Smarter contract management systems help unify critical business objectives within a single platform. This cutting-edge technology empowers enterprises with rich data and actionable insights, while simultaneously saving time and safeguarding business interests.

1. Contract Management 101
Did you know that poor contract management continues to cost
companies 9% of their bottom line?
Gartner defines contract management as “a solution and process
for managing the lifecycle of contracts created and/or administered
by or impacting the company.” An effective contract management
process is the foundation for a strong business and connects all
parts of the enterprise, such as legal, sales, finance, and
procurement teams, as well as risk management, IT, operations,
and more. Overall, proper contract management practices will help
you ensure the legal and financial wellbeing of your business.
Not only are contracts the backbone of all commercial
relationships, but they often dictate the very outcomes of these
relationships. Importantly, contracts help businesses clearly define
the parameters of working relationships to ensure expectations are
met.

2. Contracts also help parties in a business relationship recognize
what corrective actions must be taken in the event that contractual
obligations are not realized.
Most contract management programs include the following steps:
•Contract request
•Drafting/Authoring
•Negotiation
•Approval
•Signature
•Storage
•Obligation management
•Termination/Renewal
4 Key Objectives of Contract
Management
An effective contract management process will help you stay on top
of your contracts, optimize resources and productivity, and extract

3. maximum business value from them. Let’s review five key
objectives of an effective contract management process:
1.Standardizing the contracting process to ensure compliance
and reduce risk:
Keep your contracting process standardized to ensure that the
approved process and contract templates and clauses are used
across the enterprise irrespective of geographical location,
department, etc., thereby reducing risk from maverick
contracting.
2.Maximize enterprise value realization:
Effective contract management ensures that the value
negotiated into contracts is realized and the intended business
outcomes are accomplished during the in-life phase of the
contract.
3.Streamline the process of negotiating and managing
contracts to reduce time and costs:
Whether it be a salesperson negotiating a deal or your finance
department trying to ensure commercial compliance across
global teams, a sound contract management process will
simplify your workflows, help reduce cycle times, and increase
the speed of doing business.

4. 4.Improve visibility into commercial relationships:
Contract management empowers organizations with the data
and insights required to assess the effectiveness of enterprise
relationships with suppliers, customers, and partners.
The Contract Management Process
Explained
Efficient contract management doesn’t just magically happen. A
contract’s entire scope undergoes a defined process, eliminating
any oversight, miscommunication, and errors. The different stages
of contract management include:
•Contract request and contract creation: The relevant
department sends a request for a new contract in response to
recently identified business goals and objectives.
•Draft the contract: The legal team drafts the contract using the
appropriate contract templates and standard clauses.
•Negotiation, contract review, and approval: The counterparty
receives the contract and reviews the terms with their legal

5. department. After extensive redlining and review, both parties
negotiate contract terms until both are in agreement.
•Finalize, sign, and execute the contract: A final copy of the
document is drafted and both parties execute the contract with
an electronic signature.
•Storage: The contract is safely stored for easy future access.
This also helps maintain audit trails for swift audit responses.
•Manage obligations and ensure compliance: This involves
monitoring performance and compliance against the deliverables
and terms captured in the contract.
•Close/Renew: To avoid unintended auto-renewals of
underperforming contracts or unplanned and sudden contract
expirations that cause business disruption, proactively
monitoring and responding to contract renewals or expiration
events is necessary.
Issues with Traditional Contract
Management

6. Why are businesses turning to digital contract management
solutions? Digital and smart contract management platforms
provide an unparalleled level of security, ease, compliance, and
collaboration between parties.
These are important tenets that may not be available through
traditional contract management. Here are just a few issues with
traditional contract management that have businesses turning to
innovative platforms like SirionOne:
•Manual processes: Manual management of contracts is often
inefficient and error-prone. With manual processes, you waste
precious time during the creation of new contracts in extensive
manual red-lining, legal review, and status tracking. Not only is
manual contract management time-consuming, but it is also
extremely expensive. With manual processes, you must account
for the associated manpower and overhead costs.
•Limited collaboration: Contract negotiation is collaborative by
nature; it requires significant teamwork and internal
collaboration with other business functions that are impacted by
the contract. Ensuring this collaboration is very difficult with
traditional contract management approaches due to the
inherent siloed way of working of enterprise teams.

7. •Inherent risk due to lack of standardization: Traditional
contract management lacks built in risk controls to effectively
enforce and ensure compliance to the approved contracting
process. Using different systems between parties and exchanging
information via spreadsheets or one-off documents presents a
massive opportunity for error. (In fact, up to 88% of
spreadsheets contain mistakes, leaving discrepancies that can be
costly in the long-run.)
•Poor visibility and reporting after contract signature: The
limited ability to mine contracts for insight using legacy tools like
spreadsheets leaves room for human error and unreliable
data/metadata. Further, searching for and retrieving contracts is
difficult in legacy systems and time is wasted looking for the right
pieces of information in unorganized filing cabinets/offline
repositories. In the end, these bottlenecks and subsequent lack
of visibility lead to missed deliverables and deadlines.
Smarter Contract Management
Technology-led contracting eliminates human error when dealing
with your most sensitive documents. The new generation of AI-
enabled contract management software gives you the tools to

8. seamlessly manage the enterprise contracting process. By
combining automation, artificial intelligence, and collaboration,
contract management technology enables smarter contracting to
deliver improved efficiency, risk control, and better business
outcomes.
The benefits of smarter contract management platforms include:
•End-to-end contract management automation
•Compliance to approved, standardized contracting process
driving reduced risk through stronger contract compliance
•Efficient contract negotiation and legal review
•Enterprise-wide visibility into your contract portfolio with a
central repository
•Advanced contract analytics to harness the intelligence in
contracts
•Ability to drive business outcomes with actionable insights
•Ability to align performance to what’s promised in the contract
•Improved collaboration with stakeholders (internal and
external)

9. Smarter contract management systems help unify critical business
objectives within a single platform. This cutting-edge technology
empowers enterprises with rich data and actionable insights, while
simultaneously saving time and safeguarding business interests.
Offering end-to-end capabilities to automate processes and
streamline the entire contracting lifecycle, SirionOne is the
foundation of smarter contracting. Through our innovative
platform, we combine category-leading software, contract lifecycle
management expertise, and a deep commitment to customer
success.