While each organization has different needs and preferences when it comes to contract processes, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard a colleague say, “I just wish our contract processes were more complex and time-consuming.” Rather, teams are frequently looking for ways to optimize their contract management so everything is as streamlined and efficient as possible. This process reduces strain on workers and can make transactions easier as vendors and customers have less friction in each step of the process.
Here’s how you can find the clutter in your current contract processes, remove it to streamline each step, and learn from each update so you continue to make impactful changes at every stage.
Break Your Workflow Into Steps
Your contract management processes may involve dozens—or even hundreds—of small steps before it’s time to sign, but most contract management process steps can be categorized into one of these five steps:
- Drafting and negotiating your initial agreement
- Getting approval from all stakeholders
- Beginning or completing the work that the contract covers
- Monitoring and managing contract details as the work progresses
- Renewing or ending the contract after all the included work is complete
While you may want to start tackling several of these steps at once, it’s usually best to take it one step at a time to ensure that each newly simplified or automated step is functioning properly before you move on to the next one. Otherwise, you may run into problems down the line and not know which change caused them, leaving you back at square one.
Simplifying Each Step
Once you’ve categorized each step of your contract processes and selected one to start simplifying and accelerating, here’s how you can identify areas for improvement and successfully streamline your operations.
1. Identify Who’s Involved
This is easier said than done, but it’s an essential way to start the process. By talking to each person involved in that step, you can build a holistic understanding of how the process currently works and what automations would be most impactful for those team members. This can also help you get an idea of who may be involved in tasks they don’t need to be. For example, while legal may need to be involved in drafting the final contract, they probably won’t need to be a part of negotiating the terms.
If you’re using a CLM system for your contract processes, you may be able to adjust notifications and automate requests for approval. This provides a simplified experience for multiple team members without any significant changes to their workflows, which is likely to increase team buy-in for any future automations you put together.
Some other great questions to ask at this stage to get a good idea of areas for improvement are:
- What part of this step in contract management is the most time-consuming for you?
- Are there any tasks that you find unnecessary or overly complicated?
- If you had to remove one task from this stage in the process, what would it be and why?
2. Consider What Steps Might Be Obsolete
Best practices are always evolving, so steps that may have been essential the last time you evaluated these workflows might not be as important anymore. You may discover tasks that are duplicates of each other or require action from someone who doesn’t need to be involved. One of the easiest ways to simplify this process for everyone is to remove items that aren’t serving their intended purpose and reduce the number of people who are involved in each task wherever possible.
3. Look Into What Could Be Automated
Automation can be a great way to simplify the steps that are truly essential and reduce strain on your contract management team. Many CLM platforms offer a wide variety of automation solutions, so there’s a good chance your company isn’t using them to their full potential.
Working with a team like Koho Consulting on CLM implementation and adjustments can be a great way to learn how to make the most of your system quickly. If you’d rather take the time to learn about automation options on your own, some great places to start are the help center of your chosen CLM or setting up a call with their customer service team.
Start with the automations that are the clearest 1:1 change from your current system, since those will likely be easier to implement. For example, you may automate email notifications about changes to the contract so people don’t need to manually update other stakeholders about each update. Then, you can go through the steps that are left and see if any automation options in your CLM could help with part or all of those steps.
4. Have Team Members Test Your Updates
Once you’ve removed steps that seem obsolete and automated as much as you can, it’s time to have the people who complete these tasks in their day-to-day work test out the changes. While the conversations you had with stakeholders early on should reduce the likelihood of issues at this stage, there’s always a chance that something got lost in translation or isn’t working as well as you thought it would. Testing the updated contract process before actually using it with a current contract allows you to identify and fix any errors before they have a chance of impacting your customers or vendors.
This testing phase is also a great opportunity to ask your team members if they see any other ways to simplify the process or speed things up. They may have suggestions you haven’t thought of that will be useful for this category of tasks or others you work on in the future.
5. Reflect, Rinse, and Repeat
Once your updates to that step have been completed and tested, it’s time to reflect on the process and see what you can learn from it before you move on to the next step. Are there any different questions you want to ask stakeholders next time? Were there any missed opportunities for automation that you could’ve spotted sooner? What issues came up during testing that you can prevent in the next round? These types of questions will help ensure that each time you work on a particular step, it will be more effective and a smoother process than the last one.
Then, it’s time to move on to the next step until everything is as simple and speedy as possible.
Optimize Your Contract Processes and CLM
Even the best contract processes will usually have some room for improvement, and a great way to spot opportunities for growth is to work with professionals to identify, implement, and optimize the best CLM system for you. Collaborating with an outside team gives you the chance to benefit from an outside perspective.
Our team at Koho Consulting has spent years learning how to perfect your contract processes, from digitizing steps that previously required a printer to automating as many tasks as possible. From picking the best software for your needs to maintaining that system long-term, we’re here to help your contract management team succeed. Get in touch with us to find out how we can help you simplify and accelerate your contract processes.
