While managing a project there are certain areas where highly efficient performance is directly connected to the project’s success. One of these key areas is Contract Management. Contract Management shall be taken into consideration from the early stages of the project, hence the better the lifecycle of the contracts is looked after, the more secure the project is.
One of the tools to help a contracts team succeed is to apply Electronic Contract Management software
DocSpace is crucial for the team to streamline the entire lifecycle from drafting the first pages of the contract to further steps of its development such as:
- Negotiations
- Approvals
- Singing
- Archiving
- Renewal
The contracts team will be able to monitor all the stages above with the help of DocSpace
Besides a very sensitive area as the contracts management does require certain precautions. During the project execution one might be facing:
- Leakage of confidential information
- Inappropriate and chaotic approval process, where some vital steps are missing
- Loosing the thread of people in charge
These factors may lead to a potential profit loss, penalties and fines
DocSpace while helping to solve these issues could be easily adjusted to suit the project’s requirements
Contract Lyfecyle
At any stage of the cycle have the contracts in control with DocSpace where one is able to:
- Manage access rights by identifying who can access your contracts based on the contract value
- Assign due dateses
- Monitor assigned tasks in connection with a certain contract
- Search and retrieve your contracts by applying filters and saving most frequent searches
- Report the status of the contract by defining the level of details in the report
- Find a bottleneck in the process
- Find out who delays further development
Drafting
Creating a contract in DocSpace is easy and customisable. Should you wish to use a certain template or a few for various contract types, then DocSpace would be able to capture your preferences.
Should you have accompanying documents such as appendixes, specifications, drawings, then DocSpace will allow you to store them in a single place, or should it be the case where few contracts have to be linked with each other, then DocSpace will be able to accommodate this requirement too.
Approving
Either internal or external contract approval process should be structured and governed. Choose any method that reflects specifics of your business considering contract type, value, period etc.
You may allow users to define if a contract should be endorsed by someone else. Set time-limit for any step and control it.
Provide transparency of the whole process by not only covering approval or disapproval stages, but also collecting comments, information about the progress, and responsible staff.
Executing/Expedting
Once the contract is signed monitor its execution by assigning tasks and due dates so to expedite the contract and control over the timelines as well as any potential damages.
Add any relevant documents to your contract.
Closing/Extending
Should you wish to extend or close the contract, have it retrieved and either linked to a new one, or simply have it closed in the system by going through an acceptance procedure.
Re-assign the endorser, update the contract’s content or simply copy the document and change whatever is relevant. This will take you to the initial stage of the contract development - drafting.