There was a time when contract management was considered a job meant only for the legal department of the organization. However, the modern business world has started using contracts as tools to set up terms of service and deliverables for all departments and services. As per estimations and research conducted by Gartner that around 60% and 80% of B2B transactions are governed by contracts.

Every department is using or dealing with a lot of contracts and it is becoming humanly impossible to deal with so many of them manually without committing errors or spending a lot of work hours. As contracts are becoming ubiquitous in the business world, many companies are looking into ways to reduce the cost of contracts (financial and time-based), minimize errors, and improve contract lifecycle management.

Contract request management is often considered the first step of the Contract Lifecycle. Being the first step, it sets the stage for the rest of the contract lifecycle. Thus, it is important to optimize the contract request management process to save costs, decrease man-hours, and increase the efficiency of the CLM. The other aspect that the companies need to focus on is how they handle the business user interaction with the contract management system.

As per a KPMG survey, a contract can lose up to 40% of a contract’s value due to poor contract governance.

Every year, 9% of the annual revenue is lost due to poor contract management practices.

$6.900 is considered the average cost of a simple contract which can go up to $49 for a complex contract.

Improvement in business user interaction with the CLM systems eases the process of contract management and governance. This can show significant improvement in saving the costs otherwise lost due to ineffective CLM. In the following sections, we will get deep into understanding the challenges related to effective contract request management and business user interaction in CLM and how teams can overcome them using the CLM software?

Methods of Managing Contract Requests

Since 2018, industries across the world are quickly moving towards automated contract management. However, still there are companies that opt for traditional ways of contract management which are precisely outdated. This includes managing requests through emails and tracking their progress. Obviously, these ways have proven to decrease the efficiency of the contract management process and usually lead to missing deadlines and opportunities.

Consequently, the use of software-based contract management systems is gaining popularity, and manual contract management has been confined to small or micro sector organizations with limited use of contracts. This software has increased the efficiency of enterprise CLM systems and refined the process of contract request tracking. However, still, there are some common roadblocks that need the attention of the Contract managers using these systems.

Challenges in Contract Request Processing

Many companies are using contract management software to streamline their contracts and related workflows. Contract request management is an important part of the lifecycles managed by these products. However, the challenge that contract managers often face is the lack of a simple system to submit a contact request. Most of the systems have a complex process to submit a contract request which decreases the efficiency of users and eats up valuable time.

Barring a few software like Optimus’ eContracts, (which has a BU portal on the homepage where one can simply submit a request), there is hardly any similar or easy way given in any other software.

Another issue surrounding contract request management is the non-segregation of contract request types. His issue leads to a decrease in the efficiency of request workflows. If the requests are segregated properly based on different parameters like recently submitted (time-based) or based on priority then it will be easier for contract managers to work on them. The contract type segregation is an important feature that is a must to remove this bottleneck.

Apart from these, there are other issues such as lack of user-friendly navigation on the contract request page, unnecessary pop-ups, lack of user training material, etc. All these issues if not dealt with usually lead to a significant slow-down of the CLM process in spite of using a contract management tool. Thus, proper user training, coupled with the addition of user-friendly features on the tool is necessary to remove issues related to contract management. Let us look into some of the best practices that organizations can follow to optimize their contract request management process.

Best Practices for Contract Request Management

One of the best practices to enhance efficiency in contract request management is to give users a comprehensive and easy-to-navigate contract intake form with easy access. It is preferred that the submit a request form is shown with a single click and is available on the homepage of the CLM software. This will decrease the no. of clicks and the time spent in navigation for a business user who simply wants to submit a request.

The form should be able to easily capture the request details and organize it for easy access later. This removes the possibility of any missing details during form submission. The users can also use their automated contract request management platform to configure the data fields in the contract request forms to increase efficiency in request submission. This also allows the individuals involved in reviewing and approving requests to conveniently access all the information in one place.

The companies can do away with unnecessary pop-ups that distract users. A business user-specific portal for users with the option to segregate requests based on priority or type also helps in minimizing the time spent in the processing of requests. Along with this, easy access to training material related to efficient contract request management helps novice users in understanding the ways to manage contract requests. Now, let’s look into the role of Business user Interaction and tackling challenges to improve CLM.

Role of Business User Interaction and Challenges

Improving business user interaction in CLM is quite important as it helps in understanding the pain point of the user. A better understanding of the pain point helps in optimizing the contract management process by removing them with new features or by updating the existing ones. This further leads to enhancement in user experience and prompts users to interact with the tool without feeling burdened or getting bored.

Integrating business user interaction with the contract request management process can further improve the Contract management process and overall user experience. If the users are able to interact with the tool themselves and use the self-service features to customize the request management process then it will only lead to decreased turnaround time and increased productivity.

However, enhancing user interaction and facilitating self-service in CLM have some challenges. One of them is training the new users on new features or using the self-service features effectively. The upside is that the user will only be needed to take the training once and it will significantly increase their efficiency in the longer run.

Another challenge is coming up with new features to enhance the business user interaction. This will require the deployment of research and work hours for the development of new features. If the companies are ready to meet up these challenges, they can improve the contract request management process, increase overall productivity and enhance the user experience.

So, we learned the various challenges in contract request processing and the associated best practices that can be followed to overcome them. We also looked into the integration of business user interaction and contract request management processes to improve the overall contract management experience in organizations.

Obviously, there are various challenges but these can be overcome with an enhanced CLM product with specialized features for business users and a simple process for submitting contract requests and managing them based on types and priority. These features can optimize request management and facilitate self-service among users. With the world moving fast towards the path of growth in the coming years, we will see more innovations that will enhance these processes associated with enterprise contact management.