It’s no secret: reviewing contracts can take an extraordinary amount of time. Contract review is a process that requires attention to the fine details, and it can prove to be a repetitive and monotonous task. Contracts must be accurate and correct in every regard, however there is certainly a better approach than the manual route to reviewing contracts. In today’s market, there are numerous contract review software solutions available to support the productivity of your contract reviews.
Today we’ll take a deep dive into all things contract review software so you can see exactly how to these solutions eliminate bottlenecks and human error, streamlining and automating contract reviews for you.
Content-
- First off – what is contract review?
- Where does contract review software come into play?
- How can contract review software support my business?
- Time-efficiency
- Cost savings
- Risk mitigation
- Prevention of financial losses
- Increased organization
- Improved negotiations
- Contract review software and automation
First off – what is contract review?
The contract review process refers to the stage in contract lifecycle management where contracts are read and edited to ensure the document is error-free, accurate, and compliant prior to making a submission. This process includes proofreading, ensuring all necessary content is included in the document. Contract reviews oversee that the company’s contracts are properly managed by identifying key information and then collecting data into reports and charts to provide additional insights into contract performance, deadlines, obligations, and more.
Many companies opt for the manual method of contract review, where employees typically in HR or legal will check contracts line-by-line. But this takes an unnecessary amount of time and this is prone to risk and human error.
Where does contract review software come into play?
Contract review software is technology created to automatically read and review contracts according to your company’s legal standards and restrictions. The software will flag areas of concern in the document that pose issues in terms of accuracy and compliance, which can help you save time and reduce errors in your agreements. The majority of these solutions offer redlining, proofreading, and reporting capabilities to increase the efficiency of your reviews.
Contract review software also comes equipped with advanced search capabilities that identify unique user information, compiling customizable visual reports based on the data. This can support your company if it wishes to scale and is in search for a way to gain insights on their contract details and key dates.
Contract review software can optimize your contract lifecycle management by generously increasing efficiency – and thus, the productivity – of your contract lifecycle management. With contract review software, you’ll support your contract management teams and legal department with a resource that helps them improve the review stage, increase compliance, save time and money, and increase the quality of their negotiations.
What stands out about contract review software is its ability to support your legal and procurement departments in their task completion and management of contract-related tasks. Contract review software can expedite the review phase while ensuring contract accuracy and risk mitigation, allow you to move through negotiations, approvals, and contract execution at faster rates.
How can contract review software support my business?
Contract review software offers six key advantages:
- Time-efficiency
- Cost savings
- Risk mitigation
- Prevention of financial losses
- Increased organization
- Improved negotiations
Let’s take a closer look at each.
Time-efficiency
Contract review software saves time, and time is money! From pinpointing the most minor errors, to ensuring that data and figures are accurate, to manually building a report on specific contract information, the manual approach has got to go if you want to save time and money. Contract review software can complete a review in a fraction of the time that a manual review could – resulting in expedited contract lifecycles and more contracts executed in less time.
Because contract reviews can take so much time, introducing automation to your contract reviews can support you in moving to the next phases of the contract lifecycle faster. This allows your legal team to focus on high-priority tasks that require their expertise and that cannot be completed with automation.
Cost savings
It’s a common misconception that reviewing contracts by hand saves more money than a software-supported approach. In actuality, the time spent on reviewing your contracts pulls away from other strategic initiatives your company could be investing time into. The hours taken away during a manual contract review ultimately cost your business more in the long run.
Risk mitigation
Manually reviewing contracts and legal agreements means the likelihood for human errors to occur is unfortunately inevitable. While software isn’t entirely foolproof, it certainly is less risky and far more precise when it comes to contract reviews. Especially with automation, you can ensure that errors are managed and reduced during the review process.
Prevention of financial losses
By cutting down on errors and inaccuracies in your contracts, you reduce the likelihood of invalid contracts, costing your business a significant amount. And with an unorganized contract portfolio, you might lose track of key dates, contract performance, contract statuses, and other key contract insights. With contract review software, you can maintain control over your company’s contracts by having access to proactive, comprehensive contract dashboards and reports, ensuring you’ll never miss key deadlines and obligations again. This can support your contract lifecycles by giving you an extra layer of visibility and accountability for upcoming tasks and key dates.
Increased organization
Categorize agreements by contract type, date, client, and other key contract information to support your teams in locating and retrieving documents easily. In addition, contract review software allows you to assess and manage risk potential and modify standards according to contract review data – all of which will enhance the organization of your legal department.
Improved negotiations
Improving your contract negotiation phase starts by determining the success of your contract reviews. By identifying which areas of contract content to discuss and to avoid during a negotiation will assist your legal team in eliminating bottlenecks during approvals. To add, contract review software that pinpoints and alerts users of specific content requiring additional review according to rules and compliance standards can support company’s in improving the favor of their negotiations.
Contract review software and automation
Advancements in legal technology and automation have created the opportunity to streamline the contract review phase and increase productivity, allowing your teams to easily follow up on contract activities and performance.
With redlining capabilities, you can review contract language to ensure the validity and accuracy of the legal language included each document according to your company’s standards. The technology effectively “redlines” and alerts users of areas of concern so the legal team can edit and fix issues within the draft.
Automating contract authoring means leveraging libraries of preapproved and compliant contract templates and clauses. Some contract review software providers include the ability to insert preapproved sections of text to improve the agreement, which can be helpful when considering company guidelines for the negotiation phase.
Get more out your contract reviews with Dock 365
Contract review software can support your legal department and all involved in contract management with a user-friendly, rapid, and accurate approach to the contract review phase. If you wish to save time, money, mitigate risk, increase compliance, boost organization, and enhance your negotiations, then look no further than Dock 365. Here at Dock, we offer advanced tools and collaborative portals for the most productive and efficient contract review experience.
Learn more about the Dock 365 Contract Management Software.
