Introduction to Document Assembly and Contract Management A lawyer s guide to contract lifecycle management and how to achieve the biggest ROI.
Document Assembly, Contract Management and data capture Successful contract lifecycle management (CLM) begins with high quality contract creation, often known as document assembly. Creating contracts and documents from approved templates ensures quality and consistency, and improves compliance. You reduce your level of contract risk right from the start of the contracts process by creating low risk contracts. An integrated document assembly solution also enables you to capture high quality data as you create your documents, which will be vital to the ultimate success of your implementation. Easy access to the important data in your contracts is the benefit that will bring you the biggest return on your investment in a contract management solution. If you create your documents only using Word, data capture becomes a post-execution task that nobody is motivated to do, because re-keying all of the important data points from the final contract is time consuming. So, it often is not done, and when it is, is done by lesser-skilled workers without much consistency or accuracy. There are several types of document assembly software. Some people consider Word templates to be a rudimentary form of document assembly. There are desktop products, Word plug-ins and web-based products. Some take a form-fill approach and others an interview-driven wizard approach. When choosing a document assembly solution, you should consider the following: How many people will create documents? Do they need shared access? Do they need access to the data that s within the documents or contracts? Will the document assembly system be integrat- ed with other corporate systems, such as CRM, ERP, database, intranet, contract management system? If so, you ll need to consider which platforms can work together. Who will be using the software? Is it the legal de- partment or will sales, HR, or procurement need access? How much end user training is required? What are the infrastructure/it requirements? Are your documents simple or complex? Understanding Complexity Matching your document assembly solution to your document needs is a very important part of the equation. People often underestimate the complexity of their documents. If your documents truly are simple, any low end document assembly system can probably meet your needs. But, as you move into negotiated documents such as B2B contracts and financial agreements with multiple variables and conditional logic, many systems will break down. It is important to have a document assembly expert help you review your document/contract portfolio to assess the complexity of your documents. Who Is The End User? Different types of end users will have different needs, levels of knowledge, and approval authority. When you have multiple departments or types of users accessing the system, an interview-driven solution is the best
approach. You empower front-office or sales staff to create their own contracts, which brings true process improvement, rather than just a newer, faster way to accomplish the same task. Costs and risks are lowered, time to contract is improved, and data is available for analysis and reporting. Integration Another consideration is your IT environment. Do you need your document assembly system to integrate with other systems? This is a key consideration in selecting your software package. Often, people see document assembly as a standalone function and don t take technical requirements into account. Then once the system is fully implemented, they realize they need a document repository or to pull data from a CRM system or push data into a billing system. If you choose document assembly software that is platform independent and has open APIs, this problem is solved. If your integration requirements change at any time in the future, you simply integrate the solution you have. If however, you choose a platform specific product, you may lose your entire investment in software costs and training, and have to start over with a new solution. APPROVAL WORKFLOWS When you move to an automated approach to document assembly or contract creation, you will need to consider how you will handle your approval process. For starters, the interview driven approach will shorten and streamline your review cycle. This is due to the fact that documents are created from approved templates which cannot be accessed by end users. So if they select the approved default answers, their document may already be pre-approved. The Contract Lifecycle Process
For contracts that you are creating (i.e. contracts on your paper), the process begins with document assembly. But what about your existing portfolio of legacy contracts (i.e. other people s paper)? Contract management - Getting Everything In OnE place The first step in implementing a contract management system is getting all of your contracts in one place. Forrester Research¹ has a CLM maturity model which they refer to as the Four Stages of Value, that states, step one is to get all of your contracts in an electronic repository. The best way to understand your risks, rights and obligations is to have a view into your portfolio, which is impossible if you re not sure how many contracts you have or where they are. If your contracts are filed as paper documents, you must get them into an electronic format. There are a number of ways to accomplish this. You can OCR them and store them as PDFs. But this won t give you much visibility into their contents. There are some contract management systems that claim to magically read the documents and store them and their data, but they are subject to OCR errors and still require someone to double check that all of the important data has been captured. The most efficient way to get access to the data in your legacy contracts is to complete a short interview to capture the metadata and any other important data points and store that information in your contract management system. This will provide consistent access to all of the data that you need to make informed decisions. Triggers and Milestones To make informed decisions about your rights and obligations, you need be alerted to the triggers and milestones within your contracts. Having a user friendly dashboard that is accessible to all stakeholders is key. By logging into your dashboard, you can see your open tasks, have a graphic representation of your contracts coming up for renewal, or a list of contracts due for price increases. You can also collaborate with other people/ departments that have responsibility for that deal. REPORTING AND ANALYTICS, OR THE IMPORTANCE OF DATA As stated earlier, easy access to the important data stored in your contracts is where you ll realize the biggest return on your investment in a document assembly/contract management solution. A major reason to implement a contract management system is to understand your risks, manage compliance with company and government regulations, manage costs and protect your rights. To accomplish any of these goals you need access to the data. By creating your contracts with an interview-driven document assembly product, you have already captured every piece of data as you created your document. Now that you have stored that data in a contract management system, it is easy to report on and perform the necessary analysis to uncover risk. Most contract management systems will offer both out-of-the-box reports as well as ad hoc reporting capabilities. ¹ Forrester Research Inc. www.forrester.com
Professional Services Implementing a contract management system can be a daunting task and it helps to have a partner who can manage the process. You should look for a partner that has an implementation methodology as well as an experienced team. Exactly who makes up the right team may vary according to implementation, but should include a lawyer or contracts expert, a project manager, a trainer/author and a technical lead. It s always a plus if the team understands your business and has experience with similar implementations. CONCLUSION Implementing a complete contract lifecycle management system (Document Assembly + Contract Management) can bring great value to your business. In order to realize that value it is important to choose the solution that best fits your needs. You can help future proof your choice by selecting a platform-independent, scalable solution. This way if your needs or IT requirements change, you already own a product that can work in your new environment. Whether you choose a complete, all in one product or have a separate solution for document assembly and contract management, you want to make sure you are capturing data as part of the contract creation process. Data capture and the centralized storage of all of your contracts are the two most important steps to a successful implementation. If you would like help understanding if a contract management system is right for you, please contact us. We can provide a complimentary consultation, a document analysis or an assessment of your current contracts process. About Exari Exari is a global leader in document assembly and contract management solutions for large enterprises, law firms and government agencies. The system -- used worldwide by investment banking, legal, insurance, sales and government professionals --reduces costs, cycle time and risk, and improves visibility into contract data. Exari Document Assembly empowers business people with self-service documents and automates document intensive processes. Exari Contract Management enables contract creation, negotiation, management and analysis in one flexible system. A major advantage of the Exari solution is the automatic capture of and easy access to critical data. Clients are supported from Exari offices in Boston, London, Munich and Melbourne.
Learn more and connect with Exari Visit us online: http://www.exari.com. Try Exari document generation software by creating an NDA, services agreement or customer feedback letter using our live demo: http://www.exari.com/demo-trial.html. We invite you to sign up for our monthly newsletter: http://www.exari.com/newsletter.html. The Exari blog explores business and technical aspects of contracts: http://blog.exari.com/. Connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. EXaRi OFFiceS BOSTON 745 Boylston Street 6th Floor Boston, MA 02116 USA P: +1 (617) 938 3777 F: +1 (617) 314 7770 LONDON Walsingham House 35 Seething Lane London EC3N 4AH UK P: +44 (0)845 2270131 F: +44 (0)845 2270131 MELBOURNE 10-16 Queen Street Melbourne 3000 Australia P: +61 3 9621 2775 F: +61 3 9621 2776 MUNICH... Widenmayerstr. 38 80538 München Germany P: +49 89 2370 8004 F: +49 89 2370 8005