Any successful contract management software system must include an efficient contract authoring component. This aspect of contract management software provides control and automation to the development of contracts—helping both business management and a company’s legal team.
An effective contract authoring software solution will expedite and manage the authoring process, significantly reducing time to contract, while also ensuring compliance with legal regulations, internal policy, and the company’s business strategy.
Standardizing the Process
With contract authoring software, contracts can be drawn up and completed on a single integrated platform that ensures standardization. Sales contracts, employee contracts, non-disclosure agreements, vendor arrangements, license agreements, and other customary business contracts can be created using the authoring component of contract management software.
The benefits to a business are numerous. Contract authoring software can:
- provide the capability to build contracts using pre-approved contract templates and legal clauses from a contract-clause library
- speed up revenue recognition
- reduce overall legal costs
- aid in risk assessment
- encourage risk-mitigation practices
- ensure any necessary regulatory compliance
- alert all stakeholders if there are format or language modifications to a contract
- provide ongoing, easy-to-read documentation of all changes and divergences from standard language
- review and validate the inclusion of all necessary clauses for outbound contracts
- analyze inbound contracts for standardization, compliance, and completeness
- improve language control during negotiations
- automate aspects of negotiation
Making Life Easier for Business User
Contract authoring programs can be integrated with software such as Microsoft Word so that users can work with the contract authoring capability without having to learn new software. And intuitive questionnaire wizards—which are configurable based on contract type—guide users through necessary information entry without having to worry about formatting. User-friendly features such as drop-and-drag “legal clause trees” are common.
The contract authoring software will enforce compliance with standard language, not allowing access to signature-ready files if the contract in question uses non-standard language, is non-compliant, or is incomplete.
However, the standardization and automation of contract authoring software doesn’t mean that contracts can’t be modified as needed for specific purposes. While using authoring software, users can flag clauses or language that needs to be non-standard. This necessary non-standard language can of course be approved by the properly authorized personnel. The authoring software automatically sends irregular contracts to the appropriate legal or business approvers.
Freeing Up Resources
It simply makes sense to automate, as much as possible, the tedious process of creating standard contracts, thereby avoiding much repetition and wasted labor.
Consider hospital contract management software. Without a contract authoring system, the entire software solution won’t fulfill its potential. A contract authoring system provides a healthcare contract management system with a way to easily create the the myriad of contracts that hospitals must enter into—with an ease and consistency that would be impossible under traditional paper-based contract management.
This frees up hospital administrators and doctors to focus on the more value-added tasks for which they were hired. It also allows legal resources to be used on critical areas such as malpractice claims rather than on the creation, standardization, and compliance of standard contracts.
Takeaway
It’s great to make contract development easier and to ensure the correct language—but if contract authoring software didn’t boost the bottom line, companies wouldn’t be rushing to implement it. Contract authoring software leads to more-profitable contract terms and reduces legal and administrative costs. For any business that relies on contracts—and that’s most businesses—contract authoring software will provide a significant return on investment.
Improve your bottom line with contract management software from Contract Logix. We offer complete contract management solutions for both groups and businesses of any size. Follow us on Twitter at @ContractLogix.
