Legal teams must work hard to keep up with expanding businesses and contracts. Manually handling commercial agreements can be time-consuming and create potential risks for everyone. In such cases, scaling companies can forego traditional methods and work smarter. 

DocuSign CLM offers numerous powerful tools to automate legal tasks and streamline contracting. It allows businesses to proactively manage contracts through drafting, negotiating, approval, and signing. But what exactly is DocuSign CLM, and do you need it? In this blog post, we’ll discuss in detail its contract management capabilities, limitations, and benefits.

1. Contract Generation

Generating contractual agreements involves accumulating all the party details and clauses in one place. DocuSign CLM enables businesses to create language, provisions, and other relevant information from scratch or to modify existing templates. They can use existing data from other systems, such as ERP or CRM, to populate contract fields like party name, type, and address. 

Legal teams can build electronic forms with custom fields and conditional logic to gather contract information. They can automatically fill out legal agreements per applicable laws, industry requirements, and organizational standards. It minimizes errors and standardizes the contracting process across the board. Making use of these features can significantly reduce the amount of manual intervention.

2. Negotiating Terms

After generation, parties must negotiate to settle the terms and reach a final draft. Email chains and channels can delay the process and make it harder to keep everyone on the same page. DocuSign CLM streamlines the negotiation process by offering a centralized platform where legal teams and stakeholders can collaborate efficiently. 

All parties can work on the same document in real time, eliminating the need for cumbersome email threads or multiple file versions. Legal teams can also utilize the integrated clause library to quickly insert pre-approved clauses and fallback language, reducing risks associated with non-compliant terms. They can set up automated alerts to notify stakeholders of updates or required actions, ensuring negotiations remain on track. 

3. Route Reviews & Approvals

Contracts must go through reviews and approval before they become official. This process may involve numerous internal and external stakeholders. For expanding portfolios, it can be intimidating to ensure the draft gets to the right person without any delays or obstacles. DocuSign CLM transforms the review and approval process by automating what is typically a time-consuming, manual workflow. 

Legal teams can set up customizable workflows that route documents to the appropriate reviewers and approvers based on predefined rules, such as organizational roles, contract value, or type of agreement. This automation eliminates manual follow-ups and ensures that each contract is reviewed by the right people in the correct sequence. Notifications and reminders keep stakeholders informed, reducing the risk of delays caused by overlooked tasks. Role-based permissions ensure that sensitive information is only accessible to authorized personnel, enhancing security. 

4. Executing Contracts

Signing is the most vital part of formalizing a commercial agreement. When the process is effective and cohesive, businesses can swiftly onboard partners, employees, clients, and suppliers. Traditionally, executing contracts involved printing, signing, scanning, and mailing documents, which was time-consuming and prone to errors. DocuSign CLM eliminates these inefficiencies by allowing users to send contracts for electronic signatures directly from the platform.

Signers can complete the process from any device, anywhere, ensuring convenience and faster turnaround times. Real-time tracking features enable legal teams to monitor the status of each signature request, reducing uncertainty and enabling timely follow-ups. The platform also ensures legal and regulatory compliance by providing built-in safeguards and audit trails that record every action taken during the signing process. 

5. Searchable Storage 

Contracts must be readily available for post-award management. Businesses should oversee compliance, performance, renewal, and terminations throughout the contractual relationship. Traditional storage methods, such as shared drives or physical filing systems, can make it challenging to locate specific contracts or clauses, especially when dealing with large volumes of documents. 

DocuSign CLM provides legal teams with a centralized, highly secure repository for managing and storing contracts, ensuring that critical agreements are always accessible when needed. The advanced search features allow users to find documents based on metadata, keywords, or even specific clauses. Automated tagging and categorization further streamline the organization of contracts, making retrieval faster and more efficient. 

What are the limitations of DocuSign CLM? 

DocuSign CLM can streamline contract creation, negotiation, execution, and storage. However, like any software, it has limitations that may impact its effectiveness depending on an organization's needs. Implementing DocuSign CLM can be a lengthy and technically challenging process, especially for organizations with unique workflows or legacy systems. The platform requires significant customization to align with an organization’s specific needs, such as setting up templates, configuring workflows, and integrating with existing software like CRM or ERP systems. 

High Costs

DocuSign CLM is a premium solution, and its pricing structure can be a barrier for smaller businesses or those with budget constraints. In addition to the licensing fees, there are hidden costs associated with onboarding, training, customization, and third-party support for complex integrations. Organizations with highly specific requirements may also need to invest in additional tools or advanced features, which can further increase costs. 

Integration and Scalability Issues

While DocuSign CLM integrates with many popular software platforms like Salesforce and Microsoft, challenges can arise when connecting it to legacy systems or industry-specific tools. Custom integrations may require technical expertise and additional development time, which can slow down deployment and increase costs. Furthermore, the platform may struggle to scale seamlessly for organizations with complex, highly customized workflows. 

Dock 365 vs. DocuSign 

Companies always aim to keep up with the increasing demands and evolving technology. However, implementing multiple tools to aid your business operations can be expensive and time-consuming. As a result, choosing an all-inclusive contract management solution is wiser than using separate software for each of your needs. For instance, Dock 365 contract management software offers advanced tools to utilize contract intelligence to optimize the procurement process. 

Integrations 

Integrating your contract management platform with other compatible systems can enhance the value of contract intelligence. For instance, Dock 365 CMS offers a centralized platform to manage contract and procurement data through seamless integration with Microsoft Business Central. It enables users to import relevant information from the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) platform to avoid manual data entry or duplication. Organizations can create thorough contract intelligence reports with the help of real-time financial data accessible within the CMS system. A cost-effective method to manage all contract-related activities on a single platform. Either way, with the right integrations, organizations can enjoy the rewards of collaboration without incurring massive spending. 

Data security 

All the advanced capabilities of contract management are meaningless if the solution does not offer a means to protect sensitive information. Fortunately, Dock 365 contract management software provides sophisticated AI and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tools without compromising data security. The CMS system is built upon the pre-existing Microsoft 365 environment to avoid storing vital contract and vendor information in a third-party site. The company controls access and permissions to safeguard sensitive data. 

Ease of use

The usability of contract management software is crucial for organizations to ensure that all employees quickly adopt innovative technology and continue using it to get the most benefit. Thankfully, Dock 365 CMS integrates with familiar tools like Outlook, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics, and Microsoft Word. It helps you with better user adaptation. Moreover, Microsoft Business Central, Dynamics CRM, Salesforce CRM, and vendor portal add-ons help the procurement team work on contracts without switching between multiple platforms. 

Conclusion

Dock 365 is a compelling alternative to DocuSign CLM for businesses seeking cost-effectiveness, simplified implementation, and native integration with Microsoft tools. While DocuSign CLM is a powerful and feature-rich solution suited for enterprises with complex contract needs, Dock 365 provides a more accessible, user-friendly, and affordable option for organizations looking to streamline contract management without overcomplicating processes. Ultimately, the choice between the two platforms depends on the organization's size, budget, and specific requirements.