Why a CLM software should be at the heart of your innovation strategy

A tool like netLex can bring more agility, security and integration to your organization

As important as it is to carry out the company's daily activities, it is also necessary to constantly look for ways to improve these routines. Often, however, teams don't realize that they could fulfill their tasks more efficiently, or, when they do, they don't have time to look for innovative solutions.

A survey conducted by McKinsey consultancy found that, while 84% of CEOs believed that innovation was critical to the company's growth, only 9% of them were satisfied with the corporation's performance in this requirement.

This is precisely where the innovation departments come in.

Especially well positioned, these sectors look, at the same time, to the inside of the company, prospecting challenges, and to the outside, looking for incremental or disruptive solutions in the market. In the end, they work as oxygenators of the business model, helping to select and implement, in a strategic way, the innovations that best meet the company's needs.

Among all the possible interventions by the innovation department, the most efficient will certainly be the one that addresses challenges that cross the company as a whole, and the best example is contract management.

Contracts everywhere

It is not because contracts are legal instruments that their management is restricted to the work of lawyers.

Contracts are the basic unit necessary for the company's interaction with third parties. These documents constitute the corporation, connect it to all its employees, fully form its assets and promote its interactions with customers and with the market in general.

And these same documents, which establish this bridge between the company and society, employees and the market, also function as articulators of the various areas and sectors within the corporation.

A purchase of supplies, for example, will arise from a request by the Operations department, will be negotiated by the Procurement area, reviewed by Legal and authorized by Finance. And all these areas need to work efficiently to ensure the desired result with the hiring.

See more about the articulating power of contracts at: The value of connections: contracts as coordinators between areas of business

Contracts are, therefore, documents that cross the company, passing through its various internal departments, until reaching third parties, to establish mutually advantageous legal relationships with market agents.

Symptoms and effects of inefficient contract management

Documents that are so essential for the company need to be managed in the best possible way, because the consequences of insufficient administration harm work, the relationship between departments and even employee motivation.

We have separated three of the most common problems involved in contract management, their respective symptoms and effects for the company as a whole. These are just some of the points that an innovation department should be aware of.

1. Inefficiency in the preparation and review of contracts

Symptoms:

• Drawing up a contract just means taking a previous document, removing the data referring to that transaction and replacing it with the information from the new agreement, manually and without standardization;
• Reviewing a contract, on the other hand, means “scanning” the document, to ensure that all the necessary clauses are present and with the most appropriate wording, also in a manual and very repetitive way;

Effects:

• It creates a risk that some information regarding the previous document remains in the current one, impairing its legal validity. Imagine, for example, if the contract contains the name of a company, but the address of another.
• Generates risk of human error in the review, as would be the case of missing an important clause or using outdated wording;
• Increases writing and review time with less intellectual work, which can discourage the team of lawyers;

2. Lack of visibility into document status in a given area

Symptoms:

• An employee of the requesting area needs to personally inquire about the status of each document;
• Communication between areas is diffuse, done by email, chat application, or even personally;
  The requested employee must constantly stop their work to answer the requesting area's questions.

Effects:

• It generates friction between the sectors, since the employee of the requesting department has the impression that he is always “bothering” the requested area, which, in turn, also seems to him less and less efficient.
• It generates inefficiency, as the employee of the requested area is anxious to respond to communications, and has the impression that he has to decide between analyzing the document or answering questions;

3. Decentralized and non-standardized data management

Symptoms:

• Each department gathers important data in a spreadsheet (ex. Name of the parties, contract value, fulfillment period), but sometimes different areas keep several spreadsheets with the same information (ex. Contract value is important for Sales, for Legal and Financial).
• These spreadsheets are filled out manually by the employees of that sector;
• Spreadsheets contain the same data in different formats, or some information is missing;
• Those who use these databases are often unsure as to whether that information is correct, and need to refer to the original document to verify;

Effects:

• It generates useless work, as the same data is being compiled in more than one spreadsheet by more than one department;
• It also implies rework, as employees not only have to fill in the information but also feel the need to constantly check it;
• There is also the risk that some department works with outdated/wrong data, which can affect strategic decision-making.

See more about these and other problems of inefficient contract management at: Top 6 most common inefficiencies in contract management and how to address them

If you have already identified these problems, or have already noticed any of these symptoms, the solution that your Innovation team needs to prospect is in Contract Lifecycle Management - CLM software.

netLex: the must-have CLM software for your innovation strategy

Contract Lifecycle Management, or CLM, is an approach to contract management that recognizes the role these documents can play in promoting more efficient articulation for the company as a whole.

The idea is to manage contracts considering the entirety of their life cycles, going through all their stages, from negotiation to the fulfillment of obligations. This approach also values the extraction and analysis of data for intelligence generation.

Learn more about CLM in: CLM: what is it and how can technology benefit your company

Added to technology, this approach presents concrete solutions for companies looking to solve inefficiencies and achieve greater success.

netLex is a SaaS platform that combines cutting-edge technology with practical knowledge of contract management and covers all stages of CLM within a single tool. The goal is to make the administration of your company’s documents simpler and more secure, a result that is achieved through several innovative features.

1. Automation: simplify the preparation and review of your documents

With netLex, the task of writing and reviewing documents becomes much more efficient and intuitive. All contracts are created through simplified questionnaires, which allow employees to collect the necessary information with more speed and assertiveness.

On the backend, this data is compiled into automated files, built from the company's most complete and up-to-date models. Thus, the reviewer can be sure that all important clauses have been included, and can focus on the strategic aspects of that deal.

2. LexIn: gain autonomy to automate your documents with a unique plugin

netLex developed LexIn, a unique MS Word plug-in that allows users to automate their own documents. Our customers' teams are trained to operate this application, and the results have been excellent.

With it, it is possible to maintain the company's autonomy, giving creative freedom and agility to the Legal team, while ensuring all the advantages of standardization offered by document automation.

3. Workflow: have visibility and predictability over your company's procedures

netLex also allows all rules about your company's workflows to be observed by default. This considerably reduces the risk of errors in the procedure, as compliance with all steps, attributions and corporate rules can be programmed on the platform itself.

Additionally, it is also possible to configure the access authorizations for each user’s profile, in order to ensure that everyone has access only to the necessary information. This means that employees can follow specific documents through their analysis as well as visualize deadlines. Hence, there is no need for personally requesting updates, reducing friction between departments.

4. Scripts: compile data automatically

The advantage of preparing documents in an automated way is that the variables named in LexIn can be later extracted and compiled, via script, into unified and reliable spreadsheets. In addition to the contracts themselves, it is also possible to identify, in the workflows, important information for management, such as deadlines and the number of demands per person in charge.

In this way, your team no longer needs to analyze and extract information directly from documents, nor does it need to check if that data is correct every time it is needed.

Put netLex at the heart of your innovation strategy

Contracts are essential instruments for the company, crossing all its departments and establishing links with employees, suppliers and customers. It is no exaggeration to say that the success of a company in the market depends on an efficient management of these documents.

Therefore, your innovation strategy needs to be especially attentive to the problems that arise in this area. They have specific symptoms and effects, which involve friction between departments, time-consuming, inefficient, or even unnecessary work.

netLex, as a CLM platform, offers technological and innovative solutions that face these problems, enhancing the efficiency and autonomy of your company's teams.

If these are issues you've already identified, get in touch with our experts and learn more about how netLex can contribute to your innovation strategy.