Contract management software can give your business a faster and more efficient contracting process.
This post covers everything you need to know, from what contract management software is to the features and providers to look out for.
What is contract management software?
Contract management software is a tool designed to automate and streamline the contract management process for businesses.
Contract management tools make it easier for legal and business teams to create, negotiate, sign, renew and report on business contracts by automating the manual work traditionally involved in a contract workflow.
Rather than switching between multiple different tools to manage contracts, contract management software enables teams to manage contracts from end to end - all in one platform. This is because all of the features they need are centralized in one workspace.
Who uses contract management software?
Contract management software is used by businesses that need to scale their contract workflow without increasing headcount.
This means that fast-growing businesses with increasing contract volumes gain the most value from implementing contract management software.
Contract management software can also be used by multiple different teams within a business, including legal, sales, finance, operations, and HR teams.
Legal teams
Legal typically 'own' the contract process at a company. In-house legal teams use contract management software to manage their contract templates and set up rules that enable commercial teams to self-serve on contract creation.
“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, CLO, Funnel
Check out this case study with Funnel to find out how Funnel’s legal team use Juro’s contract management software to reduce manual contract admin.
Sales teams
Sales hate anything that gets in the way of closing deals, so they'll often use a contract management solution to self-serve on contracts rather than waiting for legal to create them.
Most contract management software also integrates with major CRM systems. This makes it simple for sales teams to manage contracts in Salesforce, along with other tools they know and love.
"Sales has gone from using three tools, a shared drive, emails, PDFs, and involving the legal team, to having one tool for everything” - Callum Hamlett, Senior Revenue Ops Analyst, Paddle
Check out our case study with Paddle to find out how Juro’s contract management software enables Paddle’s sales team to generate and approve contracts in just four clicks.
HR teams
HR teams in fast-growing companies typically produce and manage large volumes of contracts. Contract management software enables HR teams to automate HR contracts at scale, making it quicker and easier to hire and onboard new joiners.
“Juro has removed the need for us to hire people to focus on admin work, and that’s the biggest win” - Luke Hextall, Head of People Ops, GoPuff
Check out our case study with GoPuff to find out how Juro’s contract management software enables GoPuff to automate 80 per cent of onboarding admin.
Finance and ops teams
Finance and ops teams need visibility into contracts. They need to reconcile contracts and billing, as well as generate accurate revenue expectations for their business. Contract management software like Juro enables teams to query, report on, and analyze contracts right through the lifecycle.
“Juro’s analytics features are great - it takes seconds to access and helps us improve our process and remove any bottlenecks” - David Swenton, Director of Business Ops, Cleo
Check out our case study with Cleo to find out how their operations team used Juro’s contract management software to gain visibility into contracts and their data.
Contract management software features to look for
1. Template editor
A rich-text contract editor is one of the most important features of contract management software. It enables legal teams to pre-define contract templates that business users can use to self-serve on contracts.
Businesses without contract management software will usually rely on Microsoft Word to draft contracts. But there’s no way for legal to control which terms make it into the contracts that commercial teams send out for signing. Instead, contracts quickly become a patchwork of different, often outdated, templates.
Juro users don’t have this problem. Juro’s contract management software enables legal to control which terms appear in contracts using conditional logic. This enables commercial teams to self-serve confidently on contracts with minimal oversight from legal.
To see Juro's rich-text contract editor in action, book an interactive demo with our team.
2. Approval workflows
Approval workflows are another useful feature in contract management tools. They enable teams to get contracts reviewed and approved faster without bypassing senior stakeholders.
Without the right tools in place, approvals can become a bottleneck for businesses. Approval requests sit in a backlog of other tasks. Before you know it, these delays in the sales cycle have resulted in lost revenue. Contracts may even sneak past the approval stage altogether.
Contract management software removes that risk. Juro’s customizable approval workflows mean that you can be selective about which contracts require approval. You can also send approval reminders to move things along.
To find out more about Juro's approval workflows, book an interactive demo with a Juro specialist.
3. Browser-based redlining
Browser-based redlining is one of the most sought-after contract management software features since it enables teams to negotiate contracts in real time.
Without this feature, teams are forced to jump between multiple different tools to negotiate contracts. This process of switching between Word files, emails, and PDFs can slow sales cycles down and make it difficult to track edits.
Contract management software like Juro centralizes contract negotiations, with browser-based redlining, detailed audit trails, and split internal and external versions.
If you're interested in finding out more about browser-based redlining, book a demo with one of our specialists.
4. Native eSignature
You should also look for contract management software with native eSignature functionality. This enables teams to add legally binding electronic signatures to contracts from anywhere, on any device. Some contract management systems, like Juro, even allow users to mass-sign routine contracts.
In a manual workflow, contracts are signed using wet ink signatures or scanned signatures. Some businesses use a separate eSigning tool like DocuSign or Adobe Sign to sign contracts electronically. But this still means moving between multiple tools just to get contracts over the line.
Choosing contract management software that offers native eSignature removes this friction and makes it possible create and sign contracts in one workspace.
To find out more about Juro’s secure and legally binding eSigning solution, book a demo with our specialists.
5. Renewal reminders
It is also worth choosing contract management software with automated renewal reminders. This feature allows you to track your contracts and manage upcoming deadlines with ease.
Businesses that don’t have a contract management tool usually track their contract data manually in a contract management spreadsheet. This involves extracting and inputting data from individual contracts, which can be a waste of legal’s already stretched time.
All of these deadlines are captured automatically in Juro, so you don’t have to worry about the admin work. You can also set up automated contract reminders so you never miss a renewal deadline again.
Want to find out more about Juro's automated contract reminders? Book a demo today.
6. Smart storage
Where you store your contracts matters, particularly as your contract volumes grow. That’s why it’s important to find a contract management platform with a smart storage solution.
In many businesses, contracts are scattered across shared drives. This means they’re difficult to find, hard to monitor, and virtually impossible to report on.
Contract management software like Juro enables you to get more from your contracts post-signature. Not only does Juro let you store your contracts securely, but it also has an analytics feature that enables you to report on contracts and track progress against legal KPIs.
To find out more about how Juro lets users track and query contracts in seconds, book a personalized demo.
What is the best contract management software?
1. Juro
Juro is the all-in-one contract automation platform that enables all teams to streamline the creation, execution and management of routine contracts at scale. This means that teams no longer have to jump between a fragmented stack of tools. Instead, they can manage their contracts from end to end - all in one workspace.
Juro powers contracts for some of the world's fastest-growing companies, including TrustPilot, WeWork, Soundcloud, Deliveroo and AngelList.
Independent reviews of Juro
Juro is one of the top-rated contract management tools on the market, with ratings of 4.8 out of 5 on Capterra and 4.7 out of 5 on G2.
Juro is also #1 rated by for speed of implementation by G2, meaning Juro’s customers get to value quickly with Juro - unlike some other digital contracting tools.
Below are some independent reviews from Juro users:
“Juro completely lifted the burden off our legal team by empowering our Sales team to handle the majority of small business contracts from start to finish” - Independent review, G2
“The Juro platform has saved my team 90% of the time we used to spend writing and sharing contracts. The platform is efficient and intuitive” - Independent review, G2
Hit the button below to find out more about how Juro can reduce contract admin and create scalable contracting processes for your business.
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