Thoughts on Contract Management Software Pt VIII: Final Thoughts and a Call to Action

Note: This is the last in a series of posts on contract management software. Click here to go to the first post.

Over the past couple of months I’ve shared some of the experiences gained from my own contracts management projects, some insights gained from working with our customers and prospective customers, and impressions from reading comments on various online discussion groups. I’ve tried to touch on a number of things you might want to think about as you consider options for your own contract management software selection and implementation. I think I should wrap it up with a call to action.

Since you’re reading this I assume you have some interest in contracts management systems. Because I work for a company that provides contracts management systems and services I’d like nothing better than for you to choose Pramata as your contracts management system vendor. We have a great product and customers who love us. I’m sure there are other companies in our business that can say the same thing. However, the odds are that you don’t have a contracts management system and that even if you’re thinking about one it will probably be years before you have one. Continue reading →

Thoughts on Contract Management Software Pt. VII: Access to Information & Training

Note: This is the seventh in a series of posts on contract management software. Click here to go to the first post.

Access to Information and Security. A question that always needs to be asked in selecting a contracts management system is “who should have access to which contracts in the system?” That question relates both to access and security, and it can have a huge effect on the utility and efficiency of the system. Continue reading →

I Know the Name of my Customer’s Dog (but I don’t Know What I Sold Them)

Pramata has been gaining a lot traction with customers leveraging our contracts intelligence platform to drive revenue through CRM, so we decided to attend Dreamforce ’11 in preparation for getting more involved with the Salesforce ecosystem. In general the show was very impressive, but a seemingly obvious question kept going through my mind: why is there so little emphasis on driving revenue from current customers? Sitting through sessions and looking at the focus of technology vendors, one would think that almost all revenue growth is generated from new leads, who are increasingly found on the internet or though social networks. As one colleague put it succinctly: ’Looks like I can use these tools to find out the name of my customer’s dog, and their favorite restaurant, but I still won’t know what was sold by my company to them over the last year….’

Continue reading →

Thoughts on Contract Management Software Part VI: The SaaS Option – Can you manage your contracts in the “cloud”?

Note: This is the sixth in a series of posts on contract management software. Click here to go to the first post.

Increasingly companies are choosing to get their software as a service through what has become known as “the cloud.” Software as a service, or SaaS, means that the vendor hosts and manages the software “in the cloud” and users access it over the Internet, in most cases using only an Internet browser, and more and more through a dedicated smartphone or tablet app. Typically SaaS is sold on a subscription model and the up-front costs are greatly reduced compared to software that the company installs and runs on its own hardware. More and more contract management systems are being offered on this basis as companies are becoming comfortable with this model and are realizing the advantages of using software “in the cloud” and having the vendor manage the hardware and the software. Continue reading →

Thoughts on Contracts Management Software Pt. V: Can (Should) You Build it Yourself?

Note: This is the fifth in a series of posts on contract management software. Click here to go to the first post.

Can you (or your IT staff) build a contracts management system using only internal resources? The answer is probably “yes.” As long as you have people with some basic computer skills, building a contracts management system internally is an option. But whether you should is another question. Although I’m admittedly biased because I work for a company that provides a contracts management system, I will try to share some of the things I’ve learned over the years that may help you in a make-or-buy decision. Continue reading →

Sales & Administration: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along? – Part I

In this 2-part blog post, I want to talk about the friction that often exists between Sales and their counterparts fulfilling administrative responsibilities such as the legal and finance teams. Let’s call them “Administration”. As a former General Counsel as well as a Sales Executive, I am all too familiar with this friction having observed it from both ends of the spectrum. As an Executive, my number one goal obviously was to bring in new revenue and make sure it was profitable business. Period. As an Executive responsible for the legal department, our responsibility was to ensure that the business we were closing was optimized for revenue recognition (I was in the software industry) and that we were adequately protecting the company’s interests against risk. Continue reading →

Thoughts on Contracts Management Software Pt. IV: Non-Standard Contracts, Related Contracts, and Automation

Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts on contract management software. Click here to go to the first post.

Updated December 5, 2011

I don’t think there’s any question that automation has the potential to significantly improve the contracts function at many companies. Whether we’re talking about automation of document creation (aka document assembly), automation of information extraction, automation of workflow, automation of alerts, or automation of anything else in the contract process, there are systems that will do some or all of those things. But automation tends to work best when everything is standard and everyone follows the “rules.” And, as I’ve discussed in prior posts, there are limits to what machines can do and therefore limits on what automation can do. Continue reading →

Thoughts on Contract Management Software Pt. III: Data vs. Search; The Importance of Data; The Challenge of Data; The Myth of Full-Text Search

Note: This is the third in a series of posts on contract management software. Click here to go to the first post.

How much data do you need to have about your contracts?

Some systems store only very basic “metadata” about the contracts, such as the names of the parties and effective dates and expiration dates. Obviously, limited data means limited search capabilities, but that may be fine for companies with a very small number of relatively simple contracts. At the other extreme, some systems are capable of storing hundreds of pieces of data about any given contract, with the data fields and the data structure specifically tailored to your contracts and your business. This enables robust reporting and analytics, such as a search for contracts with specific attributes (e.g., all contracts expiring or renewing in the next 90 days where we’ve sold X product or all contracts executed with customers in the EU in the last five years). This is what Pramata calls “contracts intelligence.” The problem for most companies is that this kind of rich data doesn’t exist, because the ability to get at this kind of data isn’t built into the normal contracting process. To answer even relatively simple questions about their contracts requires a time-consuming and expensive manual review process. Continue reading →

Thoughts On Contracts Management Software Pt. II: Don’t Take on Too Much Too Soon

Note: This is the second in a series of posts on contract management software. Click here to go to the first post.

How big a project can you handle? How big a project should you handle? Many companies start out thinking they want to reengineer their entire contracting function, but they quickly realize that a contracts project touches on so many aspects of the business that the project needs to extend well beyond just the group responsible for the contracts themselves. As companies start to investigate their contracting process and its greater implications for the business they often start to realize how little they really know about their current contracts and their current processes. Going through a thorough requirements-gathering process to attempt to uncover all the “unknown unknowns” in an ever-changing business may work for some companies, but in our experience it is more likely to lead to paralysis. Continue reading →

Thoughts on Contracts Management Software Pt. I: System Capabilities – Is more always better?

A few months ago I came across a discussion on Linkedin that started with someone asking for guidance on in-house contracts administration. That started a chain of replies, most of which focused on different technologies companies were applying to their contract challenges. There was one particular comment that caught my eye. It was from someone who expressed frustration with the contracts management system her company had been trying to implement for over a year that she described as “much more complicated (and antiquated) than we were led to believe.”

This got me thinking about the issues companies face in evaluating contract management systems. It isn’t the first time I’ve heard that many companies that have invested in what I’ll call “name-brand” contract management systems have found them to be expensive, inflexible, cumbersome, and out of date. So I decided to turn that thinking into a blog series on things to consider if you want your contract management system to meet your strategic initiatives. Continue reading →