Have you found yourself struggling to manage your contracts? Looking for a way to make the process easier? Contract management softwareis a great way to streamline the contract process, save time, and become more efficient. In this blog post, we’ll discuss what a contract management tool is, why using one will be beneficial, and then give you our picks for the top 10 contract management tools.
What is contract management?
Contract management is the process of managing contracts between two or more parties. This includes the negotiation, execution, and administration of contracts. It’s important to have an effective contract management platform to ensure that your contracts are handled in the most appropriate and proper manner. Contracts are one of the most important parts of your business and are the glue that holds everything together. The agreements with your buyers, your suppliers, and your employees are likely contracts. They touch every aspect of a company.
Ignoring this aspect of your company can have severe consequences and, on the contrary, can provide massive benefits if done right.
Contract management involves a number of tasks, such as creating and tracking contracts, negotiating changes, and monitoring compliance. It’s a complex process that requires a great deal of time, attention, and resources. To simplify the process, many organizations are turning to contract management tools to save themselves time, money and optimize their way of working.
What is contract management software?
Contract management software is a software solution that automates the process of managing contracts. It allows organizations to create, store, and track contracts, as well as negotiate and monitor compliance. With a contract management tool, businesses can streamline their contract processes, reduce manual errors, and save time and money.
Contract management softwares have become increasingly popular in recent years as organizations of all sizes realize the benefits of using them. But with so many options on the market, it can be difficult to choose the right one. To make the decision easier, let’s look at some of the key benefits of using a digital contract solution.
Benefits of contract management software
Contract management software offers a number of benefits to organizations, chief among them are
- Increased efficiency: With a contract management tool, organizations can streamline the contract process, reducing manual errors and saving time and money.
- Improved accuracy: Automated contract management tools help ensure accuracy by automating data entry, generating reports and integrating with the tools that you use already. It takes data from your exiting platforms, CRMs etc and integrates that into your contracts.
- Improved visibility: Contract management tools allow organizations to have a better understanding of their contracts, which can improve decision-making. With more data and visibility into your contract process, you will be more informed when it comes time to make important decisions. You’ll have the whole picture in front of you rather than playing a guessing game.
- Reduced risk: Automated contract management tools can help reduce the risk of non-compliance and other legal issues. They also ensure contracts are safe, secure and legally enforceable.
- Increased collaboration: With a contract management tool, organizations can easily collaborate on contracts, allowing for better communication between parties. That means that wherever a person or counterpart is in the world, they can work together on the same contract. It lowers the barrier of effort required in order to get a contract signed.
These are just a few of the many benefits of using a contract tool, as there are many and plenty of them. Some more visible than others, but the benefits can’t be disputed. What can be disputed, though, is what to look for when deciding on a tool to use.
Read also: What is contract management?
What to consider when choosing contract management software
When you’re deciding what contract management tool you should use, you’re probably wondering what you should look for? And asking yourself, or the internet, what features should you keep an eye out for? In essence, what makes a good contract management tool? Here are a couple of things to consider when evaluating the plethora of options out there:
- Ease of use: The tool should be easy to use and understand. It shouldn’t take too long to get up and running to use either. Onboarding should be easy and help, not hinder your process.
- Security: The tool should provide robust security to protect sensitive data and be GDPR compliant.
- Features: The tool should have features that are relevant to your workflows and allow you to work in a manner that increases efficiency. It should have numerous quality features that have an impact on your work.
- Cost: The tool should be a cost-effective solution based on your needs and the size of your business.
- Integration: The tool should be able to integrate with other systems and applications that you currently use or plan to use.
These are just a few of the criteria you should consider when selecting a contract management tool. Now that you know what to look for, let’s take a look at our top 10 picks for the best contract management tools.
The 10 best contract management software
- Oneflow: Oneflow is an all-in-one contract management platform that controls your entire contract process from start to finish. With Oneflow, you can securely create, send, sign, manage and analyze digital contracts. You can also integrate Oneflow’s digital contracts with anything and everything thanks to the open API.
- DocuSign: DocuSign is a cloud-based tool that allows organizations to securely create, sign, store, and manage contracts. It’s features enable you to e-sign agreements at an accelerated rate.
- PandaDoc: PandaDoc’s another contracting platform that helps organizations with every step of the contract process. It has extensive features that aid in effective and organized contract management.
- Cobblestone: Cobblestone is an end-to-end contract management system that offers features that are malleable to your business needs.
- ContractWorks: ContractWorks is another solution that allows you to handle the contract process from start to finish.
- Contractbook: Contractbook’s platform gives you the ability to initiate contracts and handle them through every stage of the contract process. It also offers various features that allow you for increased insight and easier workflows.
- Contract Logix: Contract Logix as a tool for contract management that allows you to automate, simplify and optimize your contract life cycle management. It can be implemented in various areas around your organization.
- DropboxSign: Within Dropboxsign, you’re allowed to send, sign and track contracts. It’s a useful tool and has other features enabling the use of e-signatures.
- Icertis: Icertis is a tool that assists in contract lifecycle management and is widely used by companies in a large variety of industries. It offers contract intelligence with interactive contracts and live data to ensure all obligations are met when it comes to every agreement.
- Agiloft: Agiloft is a cloud-based contract management tool that organizations handle their contract lifecycle in a structured and efficient manner. It automates work to reduce the risks associated with contracts.
These are just a few of the many contract management tools out there on the market for you to choose from. So those are our top 10 contract management tools, but before we tell you our absolute favorites, you’ll want to know the exact features that make or break a tool.
The features to look for
When selecting a contract management tool, there are a few key features you should look for.
These include:
- Automated workflows: Automated workflows help streamline the contract process, reducing manual errors and saving time and money.
- Analytics: Analytics provide valuable insights into contract performance and help organizations make informed decisions.
- Reporting: Reporting provides visibility into contract performance and helps organizations stay on top of their contracts.
- Security: The tool should provide robust security to protect sensitive data.
- Integration: The tool should be able to integrate with other systems and applications.
These are the main key features to look for in a contract management tool, yet there are many more. Some are more relevant to you and your workflows than others. With that being said, it’s time to tell you our recommendations on what tools to use.
Read also: Benefits of contract management for your business
Our recommended tools for contract management software
After careful consideration, we’ve narrowed down our selection to two contract management tools: Oneflow and Contractbook.
In somewhat unsurprising news, we recommend Oneflow as a contract management platform. It can holistically handle your contracts from start to finish, providing you with robust security and premier features giving you complete control over your contract process.
We also think that Contractbook is worth checking out as well. They are a contract management tool that is similar with regards to features and functionality as Oneflow, and is a good alternative for contracts.
Both tools offer a number of features and benefits and are robust enough to meet the needs of most organizations.
Conclusion
Contract management is vital. To make the process easier, more and more organizations are turning to tools to make their lives easier. These tools can streamline the process, reduce manual errors, and save time and money. We’ve highlighted the top 10 contract management tools and have given our recommendations on what you should use. We hope this helps you in your decision to go with the tool that best suits your needs.
