If you have been considering how best to formulate your contracts, then it’s worth taking a look into contract lifecycle management and what it can do for you. In the past, businesses would simply have a template that they would mail back and forth to clients. However, with email and other forms of communication, the processes of handing over documents and contracts has become much faster and efficient. You need to know how to use these tools beforehand so you can make the most of developing contracts the right way.
Here’s the basics of what you need to know when you are considering your contracts’ lifecycle management.
Requests and authoring
When you first thing about how you want to approach contracts, then you are going to have to start with who is going to be the author of the contract and who will have access to it as it is being written. While you might want your legal experts on hand so they can modify it as writing goes along, you might not want your client getting a peek yet. This is where contract management software can be especially helpful since it allows you to assign permissions and gives you a chance to control who is viewing your document when.
Negotiation and approval
Once your contract is written, it’s time to see how you can make changes in order for it to work with the terms that suit both you and your client. This is where you go over any terms that might not work for one party or the other and decide what you want to change. Once this is done, then you can both agree that the contract is satisfactory for everyone involved and that you are in agreement to how you will be moving forward.
Storage and organization
However, just because you have agreed on the contract and what your deliverables will be doesn’t mean that you are done with them! You’ll want to keep them stored in a secure location where you won’t have to worry about them being hacked or having information stolen that is necessary to the success of your business. Make sure that you have all of your contracts put in a place where you can easily find them, and where you also don’t have to worry about losing data that would end up effecting your business negatively.
Tracking and reporting
It’s important to keep a record of any changes you have made to your contracts so you can decide which parts should be revised in the future. This also includes anything you’ve noticed in relation to how your contracts are written and whether or not they are clear. You’ll also want to provide detailed reports after projects with clients are completed so you can know what went right and what you can improve in the future.
In summary
Your contract lifecycle management can be a big part of whether your business will continue to succeed and how you approach relationships. When you have a software that can help you, you can improve your process in almost every way.
