Becky Holloway
Is Contract Complexity Catching up to You?
After posting recent content on LinkedIn describing how Malbek is creating customer-centric contracting experiences, I received some amazing feedback and great questions. Essentially, I described how Malbek incorporates robust contracting functionality in a consistent, simplistic manner facilitating “ease of doing business” with only a few clicks…and, as a result, CLM processes are simplified allowing customers to close more contracts faster. The post stimulated curiosity, “Contracting can be simple, really?” asked a skeptical reader. Yes, it can, and Malbek has proven it!
When considering the questions and views that came in following the post, it’s easy to appreciate user frustrations. Several individuals responded by sharing some of their contracting pain points and not-so-happy contracting experiences. Here are just a few examples of complex contracting…any sound familiar?
No Standardization
Legal terms, clauses and language vary considerably depending on type of contract, customer, division, or geography. Across an organization, it is important that contracts use appropriate, standard, pre-approved language to easily track and approve changes to standard terms, but with some individuals “doing their own thing,” the process can be difficult to manage, right? Are you able to support a complex review and approval cycle so that rules and structure will be maintained across the organization to ensure uniformity?
Missed Opportunities
After a contract is executed, there may be amendments or changes that need to be negotiated, signed, and managed. Not being on top of this can be costly. For example, milestones or performance commitments require tracking to prove compliance or else it could result in penalties or contractual issues with the customer. Are you protecting yourself from business and financial risk by being alerted to non-compliant terms, counter-parties, etc.?
Unsearchable Contracts
You would like to easily search for contracts, based on content or data values within the agreement, but you have multiple related contracts and don’t know where to begin. For example, you might have a master services agreement with a customer, and linked to that are new work orders every month. Or your agreements might have many addendums to track and manage. Where do you look for the contract? How do you know you are looking at the right one? Furthermore, how do you report on contract metrics like cycle time, usage of standard clauses, etc., so you can identify bottlenecks and improve process inefficiencies? Would leadership like to have dashboards to see contract effectiveness, profitability, and volume in different business units or geographies?
The Process Is Slow with No Visibility
You have heard complaints from the field that it takes forever for a contract to move from draft to approval. You know that there are delays, but you don’t know what stage they are occurring in. You also have a sense that certain clauses are frequently changed, but you are unable to track effectively. You are wondering if contracts are driving the desired outcomes. You are curious to know the commonalities amongst “high-performing” contracts. If any of this is true, there may be significant manual effort and some broken processes not to mention low user adoption.
Malbek’s revolutionary CLM solution takes a very different approach to bringing a consumer-grade user experience to the forefront while still solving the complex contracting challenges with its robust functionality. Our solution simplifies the most common challenges with contract creation, negotiation, approvals, execution, search, renewals, and tracking of obligations. It allows our customers to execute more contracts faster and track them more efficiently, thereby reducing risk and expediting revenue. If you would like to see how Malbek is shaping the direction of the contracting industry, please click here to request a demo.
