Anyone who runs their business seriously knows: correctly concluding a contract with a business partner is a separate job, and sometimes very difficult. The text of a commercial contract must go through many approvals, and there is still a risk that something will turn out to be “wrong” in the text. But the main thing is that this whole process takes a lot of time and effort, primarily from the company’s top managers. However, it can be automated, thereby reducing the unproductive burden on the company’s management.
Such a difficult contract
It would seem that it is not such a difficult task: to draw up and agree a contract with a counterparty. But almost everything sometimes takes a long time. According to the IACCM study, 92% of the time when working with contracts, there is a negotiation process.
If you understand, there are really a lot of stages. The contract should be created under a specific agreement or cooperation agreement, agreed with the heads of various divisions, with lawyers, and approved by the management. At the same time, each manager through whom the document passes may want to make corrections to it. Moreover, edits from different managers can “conflict” with each other, contradict the content of the document or be legally inaccurate. And that’s it – the text of the contract goes to a new round of negotiation. Moreover, there can be any number of such circles…
But even signing the document is not the end of the matter – after all, it is necessary to monitor how the parties to the contract comply with their obligations. As a result, the entire described process consumes unnecessarily a lot of effort and time of highly paid employees. Which, of course, negatively affects the profitability of the company.
Of course, there is a way out of this situation. First, it is necessary to competently organize and regulate work under contracts, and then to automate the process of agreement of contracts. This will drastically reduce time and effort costs, reduce risks, make the entire process transparent and avoid many internal conflicts and searches for the culprit. The concept of “transparency” here, by the way, means that you can “see” the location of the contract at each of the stages of agreement. Let’s add here that the automatic system for working with contracts necessarily stores all intermediate versions of each contract – that is, if necessary, you can always return to them and not get confused in editing.
How we implemented it
Our company was able to automate the contractual document flow by creating a low-code solution BPM system Scriptum. However, such a solution can be implemented on any system in our product portfolio: M-Files, Almexoft, Megapolis.DocNet, Creatio – to choose.
The process of working with a contract in our system looks simple and clear.
- At the first stage, a draft of a new document is created: the system creates an electronic card that displays the necessary details, some of these details are filled in automatically.
2. At the second stage, the document template is filled out. All information about the contract is entered not directly in the contract, but in the card of the document. After that, the filled-in data from the card is inserted into the text of the contract according to the configured template – this allows you to avoid errors and keep information about the contract in one place.
3. At the third stage, all appendices and additional agreements to the contract are prescribed. They can be created directly from the contract card. As a result, employees get quick access to the entire package of documents.
- Next, the formed contract goes for negotiation according to the established route. Tasks at each stage are created automatically, and e-mail messages are sent to executors. Here’s what it looks like:
Look, even in a simplified form, the procedure for agreeing a contract looks like this:
- An employee whose duties include developing a document or receiving it from a counterparty sends the document to his manager.
- The manager checks the document, makes his corrections and comments, and sends it for further approval by an additional approver.
- Additional approvers correct the document, make their comments and pass it on to mandatory approvers.
- Mandatory approvers make final corrections and approve the document.
- The document is agreed with the counterparty.
- The director receives a contract ready for signing.
It is not surprising that after an automated contract management system appears at the enterprise, the management asks one thought: “Why didn’t we implement it earlier?!”
Moreover, working on a document in an automated system is a complete cycle, which also includes signing the document using an electronic digital signature.
But the work of the system does not end there: after the document is signed by both parties, the system monitors the term of the contract and the terms of its execution. A few days before the expiration date, employees receive a notification and a corresponding task to be able to extend the contract or finish the job on time.
As you can see, the entire multi-stage process of preparing and agreeing the contract (and at the same time tracking how it is executed) was able to be “packaged” into one compact and easy-to-use system. Proper business automation looks like this.
Want to better understand how you can automate your business to become more efficient? Contact us and our expert will conduct a demonstration for you according to your type of business. You can order a consultation here: https://litiko.com/en/contacts/