A WorldCC study revealed that 84% of legal professionals feel pressured to simplify contracts. Contracts are often scattered across emails, portals, and paper, creating inefficiency.
The challenge intensifies for enterprise businesses. According to EY, 90% of contract professionals need help managing the complexity of thousands of contracts, making it hard to locate crucial agreements when needed.
Enterprise contract management software solves this by efficiently organizing, searching, and managing contracts. It helps businesses find agreements in minutes, not hours, saving time, reducing risks, and improving compliance.
This guide explores enterprise contract management software’s key benefits and features and how it transforms contract workflows.
What is enterprise contract management?
Enterprise contract management is the comprehensive process of handling all contracts, from creation to execution, tracking, and renewal. It involves using contract management software to streamline and automate key contract-related tasks such as drafting, negotiation, approval workflows, storage, and compliance monitoring.
For example, an organization that manages thousands of supplier contracts can use contract management software to automate the contract creation process with pre-approved templates.
The software can route contracts through the necessary approval workflows, store them in a centralized repository for easy access, and track important milestones like renewal dates. This ensures the organization maintains compliance, minimizes risks, and reduces manual workloads associated with managing a high volume of contracts.
Therefore, enterprises need software to streamline and automate the contract lifecycle.
Review Contracts 75% Faster
Generate a first redlined draft in a fraction of a second. Only with HyperStart AI Review.
6 Benefits of using enterprise contract management solution
Large businesses often deal with many contracts, complex workflows, and teams from multiple countries. The contract management solution optimizes these processes. Here’s a look at some key benefits:
1. Draft contracts faster & easier
Lawyers spend significant time drafting contracts from scratch, which can lead to delays, inconsistencies, and potential legal risks due to errors in language and content. With pre-approved contract templates and clause libraries, you can skip the hassle of starting from scratch every time. Need an NDA, MSA, or offer letter? Grab a template from the library and you’re ready.
Clause libraries are like a toolkit for common legal contract terms—payment terms, termination clauses, confidential information—all ready to be included in your contract.
Automated fill-in features handle repeated tasks like plugging in company names, dates, and contract values so you don’t have to. And if you need to tweak a standard template for something specific, merge tools let you mix and match to get what you need.
2. Create code-free automated workflows
You’ve finished a critical report, but it gets stuck in email purgatory waiting for approvals. Revisions fly back and forth and who needs to sign off next is unclear. Weeks can tick by, frustrating you and your client. HyperStart CLM can slash your contract approval TAT time by 5x and free up 70% of your contract admin time. Automated workflows are easy to set up, even for non-technical users, no coding is required. Build custom workflows in minutes to fit your specific approval process.
Everything is tracked in one central location so you can monitor pending approvals and see who’s responsible for each step. Plus, there’s a secure record of everything for future reference.
3. Sign from anywhere
A global company must finalize a contract with a key supplier in another country. Traditionally, this involves printing, couriering the document back and forth for signatures, and waiting weeks for the final document—a slow, costly, and delay-prone process.
HyperStart CLM offers an innovative contract management solution with built-in e-signatures. You can request signatures worldwide with a few clicks, speeding up contract approvals. It supports diverse signing preferences, including hand-drawn signatures, one-time password (OTP) verification, or integration with DocuSign or Adobe Sign.
Your company will benefit from faster approval— no more courier fees or paper costs—and ramp up security with tamper-proof audit trails. And the best part? It opens up seamless collaboration globally so you can close deals faster than ever.
4. Never lose track of a contract again
Managing expiration dates for numerous contracts can be challenging. While spreadsheets offer some assistance, they lack extractive capabilities or automatic reminders. Never miss a renewal again with metadata auto-extraction.
Contract management software serves as a dedicated assistant for handling contracts. It automatically sends renewal reminders well in advance. These reminders can be sent whether it’s 30, 60, or even 90 days before expiration, providing ample time to initiate the renewal process smoothly. It helps prevent any disruptions that could occur due to expired contracts.
Beyond reminders, this software leverages advanced technology to extract crucial information from contracts, ensuring that all essential dates and tasks are remembered. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and reduces the risk of missing deadlines.
5. Free yourself from grunt work
Manual data entry and renewal tracking can be a major time drain. HyperStart CLM extracts key information from your contracts, creating a centralized repository with up-to-date information for easy access.
Automated renewal alerts keep you on top of upcoming deadlines preventing disruptions and ensuring business continuity by reminding you to initiate contract renewals well in advance.
6. Make informed decisions with powerful analytics
You can’t improve what you can’t measure. That’s where contract management reporting and analytics come in. For example, a contract has to be signed, sealed, and delivered. You can see which department is lagging. And that’s it. The bottleneck is identified.
With this kind of data, you can make informed decisions across the entire contract lifecycle. You can optimize your negotiation strategies, identify areas for cost savings, and perform risk management. It’s like having a crystal ball for your contracts, helping you predict and avoid potential problems.
So when looking for contract management solution, ensure the reporting and analytics are top-tier. It’s not just about identifying bottlenecks; it’s about gaining insights to transform your entire contract management process.
Get started in days, not weeks
Implement HyperStart CLM in 2–7 days with bulk imports, custom workflows with granular controls, and a single source of truth for all your contracts.
With a clear understanding of the benefits, let’s equip ourselves to make informed choices. We’ll now explain the key features to prioritize when selecting effective contract management software for your enterprise.
9 Key features to look for while choosing enterprise contract management software
Here are the following features to consider when choosing an enterprise contract management system:
Advanced AI: Seek software that harnesses AI to automate tasks such as contract analysis, data extraction, and risk identification, boosting efficiency and accuracy in contract management.
Integration capabilities: Opt for solutions that seamlessly integrate with your existing CRM, ERP, and document management systems.
Customization and flexibility: Select software that allows customization to match your specific workflows and business requirements. Look for solutions offering customizable dashboards, reports, and approval processes.
Reporting and analytics: Opt for software with reporting and analytics capabilities to gain insights into contract performance, identify risks, and ensure compliance.
Audit trails and version control: Prioritize software with detailed audit trails to track contract changes, ensure accountability, and facilitate compliance audits.
Mobile accessibility: Look for software with a mobile-friendly interface that enables contract management on the go.
Automation of approval workflows: Streamlines the approval process by automating contract approvals and reducing manual intervention.
Contract templates and clause libraries: Provides pre-built templates and clause libraries to simplify contract creation and ensure compliance.
Collaboration Tools: Facilitates internal and external collaboration with shared document access, commenting, and real-time updates.
By now, you have understood all the nitty-gritty of the contract management system. Let’s learn how to choose the contract management solution for your business.
How to choose the right enterprise contract management software
Selecting the ideal enterprise contract management system for your enterprise requires careful evaluation. Here are some crucial factors to consider:
1. Gather input from stakeholders
Engage representatives from various departments such as legal, sales, procurement, and finance to participate in the evaluation process. Schedule brainstorming sessions to identify the biggest challenges with the existing system.
Is it the slow approval process that is not moving the deal forward? Maybe it’s the struggle to find specific business contracts. Identify their pain points and determine functionalities that make sense for the organization.
Not all needs will have equal weight. Analyze the feedback and prioritize functionalities based on their impact across departments.
2. Identify volume, complexity, and industry
Efficient contract management is crucial for organizations dealing with large contracts, such as those in telecom or manufacturing, to avoid bottlenecks. HyperStart CLM excels in handling bulk uploads, automated workflows, version control, and search functionalities, ensuring streamlined processes to create, approve, and store contracts, reducing turnaround times.
In industries like healthcare, M&A, or construction where contracts are complex, HyperStart CLM offers advanced redlining and AI-powered contract analysis. Its metadata extraction identifies key clauses essential for negotiating detailed project specifications and legal requirements.
HyperStart CLM ensures compliance with stringent regulations for the healthcare and finance sectors through encrypted storage and secure access controls. This feature set supports adherence to standards like HIPAA in healthcare, GDPR in the EU, and CCPA in consumer laws, providing transparency in contracting.
3. Must have AI capabilities
Choosing an AI-powered contract management software is a significant decision. Select a vendor that offers robust security protocols, access controls, and encryption to safeguard sensitive contract information.
As your contract volume grows, ensure the system scales its AI capabilities to handle the increasing workload efficiently. Look for features like automated data extraction, smart search, and AI-powered automated workflows.
Prioritize AI for risk identification, compliance monitoring, and predictive analytics. Focus on AI features that provide contract performance insights and benchmarking capabilities.
4. Integrates with different systems
WorldCC reports that medium to large organizations store contract data in an average of 24 different systems. So ensure your contract management software can integrate with your other systems allowing seamless communication across platforms.
When you need information from your CRM or ERP to understand a contract, integration is key. Choose software like HyperStart CLM that works well with other systems. This eliminates the need to switch between platforms or copy and paste information providing a unified view of all your data.
5. Opt for a trial before you use
Many vendors offer free trials. Take them up on it. Load your system with real-world contracts and see how the software handles them. Can it handle complex clauses? Is it easy to navigate with all your departments involved?
Tell the vendor about your specific challenges, contract volume, and industry. Ask them to show you how their software tackles those issues. This lets you see if it fits your large organization’s complexities well.
Having explored the key features and selection criteria for contract management tool, it’s time to make an informed decision. But before you finalize your choice, let’s go through a checklist to find a reliable CLM solution for enterprise.
Checklist for enterprise contract management software
Here is a checklist to help you identify the red flags that signal it’s time to adopt contract management software.
Questions
Is it difficult to obtain a clear picture of contract progress when spread across different teams?
Are you struggling to track contracts and meet key deadlines?
Are siloed information or communication issues hindering effective teamwork on contracts?
Have there been instances of lost or misplaced contracts?
Have important deadlines or renewal dates for contracts been missed or overlooked?
Is it challenging to ensure contracts adhere to industry regulations or internal policies?
Does the organization find it difficult to keep track of edits made during contract negotiations or approvals?
Is a central platform needed to allow authorized personnel across locations to access and manage contracts?
If any of these challenges sound familiar, it’s a smart move to consider enterprise contract management solution.
Manage contracts 80% faster with HyperStart CLM
HyperStart CLM offers an enterprise contract management solution with flagship features like automated workflows, centralized storage, contract review, and AI-powered insights. This AI-powered software, built specifically for large enterprises, tackles everything from creation and negotiation to execution, tracking, and renewal. Here are some highlights of HyperStart CLM:
Save up to 80% of contract admin time with features like automated renewal reminders and AI that automatically extracts key contract details.
Set up your contract repository in 2-7 days with custom workflows up and running in 2-3 weeks. Minimize downtime and get your team working smarter and faster.
HyperStart CLM uses AI to handle repetitive tasks like retrieving contracts, highlighting changes (redlining), extracting key information, and tracking renewals—all with an incredible 99% accuracy.
Additionally, the platform provides a centralized repository for all contracts, offering real-time visibility and control over your entire contract portfolio. With this level of security, HyperStart CLM mitigates risks like data breaches through a secure server network and clearly defined roles and permissions, protecting against external and internal threats.
Schedule your demo today and learn how HyperStart CLM helps your enterprise manage complex contracts with greater visibility and control.
