How to manage contracts in Zendesk

Want to manage your contracts in Zendesk? This post covers everything you need to know about Zendesk contract management.

Zendesk is a popular tool for managing tasks and collaborating with other teams. But some teams still aren’t using it effectively for contract management. 

Fortunately, there’s a quick and easy way to create and manage contracts in Zendesk. To find out more about Zendesk contract management and how it works, keep reading. 

What is Zendesk?

Zendesk is a ticketing system used to make and manage requests more efficiently. The software is most recognized as a customer support tool, but Zendesk is also used by legal, HR, and commercial teams requesting support from other departments.

Contracts are a perfect example of this. Sales, HR and onboarding teams frequently use Zendesk to request contracts from legal, and the platform is then used to update the teams on the status of agreements. To do this, they create a ticket. 

But can users create and manage their contracts within Zendesk? Well, the short answer is yes, but only with the right integration.

To find out more about how this works, keep reading. But first, let’s run through the manual process that most Zendesk users follow - and why it’s painful.

How do Zendesk users typically manage contracts?

Zendesk is a great tool for streamlining projects. But teams don’t always use it effectively when it comes to contracts. Rather than automating contract creation through the tool, teams use it as part of a fragmented process that relies on lots of different tools. This is similar to the process used to manage contracts in Jira, and other ticketing tools.

The manual process looks a bit like this: 

1. Sales or HR teams request a contract to be created legal. This is done by creating a ticket. 

2. The legal team picks up this request and starts to draft the contract from scratch. They use a contract template but the clauses often need to be edited depending on the nature of the contract and the relationship with the customer or hire. 

3. Next, the legal team populate the contract template using the data in the Zendesk ticket. This data is extracted manually and pasted into the relevant parts of the contract. 

4. The contract draft is then added to the Zendesk ticket and the commercial or HR team is notified that it’s ready to review. If it needs further approval, parties will also be notified when the legal team creates a ticket for the task. 

5. Once approved, the contract will be shared with counterparties for negotiation via email. From here, all redlines are captured over email and in Word. Tickets are created in Zendesk to request any edits at this stage too.
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6. Eventually, the contract will be ready to sign. Most businesses use electronic signatures to do this. 
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7. Once signed, a copy of the contract will be uploaded to Zendesk for visibility. Any data stored in these platforms will also need to be updated manually to reflect the contract’s terms.

This process is extremely inefficient and can quickly become a drain on your team’s time and resources. It means manually creating tickets, switching between tools and friction as tasks move between teams. 

Fortunately, there’s a better way to create and manage your contracts, and teams can do so without ever needing to leave Zendesk. Read on to find out how. 

Is it possible to manage contracts in Zendesk? 

If you integrate Zendesk with the right contract management software, managing contracts in Zendesk can be made easy for your HR, legal and sales teams. 

Juro is one of the best contract tools to integrate with Zendesk. Juro can be integrated with Zendesk in minutes, with no code required. This is made possible through Zapier, which connects the two tools seamlessly. 

Let’s turn our attention to what this integration looks like in practice, and how it can streamline your contract workflow. 

How to manage contracts in Zendesk

Firstly, commercial and HR teams can use Zendesk’s integration with Juro to automate the creation of contracts when a ticket is updated or created. 

This can be achieved by setting up a simple trigger in Zapier. This trigger will create a contract in Juro using an automated template when a deal reaches a certain stage. 

This enables teams to create contracts in just a few clicks and without legal’s help. The integration means that pre-approved contract templates are automatically populated with the data stored in Zendesk. 

Zendesk users can even set up triggers so that they are automatically notified when contracts are created, approved, or even signed.

These ‘events’ in Juro will automatically add a comment to an existing ticket in Zendesk to keep other teams in the loop. This removes the need to manually update Zendesk tickets to reflect the status of a contract. 

It’s also possible to push copies of signed contracts straight into Zendesk tickets.

This can be done by setting up a trigger for a contract to be automatically attached to a ticket when it reaches a certain stage of the contract lifecycle. Doing this removes the need to manually update tickets in Zendesk with the files. 

But it isn’t just copies of a contract that can be pulled into Zendesk automatically.

Users of the integration can also set up a trigger so that tickets are automatically updated with the contract data once a contract is signed. This eliminates the need for contract owners to manually update the ticket with the information from the contract. 

Connecting Zendesk with a contract management solution like Juro enables your teams to create contracts in just a few clicks, automate manual data entry and stay in the tools they know and love. 

But there are also a few, more specific benefits of integrating Zendesk with a tool like Juro. Let’s run through these now. 

The benefits of managing contracts in Zendesk 

Managing your contracts in Zendesk (and Juro) is a great way to make your contract workflow more efficient. But there are other benefits too:

• Reduced contract admin. Juro’s integration with Zendesk automates manual data entry and contract creation processes and reduces the amount of admin required to create and manage contracts. 

• No more context switching. Creating contracts within Zendesk removes the need to jump between multiple different tools to get contracts over the line. 

• More accurate contract data. It’s common for small but costly mistakes to be made when populating contracts manually. Juro’s integration with Zendesk removes this contract risk by pulling data directly from Zendesk, with no need for manual data entry. 

• Faster sales and hiring cycles. Contracts can be created, reviewed, and approved in seconds (and at scale) using Zendesk’s integration with Juro. This means that teams can close deals and make hires faster. 

• Platform familiarity. Zendesk is a popular tool for various departments, so being able to create contracts within the platform enables teams to stay in the tools they know and love. 

Find out more about using Zendesk for contracts

To find out more about Juro's integration with Zendesk and how it would work for your business, fill in the form below to speak to a specialist.