Under the guise of “digital transformation”, several areas within various companies began using softwares to perform their daily activities. Those who were not paying attention were caught off-guard by the profusion of new acronyms and corresponding softwares: ERP, CRM, MDM, EAM, CLM itself and many others.
The result was the multiplication of the number of applications used by a single corporation. A research conducted in 2022 by Okta, an enterprise that provides services of identity verification and access control, concluded that, on average, a company uses 89 different softwares to conduct all its operations.
However, if the recourse to all those different systems was initially oriented by the pursuit of efficiency, we must be careful not to make all this technology counterproductive.
Why integrate your company’s softwares?
Many of the solutions presented on the technology market today are Dedicated Standalone Softwares, systems whose purpose is to provide a very specific fit with the activities conducted within specific areas of a company. That is the case, for example, of CRM platforms, which promote Customer Relationship Management, and end-up being very useful to the Sales department.
All these platforms are excellent within their proposed framework. However, a company’s organization is not so well divided. Data collected by CRM softwares is relevant not only to the vendors, but also for the accountants who need to keep track of all transactions. If the company’s finances are conducted through another Dedicated Standalone Software, this information will invariably need to be transported between the two platforms.
At this point automated integration proves its usefulness. In the example above, the CRM software can be integrated with the accounting one, so that all data regarding the deals made will be available to both the sales and Finance departments.
Integration provides three significant advantages to enterprises:
1. Ensures the reliability and standardization of information
Integrations allow data collection to take place at just one point in the chain, from which the information is distributed to all other activities that need it. This prevents the user from having to fill in the same entry more than once, reducing the possibility of errors or the use of different standards and formats;
2. Reduces costs
The alternative to software integration would be a single application that covers all the functionalities your company needs. In practice, this alternative would hardly be found on the market and would require the effort of a large team of developers focused on building it from scratch.
The costs of mobilization to produce such a platform would undoubtedly be much higher than those of hiring specific solutions.
3. Preserve your team's familiarity
If your team already uses some software on a daily basis, integration is better than replacement. This preserves the familiarity that your team already has with that platform, avoiding the difficulties of a new adaptation stage.
Therefore, it is very important to ensure that the systems used by your company are properly integrated. Among all these applications, there is one that has enormous potential to achieve the advantages indicated above: CLM software.
CLM Software: The Backbone of Integrations
Contract Lifecycle Management, or CLM, is the set of management practices that covers the entire lifecycle of contracts, from drafting, through negotiation, review and signature, to compliance and data extraction.
A Good CLM software like netLex is not a “Dedicated Standalone Software”. This is because its application is not restricted to a specific sector or activity. In fact, its use is much broader, precisely because a contract passes through the most varied areas of the company throughout its formation and execution.
The negotiation of this document begins in the Sales department, but soon results in the sending of a draft to the Legal and Compliance Teams. It also needs to go through Finance and maybe even higher stances within the company. To be fulfilled, it will depend on the engagement of ´Production and also on the follow-up by the Customer Success professionals.
Understand more about the role of contracts in the articulation between the different sectors of the company in: The value of connections: contracts as coordinators between areas of business
As the contracts cross the company almost entirely, they have data that is important for several sectors. If the company uses other software for a specific activity, as is CRM or the accounting system in the example above, an integration would be very productive.
Following the CRM case, this system will contain important data about the proposals made and the parties involved that will be able to subsidize the elaboration of contracts in the CLM software. The same occurs with a financial management platform, which can extract information from the contractual management’s database, especially the ones regarding values and readjustment rates, for example.
Thus, an integration between these systems and the CLM software guarantees the reliability of the information to be included in the documents, while generating synergy in the activities of the most varied sectors of the operation. With this scope, CLM platforms have the potential to become the backbone of the company's technology strategy.
Discover netLex connect
In addition to recognizing the importance of integrations, it is also necessary to understand that the most varied businesses will use different systems to conduct their operations. So, a CLM platform cannot rely only on native integrations, as they may not address the reality of all customers.
It was with this in mind that netLex developed Connect, a component that enables customized integrations with other software in a flexible, agile and secure way. The proposal is part of the IPaaS - Integration Platform as a Service logic, which means, in general terms, offering as a service a set of automated tools to integrate different platforms.
In order to establish this bridge between the two systems, the only requirement is that the connecting platform has an open programming interface (also called API), through REST or SOAP protocols.
The interaction between applications is completely automated, and combines the practicality of the Low-Code approach for the end user with the power of RPA - Robotic Process Automation technology on the back-end.
Thus, it is possible to share data between systems, bringing to your company all the advantages of software integration.
As an example, there are netLex customers who have already integrated our platform with ERPs such as SAP, CRMs such as Hubspot, productivity software such as Slack, electronic signature platforms, in-house softwares and many others.
To learn more about this highly customized tool, which relies on automation to put the full power of integrations at the service of your company, contact our team of experts!
