A Day in the Life of a Contract Administrator

Contracts are an essential aspect of a successful business. They can prove to be a great benefit for companies if they are managed efficiently throughout the contract lifecycle. Contract administrators play a critical role in an organization as they direct and oversee contracts throughout their lifecycle.

On a Day-to-Day, a Contract Administrator is responsible for:

1. Prepare contracts & administer contract proposals
2. Negotiate contracts
3. Handle the contract execution process
4. Oversee the full life cycle of contracts
5. Track contracts from beginning to end
6. Ensure compliance with the company’s terms & conditions
7. Drafting boilerplate clauses for use in current and future contracts
8. Monitoring the project’s budget, expenses, compliance status, and obligations
9. Analyzing the potential risks posed by a contract
10. Coordinating with the procurement and legal teams
11. Reporting on the current status of contracts to managers and executives
12. Review contracts to ensure completeness

Despite contracts being the lifeblood of business, many companies overlook the basic need for effective contract management. Day to day life of a contract administrator is beset with many difficulties if his organization relies on manual contract management processes and inefficient practices.

In this article, we`ll explore the three key roles of a contract administrator that he administers on a day to day basis along with its inherent challenges. We will also discuss solutions dedicated to improving efficiency so that contract management is a smooth, streamlined process.

Key roles of a contract administrator executed day to day

To improve efficiency and save time, a contract administrator needs to categorize contracts by their value and risk. Successful contract management requires knowing which contracts is high value and which are of low value. This identification enables a contract administrator to know how a contract should be managed and the effort required. On a daily basis, he focuses on routine contracts that are low value and low risk, usually transactional with a small amount of functions, requiring minimal contract management.

Click here to read 5 sure ways to convince your boss to invest in a Contract Management System

Location of contracts

One of the most inefficient things that can happen during a day of a contract administrator is tracking down dozens of contracts to compile a report on one specific contract that his organization wants.

For example, if the contract administrator is pasked by the CFO of his company to prepare a simple report on the liability terms of a contract, the former needs to first locate it in the filing cabinet or the drive. If it is not there, he has to check the spreadsheets. Once he locates the contract, he has to search out the required information and enter all that data manually into a report and then deliver the report through paper documents.

Contract administrators have a tough time daily to locate contracts when contracts are stored in separate systems and different locations. This simple task of locating them becomes complicated and time-consuming. It becomes all the more challenging when contracts are stored in paper format resulting in wastage of time, money, and resources.

The best method to improve efficiency in contract management is to implement an automated contract lifecycle management (CLM) system. Implementing contract management software solution like DocuCollab centralizes contract documents in a single cloud-based repository giving clear visibility and quick, easy access to the most current and relevant contract information.

Tracking and monitoring contract deadlines, obligations and compliance

Contracts need to be tracked carefully across the entire enterprise for their full lifecycle in order commitments, compliance requirements, and potential discounts do not get overlooked. Missing them causes revenue loss to the company, negatively affects its compliance record and relationships.

A contract administrator`s key role is to track whether parties fulfill their contractual commitments. Non-compliance on obligations not only hurts performance, but also exposes businesses to substantial risks – including reputational damage, financial loss, and soured partner relationships.

He sends reminders and alerts to the team of deadlines, milestones, payment due dates, payment amounts, upcoming renewal dates and so forth. For this, he has to manually track documents to enforce deadlines and address bottlenecks.

Manual contract tracking can be costly to organizations due to the amount of time that can be wasted on inefficient processes or dealing with bottlenecks such as retrieving contracts from storage.

With automated contract tracking, contract administrators can set reminders for deadlines and configure summaries for each individual contract that points out the more salient terms and conditions to be addressed, with associated dates and reminders. CLM platforms like DocuCollab enable companies to execute the vision to drive compliance at enterprise scale, thereby building and protecting brand trust; improving business outcomes; and, most importantly, ensuring that the business is always compliant.

Click here to read How Contract Automation is changing the Business World?

Contract Drafting

On a daily basis, a contract administrator interfaces with a wide range of teams and departments, including sales, finance, management, legal, and IT. He receives requests for contract drafting from various teams. Upon requests, he prepares a draft contract based on standard templates for different types of contract. The amount of time needed to draft standard contracts exponentially increases when contracts are managed manually and when formats and terms aren’t standardized.

This challenge can be overcome by automating with Contract lifecycle management (CLM) software like DocuCollab that offers multiple benefits to the contract-initiation team. Standardized templates can be easily created, stored on the cloud and distributed among team members. These templates automatically update with any edits, keeping language up-to-date with industry standards.

How could the day be using DocuCollab Contract Management Software?

Contract management is the lifeblood of any organization. However, with that come daily challenges. But by staying organized and using automated tools like DocuCollab, it becomes possible for a contract administrator to overcome some of the greatest difficulties that he faces on a day to day basis.

DocuCollab Contract management software helps to automate and streamline the complete contract management lifecycle for full contract data utility and end-to-end process and revenue optimization.

DocuCollab Contract Management platform is the leading contract management solution in the cloud. DocuCollab`s easy-to-use, intelligent, enterprise-wide contract management software transforms the foundation of commerce by turning contracts into valuable corporate assets.

Click here to discover how you can automate every step of your contract management lifecycle through DocuCollab’s seamless contract lifecycle management tools.