Contracts on the sell-side: a gold mine for data-driven management

For some time now, managers have been looking for technological solutions to improve the performance of their departments.

In the commercial area, the States of Sales, a report prepared by the professional network LinkedIn, observed that 77% of executives had plans to invest in intelligence and technology in 2021.

But this investment will only yield the desired results if the sector has already developed objectives, identified the corresponding metrics, and found tools to reliably extract important data for this analysis.As one of the main revenue centers, the sell-side has the potential to form a unified and reliable database for the entire company's operations. Based on information extracted from the contracts signed by this sector, it is possible to guide the performance of several other departments of the company, in addition to improve the management of the workflows in the commercial area itself.

Therefore, in today's text you will understand why contracts signed on the sell-side are a real gold mine for data analysis, and how this can help your company to adopt a more data-driven management.

Optimize the performance of your sales team

The life cycle of contracts can say a lot about the performance of your sales team. Taking advantage of all possible insights to make this sector even more efficient, however, involves extracting and interpreting data referring to each step of your workflows.

Some of this data includes:

• Duration of the contract’s life cycle;
• Number of contracts
• Value of each contract
• Status of each document for monitoring; and others

A combined analysis of these points adds completeness to the conclusions reached. It is possible to go from a general approach, visualizing the volume and value of contracts signed in the quarter, for example, to a detailed perspective, identifying elements of the performance of a specific seller or of an isolated stage of the document's life cycle.

Learn more about the efficient management of contracts in the Sell-Side in: Contract management at the sales team: are you creating problems or solutions?

A CLM tool such as netLex extracts this information directly from the workflow or from each document produced by the company, making it available for intelligence generation.

Thus, the manager can follow the evolution of the department, visualizing clearly the points of the workflow that need to be optimized, or even perceive the need to further educate its employees.

Any position adopted, based on these observations, will be grounded on data extracted from the team's own activities, which adds value in the eyes of the board and establishes good practice for the corporation as a whole.

Integrate the areas of your company with reliable and unified data

A purchase agreement, or a contract for services, in which the company appears as a contractor, gathers essential information for the operations of several areas of the corporation. Some of these points include, for example:

• Data from the parties: essential for the Customer Success service, but also for future approaches in the Sales sector; for the finance department and even for marketing strategies;
• Contract's object it will need to be clear to the product department, but also to customer service. Likewise, the legal sector will need to be informed to check the applicable regulation;
• Price and Adjustment: it is important for the financial sector, in the production of invoices and calculation of the revenue; can also be used by the Human Resources department for performance appraisals; or by the legal area, to verify contract risks and the need for compliance measures;
• Other important clauses: may include fines, suspensive or resolutive conditions, in addition to charges and other attributions. They need to be nominated for Legal, and also for other areas, such as the financial, consumer success and product departments;

As you can see, this and other information, provided for in the contracts signed by the Sales team, are essential for the efficient performance of other departments in the company.

Therefore, it is important that they are unified in reliable databases.

Ensure reliability

The reliability of this set of information stems from the possibility of extracting them directly from the questionnaires used to automate the creation and management of documents. This is possible by using a CLM software such as netLex.

Thus, the collaborator does not have to manually fill in those endless tables, which reduces the risk of human error in transcription and eliminates the time and effort spent on this activity.

Unify your data sources

On the other hand, centralization also optimizes the interaction between departments, since it will be possible to refer to the data-base to search for all the information that is necessary. Each area can continue with its activities without depending on a response to the request for information from another sector.

A more data-driven management for your entire company

The contracts signed by the commercial sector are a real gold mine for a more data-driven management.

On the one hand, they bring various data that are necessary for the activities of several areas of the corporation. On the other hand, they also offer important inputs for the manager whose objective is to make sales operations more efficient. Thus, they make possible an increasingly efficient business performance.

The formation of these unified and reliable databases involves the adoption of good CLM software. netLex can help you to take advantage of the full potential of your contracts on the sell-side, talk to our experts!