What are the 9 stages of the contract management process?

While there are many components of contract management, we could summarize the process by breaking it into three clear stages: Create, Sign and Manage. The pre-contractual phase, the signing phase and management phase of a contract.

Mochadocs - Contract General - Specific Info V8

Step 1: Initial requests

Writing a contract by hand is a time-consuming activity, but through the use of automated contract management, your process and business rules will become quite streamlined.

Step 2: Authoring contracts

Writing a contract by hand is a time-consuming activity, but through the use of automated contract management, your process and business rules will become quite streamlined.

Step 3: Negotiating the contract

After drafting the contract, you and involved stakeholders will be able to compare versions of the content of the contract and note any discrepancies to reduce negotiation time.

Step 4: Approval Flows

Getting management approval is the step where most bottlenecks occur. You and all stakeholders will preemptively combat this by configured approval workflows, including parallel and serial approvals to keep decisions moving at a rapid pace.

Step 5: Signing the contract

Executing the contract allows you to control and shorten the signature process through the use of electronic signature.

Step 6: Milestone and KPI management

This requires a great deal of project management to ensure deliverables are being met by key stakeholders and the value of the contract isn’t deteriorating throughout its early phases of growth.

Step 7: Revisions and amendments

Gathering all documents pertinent to the contract’s initial drafting is a difficult task. That's why Mochadocs simplified that process. When overlooked items are found via new insights, systems must be in place to amend the original contract. Contract Data Management will help you and all stakeholders to simplify changes.

Step 8: Auditing and reporting

Contract management does not mean drafting a contract and then pushing it into the filing cabinet without another thought. Contract audits are important in determining both organizations’ compliance with the terms of the agreement and any possible problems that might arise.

Step 9: Renewing

Manual contract management methods can often result in missed renewal opportunities and lost business revenue. Automating the process allows you to identify renewal opportunities and create new contracts.

Maximize your contractual values.

Much of contract management comes down to handling these nine steps. Contract lifecycle management is critical and sometime even mission critical. As different contract types go through their various stages, you and your stakeholders need to monitor any potential changes or breaches of contract. If an employee or business is unhappy with their contract, it might be worth making alterations to the contract. It’s important to follow contractual obligations while also making sure both sides of the contract are happy.

There are many times during the contract management process when lifecycle management becomes important. Vendor Performance, Customer Performance, Channel Performance and Risk management are important considerations during the management of contracts. For example, if a vendor fails to meet their contractual obligations, you may need to rework the contract or enforce some disciplinary measure.