A recent report revealed that 78% of organizations have made some investments in Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) over the past few years. This data highlights the growing pressure to optimize contract-related processes if you want to keep up with the competition.
Looking at the bigger picture, it’s easy to see why this is happening. The volume and cost of disputes and investigations are increasing, and laws are becoming tougher on industry rules and privacy protection. At the same time, legal teams are understaffed. In such circumstances, improving efficiency is crucial, and contract management services and technologies are the most effective means to do it.
This article explores contract management services, explaining what they are, contrasting manual and digital approaches, and highlighting the benefits they bring to modern businesses. We’ll also explore how our innovative digital contract platform, Oneflow, helps companies manage their agreements.
What are contract management services?
Contract management services are tools that allow you to oversee contracts throughout their entire lifecycle, from initial creation to eventual renewal or expiry. These include:
- Contract creation: Using templates, pre-approved clauses and AI tools to generate new agreements fast while ensuring consistency.
- Strategic negotiation: Optimizing real-time collaboration and version control; all parties—whether internal teams or external stakeholders—can access and review the same version of the contract simultaneously.
- Automated approval workflows: Using software that offers legally binding electronic signatures and document seals to sign contracts securely without physical paperwork.
- Organized storage: Keeping a centralized, searchable digital repository for all contracts, ensuring easy access and reliable security.
- Compliance monitoring: Tracking key milestones and obligations (payment dates, delivery timelines, etc.), with automated alerts for upcoming deadlines.
- Renewals: Streamlining the renewal process with automated notifications, a customizable calendar and clear workflows.
Contract management used to be done manually, requiring much time, causing inefficiencies and errors. However, this has changed thanks to automation and digital contract management solutions, which significantly accelerate these processes.
Read also: How obligation management software can help boost your business
So, how exactly does digital contract management work? It involves several stages:
- Drafting: Using templates, pre-approved clauses and AI tools to quickly generate new agreements while ensuring consistency. Thanks to this, you don’t need to start every contract from scratch—instead, you get a draft pre-populated with standardized clauses, legal language and business-specific terms. It ensures consistency across all agreements, reduces errors and improves compliance.
- Negotiation: Optimizing real-time collaboration and version control. All parties—whether internal teams or external stakeholders—can access and review the same version of the contract simultaneously. Every change, comment and suggested revision is tracked and attributed. This transparency not only speeds up work but also eliminates confusion.
- Approval: Implementing digital workflows (automated routing rules) with role-based access to ensure all necessary approvals are secured. Contracts are automatically sent to the appropriate individuals or departments for review and approval based on predefined criteria. Customizable approval chains ensure that all necessary stakeholders, from legal to finance, provide their consent efficiently and effectively.
- Execution: Using software that enables legally binding electronic signatures and document seals to sign contracts without the need for physical paperwork. Forget about printing, mailing and scanning physical documents. A contract management platform enables you to significantly reduce the time to contract while maintaining the same legal validity as wet-ink signatures.
- Storage: Maintaining a centralized, searchable digital repository for all contracts, ensuring easy access and reliable security. It means organizing all agreements in a single, secure location that is easy to search through and ensures data integrity with access controls and audit trails.
- Monitoring: Tracking key milestones and obligations with automated alerts for upcoming deadlines. You can set up automated reminders for critical dates, such as expiration, renewal and payment due dates, as well as track performance against contract terms and identify potential compliance issues.
- Renewal: Automating the renewal process with automated notifications, a customizable calendar and clear workflows. The system reminds you of contract reviews and negotiations, offering clear workflows for approval and execution of renewed agreements, and providing insights into contract performance.
Manual contract management vs. digital contract management services
Here’s a table that sums up the key differences between manual and automated contract management.
| Feature | Manual contract management | Automated contract management services |
|---|---|---|
| Contract creation | Time-consuming, error-prone | Template-based, fast, consistent |
| Tracking deadlines | Manual calendar reminders | Automated alerts and notifications |
| Document storage | Disorganized, hard to access | Centralized, searchable digital repository |
| Compliance checks | Manual review, high risk of errors | Automated compliance workflows |
| Approval process | Slow, paper-based | Digital workflows with role-based access |
| Reporting & analytics | Limited or none | Real-time dashboards and data insights |
| Security | Risk of unauthorized access | Role-based permissions and encryption |
Key benefits of contract management services
Implementing modern contract management software has several benefits for your business:
- Increased visibility and control: A comprehensive, real-time overview of all contract obligations, terms and deadlines. Reports indicate that in most industries, contract visibility and control are the main reasons companies invest in CLM software. It’s not surprising, as poor visibility results in missed opportunities and a limited understanding of contractual commitments.
- Contract risk management: Proactive compliance monitoring and standardized workflows minimize the risk of non-compliance, regulatory penalties and unpredictable liabilities. It’s a great way to safeguard your business from potential legal and financial consequences.
- Cost reduction: Lowered administrative overhead and need for manual intervention. The improved risk mitigation we mentioned above helps businesses reduce the likelihood of costly legal disputes and penalties. Note that 41% of law departments received a cost-cutting mandate from their organization recently.
- Improved efficiency: Streamlined workflows, automated approvals and instant access to contract data. These tools let you accelerate deal cycles and save time for strategic initiatives, leading to faster revenue generation and increased productivity across departments.
- Better relationship management: Transparent and easily accessible agreements build trust between stakeholders and help you strengthen relationships with clients, vendors and partners. Moreover, clear communication and a shared understanding of terms lead to more productive and positive collaborations (internal and external alike).
- Data-driven insights: Real-time dashboards and analytics offer valuable insights into contract performance, enabling you to identify trends, optimize terms and make smarter, more informed business decisions. This data can be beneficial for strategic planning and continuous improvement of your agreements.
Read also: How to automate HR contracts?
Why choose Oneflow for contract management services?
Oneflow is a leading contract management platform, designed with a focus on security and compliance, that enables the end-to-end automation of contract workflows. Our solution provides access to secure digital signatures with a range of legally binding e-signature options (SMS verification, electronic identification, standard e-signature, etc.) and qualified digital seals. It also has a suite of powerful, AI-enhanced contract creation tools, real-time collaboration features (including comments, customizable triggers and branded workspaces), and post-signing functionalities, such as data extraction and document linking, all crucial for effective contract management throughout the entire lifecycle.
Finally, Oneflow is super easy to connect to other tools, including popular CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce) and HRM systems (Teamtailor). It synchronizes data between them and allows further workflow automation and efficiency boosts.
Oneflow features
- Interactive, AI-powered contract creation and negotiation: Use customizable templates to create contracts for different scenarios. Oneflow AI in contract work helps you draft, edit, summarize and translate documents, as well as review them for compliance issues and errors. Contract automation tools let you archive and send agreements easily.
- Real-time collaboration and version control: Speed up negotiations by working seamlessly with internal and external stakeholders, ensuring everyone is always on the same page with the latest document version. Access features such as secure, branded workspaces, customizable triggers, comments and audit trails.
- Secure e-signatures with qualified digital seals: Assign permissions (such as editing, viewing, etc.) and manage user roles to regulate access to documents. Use TLS 1.2 and AES 256 encryption and two-factor authentication for top-notch security (if Oneflow fails to identify a signee, the contract won’t be signed). Secure your document with a qualified seal after signing to prevent tampering.
- Integration with CRM, HRM and other business systems: Connect Oneflow to different solutions, such as HRM systems (HiBob, Teamtailor) and CRM systems (HubSpot, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics—read more about these integrations in our detailed guides: Electronic signatures for Hubspot and Contract management software in Salesforce). Synchronize data between systems to optimize processes and speed up contract work. Configure custom integrations with Oneflow API and a SCIM API.
- Analytics dashboard for contract performance insights: Track key indicators and engagement data (number of visitors, document open rates and more) to identify trends and optimize your agreement strategies.
- Automated reminders and compliance tracking: Achieve full GDPR compliance and use Oneflow’s redundant infrastructure for continuous operation. Information Security (ISO 27001), Quality (ISO 9001) and Environment (ISO 14001) certifications ensure you meet the most rigorous standards. Set up automated data retention to ensure compliance during the contract’s lifecycle.
- Centralized database with electronic records: Store documents in one place. Use filters, tags, document roles, a calendar view with lifecycle milestones, folders and a search feature to streamline contract lifecycle management.
- Signing order: Consider factors such as roles, document types and more, and customize the signing order according to the use case.
- Post-sign processes: Store sent and signed legal contracts (with external and internal URLs) in Oneflow to generate insights and extract metadata for tracking purposes.
By implementing Oneflow’s contract management solutions, businesses can significantly reduce administrative burden, accelerate their deal cycles, and improve compliance. All teams use our platform (sales, HR, procurement, legal, etc.), and it has empowered countless businesses across many industries, such as IT, consulting, automotive and more. Our client portfolio includes fast-growing startups, small business owners, established enterprises and everything in between.
With our comprehensive features and automated workflows, Oneflow enhances the visibility, control, and efficiency of your contract processes, while also mitigating compliance risks and fostering stronger relationships. A great example of this is our cooperation with Hedin Bil. The team saved ten hours weekly, hired over 3,000 talents, and achieved a positive ROI all in less than one month. Here’s what Elin Skoglund, the HR Business Partner at Hedin Bil, had to say about our solution.
Want to see similar results in your business? Sign up for our 14-day trial to see Oneflow in action!
Read also: What is enterprise contract management?
Elevate your workflows with contract management services
Contract management services enhance efficiency and provide you with invaluable visibility and control over your contract-related processes.
A good example of this is our cooperation with Knowit, a leading European consulting company with offices in six different countries. Before implementing Oneflow, they were creating contracts in Word and sending them to clients via email. Our feature-rich platform, fully integrated with both their HR and CRM systems, enabled them to eliminate these manual processes completely and provided them with full oversight over their contracting workflows. The result? Signing time was cut from several days to just one.
Want to see a similar outcome in your company? Sign up today for our 14-day free trial to start optimizing your contract management today!
FAQs
How does contract management software improve visibility into obligations and deadlines?
Contract management software stores all your agreements in one, easily searchable digital repository, allowing you to easily track key dates, terms and obligations through automated alerts and customizable dashboards. There’s no need for manual tracking or risk of missing deadlines.
Can contract management services integrate with my existing business tools?
Yes, most modern contract management services, such as Oneflow, can be integrated with popular CRM, HRM, ERP and plenty of other business systems.
How can effective contract management reduce legal risks and disputes for businesses?
Good contract management ensures compliance with regulatory requirements, standardizes contract terms, and provides a clear audit trail of all changes and approvals. This transparency helps you resolve any potential disputes.
What features should I look for in contract management software?
The best contract management software should offer automated contract creation, secure and legally binding e-signatures, real-time collaboration, powerful search functionality, automated reminders, audit trails, an analytics dashboard, and integration capabilities.
