A guide to government contract management software in 2024

Discover how government contract management software can help keep public sector contracts under control. 

Small errors can quickly amount to a costly crisis for government institutions, making contract management process with high stakes.

Yet, most government organizations are trapped in the past, with decaying contract processes that rely on a combination of physical filing cabinets and wet ink signatures. This process simply isn't fit for the digital age, or 2024.

In this guide, we'll tell you what you can do to transform your contract management process, and why it should be high on your list of priorities for the year.

What is government contract management?

Government contract management refers to the process governmental organizations like councils, agencies, and public bodies use to manage their agreements. These agreements cover everything from contracts between vendors and local councils to the employment contracts used to make new hires.

Maintaining visibility into these contracts is crucial for these organizations, especially as they are under constant scrutiny and pressure to maintain transparency when it comes to public spending. 

In fact, in 2022 alone, the US federal government committed about $694 billion to external contracts, making contracts a significant portion of public spending. Government contracts were used to provide a huge range of products and services, from aircraft and software to food service and health care. 

The level of contractual risk involved in each of these services is varies wildly, just like the time and monetary costs incurred. But one thing these government contracts share is that they need to be easy to find, query and review.

This means governmental organizations must to take extra steps to ensuring contractual terms are transparent to the right stakeholders.

In particular, they need to find ways to surface and analyze contract data more predictably, particularly when this data relates to public spending. 

To achieve this, they need to begin by building a single source of truth for contracts. In other words, they need all of their contracts secured in one place.

Why is efficient contract management key for governmental organizations? 

Increased transparency and accountability

Since governmental departments and agencies are at the center of the public sector, it’s essential to make contract data visible.

Not only will this help the organization hold the right people accountable, but it’ll also ensure that decision-making processes are fair. Metrics such as renewals, performance, and contract value can all be tracked by using a contract lifecycle management system.

Better relationship management

Government contracts are wide-ranging, covering partnerships with private companies, such as software and catering contracts, and public contracts with other government entities, for example. 

Managing these contracts and relationships well ensures that you’re getting the most out of them, whether that's the highest level of service or more favourable renewal terms.

Whatever it is, these contracts need to be managed effectively for government bodies to function properly. 

Everything tracked in one place

Every government organization will have a huge number of contracts associated with it, each with different terms and deadlines. 

Due to the sheer number of organizations that fit under this umbrella, there are thousands of government contracts on the go at any given time. Creating and getting them signed is only one tickbox to get checked. 

The more contracts you manage the harder it becomes to track renewals. In instances such as these, a strong contract management process is essential, as renewals can be tracked and measured faster, and more conveniently.

Juro allows us to track everything, so contract negotiations, notifications, comms with the counterparty, and so on, is all captured in one place -  Victoria Sörving, Chief Legal Officer, Funnel

All of these things explain why government contract management should be a focal point for these organizations in 2024.

Let's dig into how these bodies can regain control of their contracts by adopting government contract management software.

‍How can government contract management software help? 

1. Increased visibility into contracts and their data

Juro’s robust contract repository provides a single source of truth for your contracts, making it easy to find, track, and search for agreements at scale.

Contracts initiated in Juro are built as structured data, meaning that they’re fully searchable from the moment of creation. 

Users can build custom contract dashboards in Juro, meaning that key contracts are captured in one place and easy to track progress on. This feature makes that all-important contract reporting process much easier.

Avoid rummaging through filing cabinets to access the information you need by digitizing the process.

2. Faster contract approval processes

It's typical for government contracts to progress through lots of approval layers, particularly when they have a high contract value.

Contract management software like Juro can streamline these approvals with automated approval workflows. Teams can even customize the order they want contracts signed and approved in, giving them full control over the approval process.

Best of all, these approvals happen where contracts already live. Approvals aren't buried in email threads or Slack messages, it's immediately obvious whether a contract has been approved, or is waiting for approval.

3. Streamlined negotiations

As we’ve mentioned, there’s no set type of government contract, nor a set way of agreeing those contracts. This can cause friction, especially when it comes to negotiating a contract. 

Using Juro’s contract negotiation workflow, counterparties can make suggestions and comments in the contract that are instantly visible to their internal teams. Both parties can make suggestions directly within the contract and each of these suggestions can be approved or rejected by the contract owner. 

“The time I spend negotiating terms has been reduced by 75% thanks to Juro” - Karolina Plaskaty, People team, Curve

This means no more switching between email chains and Microsoft Word files to agree simple contracts, track changes and discuss amendments. Centralizing these negotiations with features like audit trails, browser-based redlining, and contract versioning can remove friction entirely. 

If you're looking for ways to speed up negotiations, Juro’s AI review feature can speed up this process by up to 90 per cent. You can find out more about AI assistant here.

4. Controlled contract renewals

‍Managing contract renewals can become complicated, especially when you manage large contract volumes across multiple departments. 

Government contract management software can bring together all of these contracts and capture key data points, like upcoming renewals, which makes it a great candidate for managing contract continuity.

Juro's automated contract reminders even notify the relevant stakeholders ahead of these dates, giving them peace of mind that contract renewals are firmly under control.

This makes it easier to prevent automated renewals you didn’t budget for and retain suppliers once the termination dates have passed.

Every contract signed will end at some point, contract management tools just prepare you for these eventualities. 

Which government contract management software is best?

Juro's robust security measures and rich feature set make it a popular government contract management software, with these institutions among the 6000+ companies already using Juro to manage contracts faster and more efficiently.

Here's why Juro is the tool of choice for organizations across the world:

• Juro brings the whole contract process together in one collaborative, browser-based platform, replacing up to five tools with one
  
• Juro is designed with security in mind, protecting even the most sensitive documents
• Juro is a global Leader in contract lifecycle management, with the highest user adoption and best support of any platform, according to G2

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Want to find out more about how Juro's government contract management software could cut the time you spend on contracts by 90%? Fill in the form below.