A Guide To Education Contract Management Software

Universities, colleges, and schools oversee a sizable number of contracts every day. Managing these legal documents across divisions and departments can be challenging for any institution. Education contract management software significantly lessens the practical difficulties of facilitating the contract lifecycle.   
 

The creation, negotiation, sharing, execution, and management of contracts can all be done from a single platform by higher education institutions with ease by adopting and implementing a proper contract management system. It can save them from drawn-out processes, unnecessary risks, and expensive long-term problems. Here is how the legal, financial, procurement, and administrative departments can work together to create legal documents for the entire organization using contract management software.  

How does education contract management software help institutions? 

The education contract management software aims to simplify contract administration for the business and the legal team. They can optimize each stage of the contract lifecycle with simple tools and procedures. Reduced risks, time, and cost are the primary indicators of all the improvements.  

• Configurability  

Contract management software for higher education comes with configurable dashboards. Organizations can utilize these graphic dashboards to oversee the entire contract life. As the template is customizable, there is no information overload. Individual departments can curate the contract management system to reflect their requirements. As a result, it streamlines contract information and processes for the various teams cooperating on education contract management.  

The contract management solution also offers comprehensive reporting and analytics tools. By producing customized contract reports, educational institutions with visibility problems can get around the drawbacks. It makes real-time data on contract value, vendor agreements, sales agreements, approval timelines, and other pertinent topics easily accessible to users.  

• Centralization  

By consolidating all legal documents in one location, organizations can streamline the contract lifecycle and facilitate collaboration between stakeholders, colleges, and universities. Education contract management software offers digital repositories for businesses to securely store all their contracts and associated files. It enables them to maintain visibility into the vendors servicing the educational institution and avoid contract duplication. 

Contract management solutions also provide pre-approved templates and clause libraries to expedite standardized contract generation. They can set up accepted language, terms, and format to bring consistency into the contracting process. Thus, any department can self-serve contractual agreements without compromising compliance or organizational standards.   

• Automation  

Process acceleration is essential for businesses with large customer bases. Additionally, when it comes to contract management, organizations need quick results without sacrificing competence. Contract management software empowers legal departments to achieve that with automated workflows. Users can create unique workflows and assign candidates to hasten the generation, negotiation, execution, and management of contracts. Therefore, educational institutions can guarantee that contracts smoothly complete every phase of their lifecycle.  

Higher education institutions can more easily keep track of contract milestones with the help of automated reminders offered by contract management software. For any significant event, organizations can trigger notifications to inform relevant parties. As a result, businesses can act promptly to review, renew, and extend contracts and never miss a deadline. Contract management systems also come with automated functions to track contractual obligations. Without the need for the legal department to step in, they make sure that all parties involved are abiding by the contract's terms.   

• Scalability 

Manually managing all contracts required for higher education may be difficult for the legal department. With education contract management software, growing businesses can scale their contracting process. The intuitive solution offers bulk actions, empowering users to create, edit, copy, share, and sign contracts in large numbers. Consequently, it expedites routine administrative tasks, allowing the legal team to concentrate on high-value contracts.  

The sheer number of vendors, providers, and businesses that educational institutions must interact with is staggering. It means convoluted negotiation processes with multiple parties and contract versions. Contract management software enables users to streamline negotiation by facilitating online redlining. It makes sure that all parties involved are in the know and have access to current information. Moreover, the system’s advanced OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and AI capabilities improve the searchability function. Anytime, they can conduct a quick search and retrieve pertinent contract data. Additionally, the tailored filters guarantee that no contract or information is ever out of reach.  

• Integrations 

In addition to their sophisticated features, education contract management software can enhance the contracting procedure by integrating it with pertinent business applications. They can therefore modify the system depending on the needs of the institution. Integrating with electronic signature solutions like Adobe Sign, DocuSign, and Sertifi, allows users to sign documents online within the contract management platform. Educational institutions can quickly and legally execute compliant contracts thanks to these secure e-signature solutions,  

Educational contract management software can integrate with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP solutions to further enhance business operations. Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics integration allows users to auto-populate customer data and generate contracts within the CRM platform. Integrating with Microsoft Business Central enables organizations to oversee the financial performance of every contract. There are countless opportunities for educational institutions to enhance contract management. 

• Security 

Data security is a top concern for educational institutions handling sensitive contracts, confidential information, and intellectual property. The already-existing Microsoft 365 environment serves as the foundation for Dock's contract management software. Therefore, organizations can store contracts and related documents in Microsoft 365 instead of relying on third-party sites.   

Apart from the phenomenal security of Microsoft and SharePoint, contract management software also has user-based access. It means only authorized personnel can access contracts, dashboards, and certain privileges. It ensures that there is no data leakage and sensitive information does not end up in the wrong hands. Role-based permission is quite helpful for educational institutions with multiple parties involved in the contracting process. 

What are the advantages of education contract management software? 

Education contract management software can help schools, colleges, and universities to streamline and accelerate contract lifecycle management, helping them to achieve their goals more effectively It enables institutions to .centralize and organize all of the contracts into a single, secure location for transparency, productivity, and efficiency. 

• Increase visibility 

For educational institutions where contract lifecycle management spans across teams and divisions, cross-departmental transparency is unquestionably necessary. Contract management software with a centralized platform ensures that all the relevant parties are on the same page and have access to real-time information. Stakeholders can track any contract, vendor, project, or information with the utmost ease thanks to the user-friendly OCR and AI technology.   

• Reduce overhead costs 

By streamlining workflows, education contract management software automates and lessens the complexity of contract management across divisions, schools, and departments. It takes less time, money, and resources to generate contracts when you use a systematic approach. The centralized platform enables various stakeholders, including facilities, real estate, business & finance, IT, compliance, and general counsel, to collaborate on the contract lifecycle without taking any legal or financial risks.  

• Ensure compliance 

When you have a university-wide collaboration to manage the contract lifecycle, it is difficult to establish compliance. But education management software makes the task easier for the legal department by incorporating automated workflows, version control, and role-based access. Every stage of the contract lifecycle is organized and carefully planned out in the contract management system. Therefore, there is no scope for rogue actions or misplaced information. When there is a clear-cut division of tasks and accountability in the process, it is easier to establish contract compliance.   

• Mitigate operational risk 

Pre-approved templates and clauses in educational contract management software ensure that only compliant contracts reach the end of the contract lifecycle. Also, the automated processes guarantee that reviews, approvals, and signature workflows make it to the right personnel for compliance and accuracy. With the established features of the contract management system, educational institutions can oversee the entire contract lifecycle to identify and mitigate risks.  

Conclusion 

Schools, colleges, and universities manage a high volume of products and services across multiple departments. That is why they need a sophisticated system to handle all the business agreements associated with their daily operations. The education contract management software offers an array of functions and procedures to manage contracts, from creation to negotiation, execution, and management. It enables all the relevant stakeholders and teams to productively collaborate on the contract management process from a centralized platform.  

The secure digital repository protects sensitive educational data and contracts from data leakage. With automated workflows, pre-approved templates, and version control, compliant contract progress through the lifecycle without any roadblocks. With electronic signature solutions, users can safely sign and execute contracts within the CMS (Contract Management Software) platform in no time. Moreover, contract management software for higher education seamlessly integrates with leading CRM and ERP applications to optimize business operations.  

Get a live demo with our Dock 365 experts to explore the possibilities of contract management software.