By Dave Heflin, Ariba Senior Manager - Supplier Accounts

For most sellers, managing customer contracts can be a real headache. Negotiating terms and conditions, agreeing on exceptions, and getting approvals from legal, finance, and other stakeholders can take weeks or even months-creating long contract lifecycles that eat into revenues or even cause deals to fall through. Poor visibility into contract status erodes compliance and makes timely renewals difficult, jeopardizing business retention.

Fortunately, automated contract management solutions offer an excellent way to overcome these problems, providing in-depth features and functionality that simplify and streamline the entire contract lifecycle-from request and proposal to execution, payment, and repository management through recalls, compliance checks, and renewals.

How Can Automating Contract Management Help Me Win Deals?

Paper-based processes or tools that automate only parts of the contract management lifecycle make it difficult to rapidly complete agreements or respond to changing customer requests. And the longer the contract lifecycle drags on, the greater the opportunity for customers to get impatient, lose interest, or award their business to another seller. Automation eliminates these delays, allowing you to quickly execute contracts on any deals you negotiate-or even capture business from competitors still using manual processes

By taking advantage of automated contract management, you can:

Close Business Faster

• Automation of the entire contract management lifecycle lets you cut negotiation times up to 50 percent, sell against contracts sooner, and boost renewals 25 percent or more
• Electronic tracking and reporting notify you about needed actions and alert you when agreed-on prices, terms, or conditions aren't being fulfilled
• Automated price increase and change management tools check contract terms before allowing revisions so agreements aren't jeopardized
• Expiration and milestone alerts enable you to contact customers about renewals and fulfillment on a timely basis, boosting business retention

Strengthen Customer Relationships

• Collaborative capabilities let you streamline and scale contract development, negotiation, and approval while working cooperatively with customers and internal teams
• Faster, easier contract approval, execution, and implementation help you better fulfill contract terms and meet client expectations
• Clear visibility into contract status lets you stay on top of progress and approvals and respond quickly and accurately to customer queries
• Support of multiple language, currency, and regulatory requirements gives you the flexibility to meet diverse client needs

Cut Costs and Increase Efficiency

• Easy integration with ERP and business solutions eliminates the need to manually re-enter data and maintain consistency across disparate systems when changes are made
• Automated development and approval tools along with preapproved and standardized templates, exceptions, and legal clauses free up legal resources
• Electronic signature capabilities expedite approvals and execution and eliminate the need for paper
• Extensive recall and search capabilities into comprehensive contract repositories let you instantly access data from current and historical agreements

Ariba Contract Management