If your reaction to this headline is that contract management is one of your problems, then you probably need some help. ContraxAware can provide that help. In fact, there are at least 99 reasons why ContraxAware is the best contract management software out there. We offer three plan levels depending on your budget and the size of your company or team.
So, what kind of features does ContraxAware offer?
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Get the Basics Handled with General Data Management
To start with, ContraxAware can handle all of your general management and tracking of contracts. You can:
1. Store an unlimited (yes, even on the cheapest plan) number of contracts in one central location.
2. Securely access your data from absolutely anywhere. Your office, your home, the beach…
3. Import any contracts you already have. We make getting started with ContraxAware a breeze.
4. Easily create new contracts.
5. Track each contract through its life, from concept through requests for proposals through completion.
You can thus keep an eye on all of your contracts and make sure you have everything straight. All of this is handled through our secure, flexible, and always available database.
Configure Data by Contract Type
All of the stored data is configurable. You can customize and configure:
6. Data entry forms.
7. Required fields.
8. Default fields.
9. Validation rules.
You can customize each contract and contract type can be customized Your staff can enter the details quickly and intuitively, without having to add extra “Other” fields or waste time working out where everything fits. You can also use the system to ensure that metadata is entered accurately and that users use the right language.Creating deep metadata collections in your contract management software can save you a lot of time later.
Maintain Unlimited Records As Your Business Grows
Again, unlimited. Regardless of your plan level, ContraxAware puts no pesky limits on the number of contracts, vendors, and other information types you can store in the system. For all account levels, you can store unlimited information, such as:
10. Contract records and specific fields of information for compiling and sorting.
11. Documents related to those contracts, allowing you to centralize proposals, timelines, etc., in one space.
12. Vendor, customer, and employee records. You can link them to the contracts they are associated with.
13. Tasks, which might be linked to employees.
14. Workflows, which you can archive to document past business practices and actors.
Need to group your records together based on key connections or pieces of information? ContraxAware can help! You can also:
15. Create complex groups based on lists
16. Link related contracts, such as all the contracts you have with Vendor X, or all the contracts with the government, or all the contracts a certain project manager is working on.
17. Export your records for reports, backup copies, and filings with any regulatory agencies.
ContraxAware also allows you to export all of your data.
Solve Even More Problems with Professional and Enterprise Features
The Professional and Enterprise plans offer even more record configuration options, including:
18. Unlimited custom fields. If you need to mark every contract record that has a particular product, specific requests, or additional requirements based on the industry type, you can create that field for easy information sharing and report generation.
19. Easy data import so you can combine multiple systems and build out contract records from your archives
The Enterprise plan also gets the ability to:
20. Create unlimited custom tables.
21. Create custom table relationships.
As the Enterprise plan is intended for larger companies with a lot of contracts, it does tend to have features that are less valuable to small teams. Finding those contracts is made easy by using metadata to find contracts, organize them by type, and group them together. You can pull up lists of, for example, all the contracts that relate to a larger project, such as your headquarters refurbishment. Here’s more information about organizing and finding contracts.
Manage Your Documents for Easy Access
ContraxAware has a great suite of features for document management. It can:
22. Create new contract records for your currently active contracts or new customers and opportunities.
23. Store any type of document. There’s no need to convert your documents to a format your contract management software recognizes, to have everything in pdfs. If your vendor is one of the five people who still use WordPerfect, not a problem!
24. Store all of your documents. Never worry about compressing your file types or having to offload older contracts onto a separate server.
25. Use OCR to read scanned documents. Although most of us are paperless these days, there’s still that invoice that comes in the mail or a mailed check that needs to be recorded.
26. Search the text of all documents, globally, regardless of document type. This allows project managers to find the information they need.
27. Track the changes people make to every record. This can help you monitor employee performance, protect the integrity of separate records, and follow the history of contracts you weren’t involved with.
28. Professional and Enterprise Plan users can also convert Word documents to PDFs in the system. Why is this so useful? You can store contract templates as editable documents that your legal team can revise but send them out to standard customers as uneditable PDFs. There are other tools out there that can do this, but it’s nice to have it integrated into the system.
29. Check in and check out documents. Documents can easily be added to or removed from a contract.
30. Lock documents so they can’t be accidentally edited or deleted by that employee who hasn’t had his coffee yet.
Whittle Down Difficulties with These Premium Features
In addition, Professional and Enterprise accounts have a couple of other really useful tools:
31. A revision comparison tool to let you track changes to documents and who made them, and revert revisions that prove to be a problem. This helps make sure you are using the right version of the software.
32. 1. The ability to convert PDF files or any image to Word documents for easy review and redlines.
We also offer a built-in contract template library, which allows you to have boilerplate contracts that can easily be retrieved, tweaked as needed, and merged with the vendor or customer’s metadata, instantly. This is particularly important for your sales team (along with other features such as managing individual productivity), as they no longer have to waste time writing up a new contract every time. Find out more here.
Manage Tasks Automatically So They Don’t Fall Through the Cracks
ContraxAware has a full-featured task management system that includes task lists and reminders, alerting users of tasks that are coming due. You can:
33. Set automated email task reminders. You can send reminders to the appropriate users and customize how far in advance the notification should be sent based off of the user’s habits and the nature of the task. You can customize what is in the reminder, such as providing a direct link to a related document.
34. Group, sort, share, and export task lists. This allows project managers to get a quick overview of where everyone is in terms of working on the project.
35. Set badges that summarize key performance indicators, letting everyone see who is ahead of the game.
36. Report tasks by either a single employee or everyone. Project managers can track personal performance, or make sure that everyone is on the same page and at the same point.
37. Send automated task reports by email. No matter what your preferred tool is to communicate to-dos to your team, ContraxAware has you covered in the Professional and Enterprise plans.
38. View tasks in graph format, which some people find much more intuitive.
39. Track contract tasks throughout the life of the contract, even after execution, to ensure that deadlines and obligations are met.
40. Track milestones and obligations. It’s not enough to know when things get done or to just have insight into internal tasks. Many of your contracts have contractual, legal, and regulatory compliance obligations that need to be tracked and completely visible to responsible parties.
41. You can track an unlimited number of tasks.
Our reports functionality lets you monitor in-progress tasks, filter your view to focus on your priority tasks, and evaluate past performance.
Manage Users So Everyone Has the Access They Need
User management is one of the most important aspects of good contract management software. No matter how trustworthy your employees are, you can never guarantee that somebody won’t leave their laptop unlocked in a hotel lobby while at a conference attended by your competitors. ContraxAware allows you to easily:
42. Add users to a project, delete them, and edit their details and properties such as email address, department, and type of employee.
43. Add roles (or user groups), and delete and edit them as needed. This option allows you to define a role rather than a specific user so you can hand off the responsibilities to a new hire or a replacement.
44. Assign a user to a role. Make this connection between the two identifiers. Having the two separate identifiers makes it easier to promote, transfer, and replace employees without a lag in CLM access.
45. Set access rights for users and roles. For example, you can give somebody read-only access or full access, depending on the nature of their position.
46. Set access rights for specific types of contracts. For example, you may have documents you want to be read by those working on government contracts but not private sector contracts.
47. Set access rights to specific functions. This keeps users from being able to make unauthorized or accidental changes. For example, entry-level salespeople shouldn’t have any approval rights.
More Features for System Admins
System administrators can govern how employees use or access information on the platform. They can access these additional controls:
48. Adding, editing, or removing administration rights to different users.
49. Managing user properties. Locking this function ensures individual employees can’t change their settings or access functions they shouldn’t.
There’s one more thing here for Professional and Enterprise levels, which is:
50. Allowing and managing external users. You might use this if you need to give your vendors access to read some of the documents related to a contract.
Manage Requests with a Custom-Crafted User Request Portal
Jane in accounting needs to see invoice Y to make sure the customer is fulfilling their payment obligations.
Human resources wants to see Stephen’s performance so they can decide on his annual bonus.
But email isn’t the way to make these and dozens of other requests happen in an organized fashion. That’s why ContraxAware allows for a streamlined user request system that saves a lot of time.
When a user makes a request, ContraxAware lets them or you:
51. Assign any appropriate data. For example, contract administrators can preemptively require the customer name, expected ACV, and query before the request gets sent.
52. Upload supporting documents.
53. Send email and system alerts to tell the appropriate people about the request.
Requesters can also track the status of their own requests (#54!). This further reduces the amount of email and “queue-jumping” your departments may be struggling with.
Higher-level accounts can also solve problems by:
55. Allowing contract requests to come in from anywhere around the world.
56. Letting request recipients request additional information. This system allows clear communication, keeps legal in the loop, and keeps the request all on one request record. Also, it automates as much of the process as possible, so project managers only have to worry about unusual requests. This feature is particularly useful for your legal team, who can use it to stay organized and make sure they stick to request procedures at all times.
Handle Electronic Signatures in the Platform So There Are Fewer Delays
Some people still prefer to print, sign, and scan. However, electronic signatures are considered acceptable for most purposes, and they can make your contract management system stronger. ContraxAware offers a completely paperless electronic signature system that can:
57. Integrate with DocuSign for seamless signatures. Most businesses are already familiar with this platform and can sign instantly.
58. Allow users, including contract administrators, salespeople, and any other qualified employee, to send contracts to the correct contact in the customer account record.
59. Send a signature request simultaneously to both internal and external signers.
60. Allow contracts to be signed on any device, not just a desktop in a specific office.
61. Track who has signed contracts and when, with emails going out to the appropriate people when a signature is received.
62. Add a signature to any document, not just the contract. You can also add initial tags if, for example, you need an employee to tag that they read an important document.
63. Track overdue signatures through email so you don’t have to manually check for updated statuses.
64. Notify you via email when a contract signature is overdue. This allows contract authors and originators to manage tasks.
65. Save the signed contract directly to the contract record, keeping it in a central location. You’ll never have to worry about employees forgetting to manually upload a signed document again.
Professional and Enterprise users can also use integration with the popular DocuSign system, although it is not necessary to use any of ContraxAware’s features.
Automate Your Team’s Workflows
The real meat of any good contract management system is automation of workflows. One of the best reasons to use ContraxAware is that we have an amazing workflow automation system. It’s designed to start workflows easily, create workflow templates, and keep everyone on track. Get rid of your workflow woes with these comprehensive management features:
66. Create unlimited workflows. No matter how granular your business is, we’re here to help you manage it.
67. Assign a default approval and signature to contract types, so each contract is already marked with who has to sign off on it.
68. Automate approvals, reviews, and signatures, saving a lot of time on all sides.
69. Initiate a workflow from the contract record page. Fewer clicks mean faster task completion!
70. Assign users to a workflow, including external users.
71. Assign workflow steps that are either sequential or parallel.
72. Allow for a first approval option, where only one of the specified users needs to approve a task. This can help pools of approvals share tasks and manage approvals if someone is out of the office.
73. Assign due dates to workflows and elements.
74. Grant access to the right details and documents when adding a user to a workflow.
75. Email notifications and reminders for employees.
76. Enable notifications with a link straight to the workflow and any task details.
77. Use single click accept/reject features to make tasks moving.
78. Provide on-screen prompts to guide through steps.
79. Tracking features that monitor workflow status, including a user’s current steps.
80. Reminders of assignments and due dates.
81. Alert users to upcoming and overdue workflows.
82. Send email alerts for completed and overdue workflows. This can be sent to assignees, their managers, or the contract record originator.
Manage and Create All of Your Workflows from One Place
Not many contract management utilities provide all of these workflow automation features. Our workflow templates allow you to standardize your processes and speed up setting up new contracts. You can still, of course, create one-offs for those special cases. Creating new workflows can be complicated. Once you have the templates in place, though, it can be much faster, and help your sales manager handle more sales.
Workflow templates can help ensure that when you have compliance issues, such as HIPAA, the right signatures are attached to the right documents and the right intra-term reviews are done. If you have a lot to manage, you’ll love our next workflow feature:
83. Manage and view all of your company’s workflows from a customizable, easy-to-organize dashboard.
Create Reports So You Have Complete Business Insight
Finally, ContraxAware allows you to create reports that will help you make better decisions, both for the current contract and future ones. That’s problem #84 completely handled by your enterprise contract management system! As you learn the system, it will help you improve your contract management over time and develop best practices. This will also help you with compliance. ContraxAware provides:
85. Built-in reports. You can view them in any format, including charts, grids, and timelines.
86. Search and filtering capabilities to grab the data you need for the report.
87. Grouping and sorting of contract data so you can organize and locate information more easily
88. Extensive printing, exporting, and sharing functionalities so you can communicate relevant information. Creating separate documents for external parties better protects your business by limiting system access. Also, you can send them to executives, vendors, partners, and customers in whatever format they prefer. You can stay completely paperless or provide a hard copy to those who want it (or for compliance purposes).
89. An interactive map showing the locations of contract parties.
90. A calendar to display tasks and due dates.
91. A pivot table to crosstab reports so you can group and total data.
92. Gantt chart display for tasks and other data with start-end dates.
93. Pie, bar, and line graphs for displaying data.
94. Calculated totals for large data set summary.
The last four are only available in Professional and Enterprise.
Make sure that you have the system set to send out weekly reports to your team, covering things like late payments, the status of high-risk contracts, etc.
Enjoy the Complete Package of Problem-Free Contract Management
ContraxAware does more than solve your contract management system problems with features. Our software includes these five final advantages you can’t get anywhere else:
95. Integration with 1,500 tools. ContraxAware offers integration services with Zapier, so you can connect your contract management system with all of your favorite business apps. Organize all of your work in one system. No problem!
96. Automatic updates. ContraxAware is proprietary software. That means we handle the upgrades and the improvements, not yet. You never have to tangle with open-source complications again!
97. Cutting edge security. When you keep everything on the cloud, you face fewer threats from malware trying to attack your business’s private servers. Also, we use continuous monitoring systems to keep out malware viruses, and other digital threats.
98. Device management. One of the biggest problems with remote access is potential device loss or poor device security. But we’re not here to add to your problems. That’s why our software allows remote wiping and remote user access control. If your field sales rep loses their phone, you can lock down access immediately.
99. Unparalleled customer service. At ContraxAware, we’re here to help you use (and enjoy using) your contract management software. So you can schedule a 1:1 demo, contact us any time, and ask for help setting up your custom workflow and templates.When you choose ContraxAware, contract management and contract tracking aren’t a problem. You will be free to devote more time to things like attracting customers — or taking that coffee break you really need right now. Check out ContraxAware now to see if we meet your needs for a full-featured contract management service and request a demonstration today.
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