Digital business processes are a matter of course, in many companies today. Analog hurdles still lurk in many places – for example, when dealing with contracts. Digital contract management, based on an ECM system, promises to remedy this.
Contract management classic – A Hurdle Race
Whether privately or professionally: contracts are one of the necessities of our civilizing coexistence. This is associated with many challenges that a private household has to deal with just as laboriously as the controlling of a DAX group. Bureaucratic hurdles include keeping track of contract terms and notice periods to prevent automatic and unwanted renewals.
Today, most contracts are still archived on paper. However, the increasing mobility and dynamism of our day-to-day work make it increasingly necessary not to link upcoming business deals or agreements with customers and suppliers with the physical presence of those involved in the company headquarters.
Before the sign, the document had already gone through several inspection bodies. And also, numerous versions with filings in a wide variety of locations. These diverse processes are not always immediately understandable.
Today, it is more important than ever to push ahead with reducing bureaucratic pitfalls in the face of increasing competition and rationalization pressure. For this reason, digital contract management is essential today for compliance-compliant and process-optimized management of contracts.
Four Reasons for Digital Contract Management
Getting used to digital contracts is like many other things in life. And, if you don’t know the new technology, you don’t know what you’re missing. Anyone who still uses an old tube television will be overwhelmed by what a 4K screen can do today – and then never return to the old device. It’s the same with contract management. Nobody wants to go back.
There are several reasons for this:
Time Control
Numerous contracts with different terms, payment, and notice periods are among the greatest challenges for its own control. Digital contract management offers comprehensive-time control, with which classic Excel behemoths and Outlook calendar entries are a thing of the past. This includes automated notifications in order to be able to make cancellations. And also, renewals in a good time or to keep an eye on payment deadlines. This aspect also applies to digital invoice processing.
Workflows
Transparent processes must be guaranteed, particularly with regard to internal procedures relating to the structured creation, review, adaptation, and finalization of draft contracts. Predefined workflow management as an integral part of the ECM system ensures seamless collaboration between the departments and provides information about who edited certain content and when. Intelligent authorization control ensures that reduction of the access to sensitive contract content to a predetermined selection of people.
Manage Contracts Digitally: Prepared for the Future
Administration
In addition to pure contract management software, an additional ECM system offers the special advantages of a fine-grained full-text search. With which you can research every stored contract document in the shortest possible time. The digital files also store all contract-related documents such as e-mail correspondence, minutes, or notes. And versioning shows the contract document’s entire life cycle.
Electronic signature
Last but not least, more and more users are using the electronic signature to be able to conclude contracts regardless of time and location. However, a prerequisite for this is an appropriate encryption and authentication system. Because this is the only way to guarantee security against forgery – an essential difference to the so-called digital signature, which often does not guarantee that security.
Anyone who has first learned to appreciate digital contract management’s advantages – its speed, transparency, availability – will no longer want to do without it in the future. It would be like stepping back in time. Or are you still using a tube monitor?
Also Read: 5 Reasons to Start your E-commerce Now – [2020]
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