Contract management software features can blend together and start to make all the products in the market look the same. And there are a lot of products in the market. When searching for a fitting solution, prioritize features that benefit your company. There are a lot of trends in contract management but here are the core features you should look for.
Who are the contract management software features built for?
A quick scan of the products reveals that most contract management systems cater to larger companies. They emphasize contract management software features for volume and price, targeting companies with an annual spending capacity of $20-30K on software without contributing to revenue or the efficiency of the go-to-market team.
For many small to medium-sized startups, spending this amount on non-business-building software is a hard sell. So most early stage companies build their contract management on tools like Trello or other project management tools. These solutions do the job but lack the advantages that contract management software features offer.
Contract Data Capture
One of the key contract management software features to look out for is that of data capture. The primary issue with contracting for early-stage companies is that data becomes trapped in PDFs. That trapped data later translates into manual work. How many times has the CSM team asked to clarify contract start and end dates? How many times has the finance team had to review a contract for actual ARR? How many times has marketing asked if they can use a logo? This translated to wasted time.
Look for a contract management system that not only extracts the data that you need but also puts it into a clean, searchable and structured format. Contract Sent allows you to capture this data during the negotiation process and export it in a well structured CSV file.
Notifications For Your Startup Legal Team
Notifications are one of the basic but essential contract management software features. They will help you build a process that improves your internal communication. Notifications provide a direct and immediate channel of communication between the process and the user. This ensures the system promptly informs users of new tasks or assignments, reducing the risk of missed or overlooked tasks.
Notifications will help your team with real-time updates. When your team receives real-time updates on task assignments and changes it ensures they always have access to the most current information. This can be crucial in end of month or end of quarter rushes. Another critical aspect to this is accountability. Notifications create a record of task assignments and acknowledgments. This can help establish accountability as both legal and sales teams become aware that the system tracks their actions, reducing the likelihood of neglecting tasks.
Dashboard Overview of Your Legals
Having a dashboard that provides a visual representation of the progress of legal negotiations in the procurement phase of your sales cycle is extremely important. Firstly, it enhances transparency and visibility into the black hole that is ‘it’s with legal’. This allows stakeholders to quickly understand where each deal stands. This transparency not only improves internal communication but also fosters trust with clients or partners as they can track progress in real-time.
Secondly, a dashboard like the one we’ve built in Contract Sent can significantly improve decision-making. Sales and legal teams can use the data presented to identify bottlenecks or delays in negotiations, enabling them to take corrective actions promptly. This proactive approach can lead to faster deal closures and reduced sales cycle times.
The dashboard allows for better resource allocation. By visualizing which negotiations are at what stage, your sales leaders can allocate the resources and personnel in your legal team more efficiently at the end of month crunch time, ensuring that the most critical deals receive the necessary attention.
Having a progress dashboard enhances accountability. Team members responsible for negotiations can be held accountable for meeting deadlines and milestones, driving greater ownership of the process and reducing the chances of overlooked tasks.
A progress dashboard for legal negotiations in the procurement phase of the sales cycle improves transparency, aids decision-making, optimizes resource allocation, and enhances accountability. These benefits collectively contribute to a more streamlined and effective sales process.
Redline What Matters
Raise Changes For Approval To Turnaround Contracts Faster
Contract Comparison Tool
As far as contract management software features go, this is one of our favorites. Having a contract comparison tool that allows you to see the differences between two modified sales contracts super quickly and easily. This tool promotes accuracy and risk mitigation. By highlighting the changes made between contracts, contract comparison tools help users quickly identify any discrepancies, omissions, or potential errors. This ensures that the finalized contract accurately reflects the intended terms and reduces the risk of costly legal disputes.
Secondly, it saves time and enhances efficiency. Manual contract comparison is a time-consuming and error-prone task – not to mention a little bit soul destroying. With a dedicated tool, users can swiftly compare contracts, focusing only on the areas that have been modified. This not only saves time but also frees up valuable resources that can be allocated to other critical tasks.
A contract comparison tool that allows you to share the results with a secret URL like the one built into Contract Sent promotes contracting collaboration and informed decision-making. Sales and legal teams can easily review and discuss contract modifications, making it simpler to reach a consensus on terms and negotiate effectively. This fosters smoother communication and collaboration within the organization and with external stakeholders.
This feature also serves as a valuable contract auditing and compliance tool. By tracking changes over time, organizations can maintain a comprehensive record of contract revisions. This is crucial for ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and internal policies, as well as for conducting audits when necessary.
Central Contract Repository
A contract management system with a central contract repository provides numerous benefits to startups. Firstly, it enhances accessibility and visibility. All contracts are stored in a centralized location, making it easy for authorized users to quickly locate, search for and access any contract they need. This visibility improves transparency and ensures that contracts are readily available for reference, reducing the chances of overlooking critical details.
It helps with organization and efficiency. With contracts centralized, it becomes simpler to categorize, sort, and search for specific contracts or clauses. This streamlined access and organization save time and effort when managing contracts, enabling users to focus on more strategic tasks.
Additionally, it will help you get into shape when an investor asks for all of your contracts in one place (at short notice, of course).
A contract management system without a central contract repository probably is one you should overlook.
Contract Management Software Price
While not a contract management software feature exactly, let’s be honest, it’s one of the most important things that you’ll be looking at. There are a lot of tools out there that can be quite pricey – or that just don’t list their price. Contract Sent has been built with transparent pricing for startups starting at $1,500 annually it’s an easy way to get a lot of the benefits of contract management software features without the heavy price tag.
