Contract Management Software:

There are various types of contracts including, written, oral, express and implied. Contracts vary in complexity depending on the nature of the relationship but for a contract to be legally binding, it must consist of an offer, acceptance, consideration and consequences in the event of a breach of the contract.

Contracts are most commonly used in business settings and they serve the purpose of clearly defining the nature, extent and obligations of two or more parties in a business relationship. In a large organization that does business with many entities, managing the numerous contracts manually can be a headache and this is where contract management software comes in handy. It helps streamline the contract lifecycle from request, authoring, negotiation, approval, execution, management of ongoing obligations to amendment and renewal of contracts. The software needs to increase visibility of agreements within the organization in order to make procurement efficient.

Contract management software is not limited to large organizations smaller organizations with fewer users can also benefit from the various advantages this software offers such as reduced contract administration costs, reduced exposure and better compliance.

Contract management software can either be open source or customized to respond to a business’ specific needs. If one chooses to go for open source software then it’s important to look for one that is adaptable to multiple systems. A good contract management software should:

• Facilitate proactive management of agreements instead of reactive. To do this the system needs to have the ability to provide advance warning for pending events.
• Be accessible to all staff with relevant levels of access such as read only or full access. A repository of information is no good if the information cannot be shared.
• Provide automation of agreements such that everyday tasks have a standardized way of doing them which also provides a good accountability system and audit trail.
• Provide avenues of probing contract management processes such as tendering and quoting
• Facilitate the making of any payments stipulated in the agreement by tracking all payments made during the contracts life times and if possible the methods of payment.

........................................................