Contract initiation: why you should enable teams to self-serve in 2024

Are delays in the contract process slowing your growth? Discover a faster and more efficient way to initiate contracts.

What is contract initiation?

Contract initiation is the first stage of the contract lifecycle and it happens when an individual identifies the need to for a new contract to be created. This could be be close a deal, or make a new hire, for example. 

The need is then communicated to the legal team through a contract request. Or, if the business teams self-serve on contracts, initiating a contract involves kicking off this process. 

The typical contract initiation process

The process used to initiate a contract varies between businesses. However, it typically looks a bit like this:

1. A transaction or hire is nearing completion so a member of the business team decides to get a contract created to finalize the terms. 

2. The individual responsible for the sale, purchase, or hire gets in touch with the legal team to request a contract, either via email or by submitting a contract request form. 

3. The request gets added to the legal team’s backlog. When it gets picked up depends on their availability. In some cases, the legal team will direct the individual to an existing contract template and ask them to work from that instead. 

4. The contract is eventually created and shared with the contract owner. If they created a contract using the template provided, legal will usually need to review the contract before it goes out to the counterparty. 

This process isn't perfect, though.

It means many business teams are reliant on the legal function to get deals and hires over the line, even if they only need a routine contract. This can result in costly (and unnecessary) delays in the contract process, particularly since 76 per cent of in-house lawyers report feeling buried in low-value work.

Fortunately, there's a better, more efficient way to initiate contracts. Let's explore that now.

A better way to initiate contracts

With the right tools and safeguards in place, business teams can create, edit and manage contracts without legal involvement.

This is achieved through automated contract templates and simple Q&A forms that allow commercial teams to populate contracts in seconds.

‍Contract management solutions like Juro enable legal teams to lock contract fields and control which terms can be edited. Commercial teams can then generate watertight contracts on demand using terms pre-approved by legal.

Before Juro, we needed to review 100 per cent of customer contracts. Now that we can lock contract fields with Juro, that number has dropped to 12 per cent - Victoria Sörving, Chief Legal Officer, Funnel

Juro users can also set rules and conditions for contract templates, enabling business teams to quickly and safely customize complex contracts. These rules can automatically add specific clauses for contracts over a certain value or trigger approval for contracts that deviate from standard terms.

Commercial teams can even generate contracts without leaving their existing systems. This is because Juro integrates seamlessly with platforms like HubSpot and Salesforce, allowing sales reps to generate contracts directly from their CRM. This process pulls in relevant opportunity data into smart fields, populating contracts in a matter of seconds.

It takes the sales team four clicks to generate and approve a contract in Juro - Callum Hamlett, Senior Revenue Operations Analyst, Paddle

Want to agree contracts 10x faster in 2024?

By empowering commercial teams to self-serve on contract creation, businesses can reduce the burden on legal teams and unlock faster, more efficient contract workflows. In fact, businesses that use Juro to initiate contracts turn them around up to 90 per cent faster, freeing up time for higher value work.

Juro’s definitely given us a return on investment; it enables sales to sell, and my team to focus on important work, instead of low-level contract admin - Harj Gill, Group General Counsel, LiiV

If you want to join the companies already agreeing contracts faster with Juro, fill in the form below to find out more. To hear more about how businesses are enabling teams to self-serve on contracts, check out our case studies.