by admin | Sep 8, 2022 | News
Contract Process Automation: CLM and Beyond Sep 05, 2022 | 5 min read A common misconception regarding contract processes is that they are all about contract lifecycle management(CLM). Many organizations consider CLM only about drafting legal contracts, getting legal reviews, counterparty reviews, and approval/signature. Another misconception is that all the processes have to be driven by either legal or contract teams. Apart from this, there are also some core issues related to contract management. Actual contract work in most organizations is completed through informal means like sending emails, sorting and color coding through excel sheets, and collaboration through calls and meetings. With these manual and outdated practices, there is no real tracking of the changes made in the contracts or keeping the history of the contract process. This also makes it hard for people to clearly understand their roles in the contract process. “An average Fortune 2000 company has 20,000 to 40,000 contracts under management at a given time.” – World Commerce and Contracting Contacts are like mini-projects that need constant management. It involves constant reviews, analysis, and updates that enable flawless work. A clear understanding of contract processes and the best ways to manage them is necessary to alleviate the issues and misconceptions associated with them. Making CLM work efficiently involves some important supporting processes. In the upcoming sections, we will learn in detail about the processes beyond CLM that make contract management efficient and effective. Counterparty Onboarding Process Before starting a contract, the counterparty onboarding process takes place. This is primarily done when the stakeholders are getting into a commercial relationship. However, before onboarding, the company needs...
by admin | Sep 5, 2022 | News
Contract Ops 101: Understanding Roles, Duties, Headaches, and Pro Tips Sep 05, 2022 | 5 min read Let’s start by introducing Contract Ops: A contract operations person supports and maintains all the pre and post-contract signing operations. But one must not think of contract ops only as a “support role” as it’s a critical and strategic function for smoother contract management. Depending on the size and capabilities, most organizations prefer dedicating an entire team to run contract operations. The rapidly evolving field of contract ops covers a variety of roles and functionalities, which are meant to reduce bottlenecks in the contract management process. This will increase productivity, and revenue, and decrease capital losses related to non-compliance. With the support from Contract ops managers, the decision makers like project managers or directors can focus on devising effective growth strategies. The contract operations people make the decision-making as effective as possible by analyzing contract data, generating progress reports, and sharing strategies to optimize the contract management process. Contract ops roles are progressing in most organizations. However, some small or medium size organizations and often startups – struggle with employing effective contract operations management. The main obstacles they face include a lack of clarity in responsibilities and team goals, the overlap of work with other teams, and sometimes dealing with the wrong people in the wrong places. In the upcoming sections, we will be getting deep into understanding the role contract ops plays in contract management. This will be followed by pro tips for combating the obstacles in contract operations. “Companies are making investments in improving the management of contracts after signature.”...
by admin | Sep 5, 2022 | News
Role-based experience for Contract Stakeholders Sep 05, 2022 | 5 min read In a fast-paced and competitive business landscape, organizations strive to reduce costs while improving business performance. One of the important business processes, contract management, proves to be a very time-consuming element of business, which makes the lookout for a contract management tool an obvious consideration. Contrary to what you may think, contracts are not only handled by the Legal or the Contracts teams but also the end-users like the IT administrators, executives, and more. Most end-users have a tough time getting to grips with contract terminology and the more technical aspects like contract reviewals, analysis, request management, etc. This can be tackled with a more open collaboration with business users and redesigning the contracts into simple language and user-friendly visual pieces of data. “Even legal departments of medium-sized companies often manage tens of thousands of contracts. Digital Contract Lifecycle Management is an essential function of a modern legal department.” – Deloitte 1. The Administrative Experience – For day-to-day contract operations The Contract Administrator experience enables strong attention to detail along with the ability to discover potential risks for your company. It also analyzes contract data for reducing costs and increasing profits, while ensuring compliance with the law. Usually, these contracts include the sale or purchase of products, goods, supplies, services, or materials. Enables the management of a large number of renewals, issues, co-ordinating among stakeholders and decision-makers As many contract teams fall short of resources, CLM systems should cater to quick, high-performance contract tasks like executing hundreds of contracts/per day 2. The Business Owner/Stakeholder Experience – The...
by admin | Jul 27, 2022 | News
Contracts & Artificial Intelligence: Hit or Miss? Sep 05, 2022 | 5 min read Businesses strive to increase their adoption of the technology trends to improve their efficiency and profit, Legal departments are no different. AI helps Legal and Contract professionals to quickly perform routine tasks like data extraction, contract review, or analytics reporting. According to The Future Ready Lawyer Report 2021 by Wolters Kluwer, 70% of legal professionals say Artificial Intelligence will have an impact on their department, up from 58% in 2020. That said, AI still does not replace the vital role of legal or contract teams. Why so? We discuss that in this blog. “Although AI is set to explore some new avenues and significantly impact how a robot performs human functions, the advanced protocols of programming a robot close to human-level perfection is still an inconceivable wish.” – BusinessToday India 1. The emotional intellect that contracts need Contracts are the foundation of business relationships – the relations a business has with its stakeholders like its suppliers, partners, and customers. Contract relationships are personal communications between two businesses that require emotions, wit, expressing gratitude, etc. to get the maximum output from the contract terms. Critical contract management decisions involve understanding the elements of a contract’s lifecycle to extract meaningful data insights, for which human intellect is essential Businesses can not use AI for contract negotiations, renewal decisions, or solving contract issue AI cannot itself establish or maintain counterparty relationships – which are beyond just the business transactions 2. AI needs a lot of data & consistency With hundreds of contracts to manage, sorting through all of...
by admin | Jul 12, 2022 | News
Game On! – Optimus BT is sponsoring the 2nd Johns Creek Squash Open 2022 from July 13th-17th! Johns Creek, Georgia – July 13, 2022: Optimus BT along with LifeTime Athletics are sponsoring a PSA Challenger Tour Squash tournament in Johns Creek that will bring Athletes from all around the world and demonstrate the sport of squash to the local community. Optimus is proud to sponsor the tournament to encourage talented youth from all over the globe to compete and develop their skills. We believe that the core values that drive sports have a lot in common with business including drive, motivation, vision and perseverance. There are 24 squash professionals competing from 12 countries in the event. Here are some of the details: The pro event will be held from July 13th to July 17th An Amateur Tournament will be held along with the Pro tournament of local talent on July 16th & 17th There will be a squash camp conducted by PSA pros during the event The PSA final match is scheduled on Sunday, July 17th at 3:00 PM Let’s take a step towards bringing culture, people, and passion together. Looking forward to seeing you all at this fantastic event! About Optimus BT Optimus BT is a software company based in the beautiful northern suburbs of Johns Creek in Atlanta, United States. It has been helping hundreds of customers implement enterprise-wide software platforms while providing its expertise on Microsoft technologies and legal and contract management business...
by admin | May 4, 2021 | News
Enterprise Contract Management: Top Strategic Reasons to Invest For businesses that need to sign and manage hundreds of contracts, there’s a higher chance for issues like lack of contract visibility, missing contract deadlines, poor compliance, etc. to creep in. Enterprise Contract Management helps to bring all of your company’s commitments into a single system for streamlined management of all the contract processes. Enterprise Contract Management software in place helps Legal and Contract teams to organize a variety of contracts, clauses, and templates for efficient standardization and quick retrieval. It is a perfect solution for you if are: Handling large volumes of contracts Operating multiple divisions or across multiple locations Working in a heavily regulated industry A recent member survey by the World Commerce and Contracting says that: 81% professionals have plans to implement contract automation 84% experience pressure for contract simplification 48% experience challenges tied to price changes and delivery terms Download Infographic Now let’s take a look at the top strategic reasons why you must invest in enterprise Contract Management: A Centralized Hub for Your Contract Portfolio An Enterprise CLM provides your team with a simple and easy way to search, find, track, manage and evaluate contracts in a centralized repository with metadata, tracking, and log information. It enables a single place to organize and store all contract-related information making it efficient to retrieve the information on-demand to keep contracts moving forward. It enables a 360-degree view of all your contractual relationships in a single-page view with updates like key terms, clauses, and obligations. It also helps you keep track of metadata, alerts, reminders, activities, and workflows from...
