After a merger or acquisition, your team has a lot of details to focus on. It can be easy to allow merging your contract records to get lost in the shuffle. After all, both businesses likely have an effective contract management system in place that has allowed them to keep up with their contracts thus far. You can wait to merge those systems together, right? In reality, you need to put merging contract records high on your priority list.
Consider these key reasons why merging your contract records is important, and then read our guide to creating a contract migration project. Also, consider how failing to do so could create unanticipated problems for your newly-combined businesses.
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1. Merging contract records can make it easier to generate company-wide reports.
When you merge your contract records, you can quickly and effectively generate reports that cover all aspects of your company’s contracts. If you keep your records in different depositories, on the other hand, you may need to generate separate reports for each company, then manually compile them. This can substantially slow down your ability to put together those vital records.
2. If you don’t merge your contract records, employees may not know which system to use.
In the early stages following a merger or acquisition, employees may automatically use the system they’ve always used as they create, negotiate, and manage contracts. As you restructure your business following those changes, however, you may shift certain business responsibilities to one partner company or the other. Employees may then not be sure which contract record system to use or where to store contracts.
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3. Failure to merge your contracts can make it difficult to find specific contracts and information, especially as your business grows in the aftermath of the merger or acquisition.
When you begin merging contract records, you will store it under one standardized system that makes it easy to identify key information about your contracts. You’ll be able to easily track the current versions of contracts, as well as keep up with where you can find those contracts. When they’re located in separate repositories, on the other hand, it can prove difficult to find a specific contract. You may need to go through more than one system in order to find the specific contract you need. This can slow down your response time when dealing with clients.
4. You don’t want combined departments to have to search in two locations for information.
Many departments throughout your newly-combined business may need to access your contracts. You may have a specific department that takes care of compliance. Salespeople need to be able to access past versions of contracts. No matter who needs to access that information, you want them to be able to search in one location for it. Not only that, but you also want to ensure that employees have the right security permissions to access the contracts.
5. Merging contract records will ensure that all alerts and reminders end up in the right place.
Along with your merger or acquisition, you may substantially restructure some of your processes and departments. That includes your contract approval processes. You may have new individuals who need to approve contracts before they can be finalized. Alternatively, you may need to add something to the existing contract approval process of one business to fit the needs of the other. If you’re still using separate contract management systems, those systems may have different workflows or processes. That could create additional steps or make it difficult to keep up with your contracts. Merging your systems helps ensure that all of those reminders end up in front of the right individual or team.
6. Merging your systems helps protect your security.
You want to use a secure contract management system to help protect your clients and their data. Merging contract records can both give your customer data more security and help tighten your internal security. Start by assigning the proper permissions to employees who need to access contract information over the course of their work responsibilities. You may need to prevent employees from accessing secure materials that are outside the scope of their job responsibilities. Salespeople, for example, may need access to only the systems that they work on. But employees responsible for contract implementation may not need permissions that will allow them to make changes to those contracts. Using a single system can decrease the risk of internal security holes in your system. It will also help protect your business and your clients.
Prioritizing the merging of your contract records is essential. It will help your business keep up with its responsibilities following a merger or acquisition. Don’t let it wait too late! Instead, put merging your contract records at the top of your priority list. This will keep your workflows moving smoothly following a merger or acquisition. Also, try our software for a week to see why it’s the best new home for all of your business’s contracts.
