Businesses today face myriad challenges in managing their contracts efficiently. The huge volume of contracts that firms need to handle makes it a cumbersome, laborious process. By leveraging technology, experts believe firms will be able to bring about efficiency in their contract management processes.

Every commercial contract contains critical data on a firm`s legal obligations, rights, remedies and rules in an unstructured form. With the help of AI and digitizing, these documents can be structured into a commercial knowledge base providing collective intelligence that can be used efficiently to reduce business risks and increase economic value for the organization.

Businesses benefit greatly through the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution which helps drive automation, streamlined workflows, efficient timelines, enhanced productivity and profitability.

In this article, we will see the top three substantial benefits that AI can bring about to organizations in the area of contract management.

  1. Automated Compliance

    With regulations growing in volume and complexity and being prone to continuous change, maintaining regulatory compliance has become a growing burden for organizations today. A failure to comply may lead businesses to incur heavy fines and penalties, disrepute and the risk of potential litigation.

    AI technology can be used to assist business leaders to understand compliance requirements easily, get actionable insights and take effective action. They can even help businesses in maintaining compliance through the use of deep learning and natural language processing to read compliance rules and notify stakeholders of any regulatory changes.

    Use of AI eliminates the need for manual observation from compliance workflows, and also leaves no chance for human errors. Thus, it helps save costs, achieves optimal visibility into all risky compliance aspects of the organization, enhances efficiency, and mitigates risks.

    Automated solutions not only replace manual work but also monitor milestones like payments, renewals, delivery schedules and license renewals which literally translate into cost benefits. Thus it helps to avoid penalties due to incorrect or delayed payments and deadline breaches, as well as avoidance of penalties for regulatory non-compliance.

    An AI – Powered Contract Management solution such as DocuCollab automates compliance and risk management tasks. It consolidates data flows and processes, provides all data visibility and helps track compliance activity such as regulations, policies, standards, contracts, and clauses, etc. all in one control center.

    DocuCollab`s AI-based Contract Management Solution processes large volumes of data with speed and accuracy that helps enterprises to derive great benefits from improved productivity, efficiency and aim for continuous improvement.

    Click here to read 7 Contract Management Functions You Can Automate Today And Secure Peace Of Mind!

  2. Reduced Cycle Times

    According to the Forrester Research Report, CLM Solutions shrink the timeframe required by legal teams to draft and review contracts by up to 80%. By capitalizing on the power of AI-based CLM Solutions, organizations can deliver consistent execution of best practices across the contract lifecycle. Apart from quickly reducing contract cycle time, it enhances efficiency in drafting agreements, eliminating errors in the contract review process and improves negotiating outcomes.

    Gartner predicts that, in the future, half a billion users will save two hours a day as a result of AI-powered tools.

    The first notable experience of using automated AI-enhanced CLM software is reduced cycle time and increased performance efficiency. Use of such tools helps organizations to benefit from released time, operation capacity and labor to focus them on other strategic areas.

    It enables dynamic creation of contracts from templates and clauses, compares previous versions, and underscores changes with audit trails. It thereby enhances efficiency, eliminating errors in the contract review process and improving negotiating outcomes, bringing all stakeholders in one single platform. By empowering business users to create contracts in an effortless manner, organizations can achieve faster time to bring revenue, improve cycle times and significantly reduce legal operating expenses.

    DocuCollab`s AI-enabled Contract Lifecycle Management Solution eliminates manual and disjointed contract processes, helping legal teams drive contract compliance while reducing cycle times, avoiding bottlenecks, improving negotiation outcomes & eliminating errors & risk.

  3. Cost Savings

    Due to opaque and inaccessible contract obligations, many organizations tend to incur heavy losses. According to ICACCM reports, since the last six years, the cost of a standard low-risk procurement contract from draft to signature has increased to 38%. When staffs are based across multiple locations and in different departments, teams can miss crucial opportunities to negotiate on consistent pricing and economies of scale, which could add up to huge sums of money.

    With AI-powered CLM Solution, it can help businesses to reduce spend and improve efficiencies in their procurement strategy. In the near future, it is predicted that AI will continue playing a key role in cutting costs and reducing over-payment in procurement areas.

    AI-enabled CLM solution such as DocuCollab helps to cut down administrative, dispute and operational costs by setting up timely alerts and notifications. In case of non-fulfillment of contractual obligations, it enforces penalty clauses. It also drives business growth. By tracking data from past experiences like up-sell or cross-sell opportunities, AI-based CLM tools provide intelligent insight that helps users make more informed decisions in the future. Studies say this increases new revenue opportunities by 20%.

    Click here to read 5 Key Ways How AI Brings Value to Contract Lifecycle Management

  4. Final Thoughts

    Companies that are open to digital transformation are better positioned to provide higher value support to their business clients. It must be agreed that AI-driven contract management is definitely worth the business investment. By eliminating human interaction in contract management processes, they allow businesses to focus on things like making new clients, fostering good business relationships, coming up with innovative solutions for clients and all other areas that are required not to just maintain but also grow a business. Aberdeen Research says organizations by deploying an AI-based CLM Solution see an average of 82 percent drop in their contract approval time, and 90% drop in optimal contract renewal rates.

    If you have decided to contract smarter, then we at DocuCollab can empower your team to assemble, send, sign and approve all kinds of contracts ensuring improved productivity, contract quality and process agility in your business contract management.

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