When you’re constantly creating contracts, you need a solution with lightning-fast turnaround, instead of relying on a single lawyer to do all the work. Writing a good, legal contract takes a lot of time if you’re starting from scratch. Legal contracts are binding agreements and can easily be created or reviewed by legal professionals. But a fast-paced work environment benefits from the use of smart technology and streamlined processes that can keep up with the pace.
Technology allows for certain clauses to be reused or simply updated with new language instead of starting from square one every time you need a new contract. Additionally, it speeds up a process that can be painstakingly slow. Leveraging technology to create contracts, SOW’s, MSA’s and work orders is smart business, and here’s why.
You Can Make Changes and Send Them Off Quickly
The old way of handling SOW’s was big and bulky. It involved paper and hand signed pages. Then it evolved into PDF files to review and print out. The next evolution included signing them online, but even then, whether those signatures were binding or not was a gray area. Making changes meant editing documents and resending pages and pages of content. Leveraging a contract authoring solution to create and edit your contracts allows you to make quick changes and get real-time feedback from your customers. Making changes is no longer a long, drawn-out process, but one that can be made quickly, and then sent off with the click of a button.
You’ll Have Access to Legal Terminology
While it’s best to have a lawyer review any final contracts, creating iterations can now be done with software. Smart contract programs offer verbiage for different parts of a contract. This verbiage is based on best legal practices. This can help in the editing process for SOW’s and MSA’s. Clients expect a quick turnaround for changes, and yet old business practices can slow the process down. When you have a high volume of contracts to process, leverage technology and all the ways it speeds things up.
You Can Make Changes From Home
Technology allows fully remote teams to work together from different locations. Adding a contract software further creates solutions for remote staff. No longer do you need to shuffle through files filled with old SOW’s to use as a template. Instead, you can pull up old documents with the same client using software and make a few changes to create updated contracts. These changes can all be made from any fully remote location as long as the right privacy is in place.
It Helps Prevent Stop-Loss
The reach of a contract goes beyond the walls of you and your clients’ businesses. The reach of a contract can impact economics as a whole. A well-designed contract provides protections and efficiencies that can affect the cost of real goods and services. If a supplier didn’t fulfill their end of a contract, the cost of their failure can drive up prices for a product. This price impacts the end buyer and causes a ripple effect. Contracts are just to cover you, they are to protect you from stop-loss after the contract is completed. By using technology, you gain further efficiencies to prevent those losses in future contracts.
It Reduces Risk
Contract creation is about reducing business risk. It helps protect you and your company and also offers benefits to your clients. Contracts should always be mutually beneficial, and technology helps make this a reality. Once a contract is complete, the best legal software can analyze the document to find places that may need stronger or different clauses to reduce risk. Smart software programs leverage AI to find holes and clauses you may have missed. This additional set of “eyes” ensures your contract is as low-risk as possible. Once complete, you can send the final document off to a legal professional if you want that assurance.
Assists With Contract Lifecycle Management
There are a lot of steps in creating and executing a contract. Using technology means you get help with every step of the contract lifecycle. Managing the end-to-end document and execution of it all in one system simplifies the process. There are less gaps, and it’s easier to manage the contract even after it’s signed. The contract lifecycle doesn’t end at signing and the right technology will help you even after all the signatures are in place. This is one of the many important reasons to use smart technology for contracts, and the part of the process that gets most forgotten in the contract lifecycle.
