saving it, they will delegate any future work on this contract to Abraham by simply clicking the “Next Step – Send for revision” button. Abraham is notified about this action with an email notification. He can also see that he has an active task in the Comindware Tracker interface in his “My Active Tasks” list, and in the list of his Outlook tasks (both lists are synchronized automatically). Helena and Kurt have now finished on this process and can continue their usual activities – if someone needs their response, they will be notified accordingly.
Comindware Tracker is the perfect software for tracking all your company activities. It is a perfect specialized contract management software tool as well with its Finance and Back Office Administration Solution. Install it and use the “Finance Management Solution” solution. Explore the other systems we have developed for you, adopt them to your company needs and create new ones. Do not hesitate to share your experience with Comindware Tracker with us. Please describe how you have automated everyday activities in your company with Comindware Tracker.
