How Does Salesforce Contract Management Help The Legal Team

The legal department is typically in charge of producing thousands of legally sound contracts for the enterprise. It is a daunting task, especially for scaling businesses with endless clients. Even with bulk actions, the legal team cannot take care of all the sales agreements with the traditional methods. 

That is why it makes sense to adopt integrations that make the contract lifecycle management easier for the legal team. Salesforce contract management enables the sales team to collaborate on contracting without leaving the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform. And we have already discussed how integration benefits salespeople. In this blog post, we will explore the possibilities of integrating contract management software with the Salesforce platform for the legal team.   

Why is managing contracts challenging? 

Contract lifecycles are by no means simple, yet they are a crucial step in the sales process. Contracts are legally binding representations of business partnerships. And for growing businesses, contract lifecycle management is spread throughout the organization. Also, they end up storing contract-related information and documents in different folders across the platforms.  

The result, however, is that departments must shuffle between platforms to carry out the process. Moreover, they must generate compliant contracts with a disintegrated contract lifecycle management system. Manually inputting details, sharing documents, negotiating, and all seem like a never-ending task when you do not have a single platform to do the job. Also, the legal team cannot ensure data accuracy when they do not have a lone source of information. Organizations can mitigate these challenges by integrating Salesforce with Contract Management software to speed up the contracting process.  

How to create contracts with Salesforce Contract Management? 

The three phases of the contract lifecycle management process are pre-contract, contract, and post-contract. The sales team often handles the pre-contract phase of sales agreements. The post-signature stage, however, falls under the purview of the legal department.  

Both departments can work together to develop competent contracts using the Salesforce contract management solution. The association empowers the sales team to self-serve contractual agreements within the CRM platform. But what about the legality of the document? That is where the legal team comes in. The integrated system does not compromise compliance for increased productivity. The legal and sales can collaborate to create contracts from one system. And the legal counsel can stay in control of the contract lifecycle. Here is how the legal department can utilize Salesforce contract management.   

How does Salesforce Contract Management benefit the legal team? 

The contract lifecycle extends from contract creation to negotiation, signature, obligation, and renewal. Fortunately, Salesforce contract management offers the legal team the necessary tools to handle the entire process. By adopting the integrated solution, businesses do not have to choose between competency and speed. Salesforce contract management can help your legal department in the following ways:  

• Establish compliance 

Thanks to Salesforce contract management, the sales team can utilize the pre-approved templates and clause libraries to self-serve contracts. So even though the sales department creates the legal document, the legal division can set the language, tone, and terms of the contractual agreements.  

It ensures that all the contracts produced by the organization are effective and competent. The legal department will find it simpler to establish contract compliance and performance when the written agreement is full-proof. They can utilize the Salesforce dashboard to identify and analyze KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for the sales agreements.   

• Consistent contracting process 

Contract efficiency depends upon a structured contract creation process. Integrating Salesforce with contract management software ascertains that the sales department follows a standardized operation throughout the contract lifecycle.
Moreover, the legal division can set a framework suitable for company policies. Thus, all the contractual agreements coming out of the organization are consistent and authentic to their image. The legal department will not have to devote a lot of time to each contract if there is a uniform contracting process.   

• Eliminate bottlenecks 

The contract lifecycle advances fast if all contract-related data is accessible on a single platform. The legal department can streamline the end-to-end contract lifecycle management process through the Salesforce CRM integration. It reduces the scope for human error and inaccuracy in contracting.  

Moreover, Salesforce contract management provides the legal division with a thorough overview of the sales and contracting process. They also have real-time updates on document status and access to all the stakeholders in a centralized platform. Also, customized approval workflows and user permissions ensure that only competent and approved contracts make it to the final stage. As a result, the legal counsel can analyze and eradicate hurdles before they become a problem for the business.   

• Frees up legal for high-value tasks  

Integrating Contract Management Software with the Salesforce platform automates the entire contract lifecycle. When the contracting process progresses smoothly without human intervention, the legal team gets a reprieve from repetitive administrative tasks. They can automate contract creation, renewals, approval workflows, and notifications.  

Integrating Salesforce with contract management software enables organizations to work smarter rather than harder. Hence, the legal division can produce more contracts in less time. So even if the volume of sales agreements increases, the legal counsel can assign low-value jobs to automated workflows. Consequently, they have more time to focus on high-value and high-risk opportunities.  

• Minimize risks 

It is best to be specific and clear when drafting contracts. The validity of an organization's contractual agreements and how closely they adhere to the document determine its trustworthiness. Mistakes in legal documents can tarnish the reputation of an organization and create troubles down the line. 

Hence, legal must take extra care while creating contractual agreements and avoid contract risks. But the task becomes more challenging when the business has thousands of contracts to deal with daily. The legal team can auto-populate the customer data to create sales agreements in the Salesforce contract management system. Thus, organizations can do without manual data entry and human errors. All the hurdles in a contract lifecycle can not be avoided, but organizations can take steps to mitigate the losses. Consequently, employing CMS-integrated Salesforce for contract management can help to minimize contract risks. 

• Utilize CRM data for improved contract reporting 

If you do not have an up-to-date overview of the vital information, it is easy for critical insights to get lost in the mix. But fortunately, Salesforce contract management comes with comprehensive reporting and analytical tools. The organization can utilize the centralized system to aggregate all the customer and contract data. The legal team can easily pull up relevant information for enhanced contracting from the cloud-based repository. 

When the legal division has absolute over the contract and customer data, they can take proactive steps to identify potential pitfalls and opportunities. Also, they can analyze and produce accurate reports in no time. Critical information like contract value, key dates, third-party contacts, and so on will be available close at hand. Thus, organizations can employ the Salesforce contract management system to generate organized contract reporting.  

• Shorter contract review 

Creating contractual agreements in the CMS-integrated Salesforce platform means all the stakeholders can collaborate in real-time. The invested parties can employ contract redlining to stay on top of the changes in the legal document. Also, it provides a proper system to keep track of contract versions.  

When all the parties have access to accurate and up-to-date contractual agreements, the negotiation process flows smoothly. The complaint contracts made from pre-approved templates and clauses do not require exhaustive evaluation. As a result, the legal department does not have to go through a long-lasting review. 

• Reduce rework  

The legal department has access to extensive CRM data via the Salesforce contract management system. They can learn more about the client's history, preferences, and contact information. All this insight may help develop customer-focused legal documents.  

If the businesses manage to churn out client-focused contractual agreements, they are much more likely to get them through the negotiation process. Consequently, the legal department does not have to make never-ending changes to get the contract signed.  

• Legal Overview 

While self-serving contracts empower the sales team and improve productivity, it is hard for the legal department to steer the process. Without appropriate legal counsel, businesses may end up producing ineffective contracts. Salesforce contract management makes sure that the legal division stays in control of the contract lifecycle. They can ensure the contractual agreements are legally viable. 

Takeaway

Contracts highly affect the daily workings of an organization. Do not let a drawn-out contract management process slow down your business. The legal department requires all the help it can get to transform digital contracts into assets. By integrating Salesforce with contract management software, you are providing the legal team with access to advanced CRM tools and functions to streamline the contract lifecycle. They can utilize customer databases and dashboards to optimize and accelerate the contracting process. Salesforce contract management is a sure-cut way to increase the productivity and efficiency of your entire legal department.  

Schedule a live demo with our contract experts to learn all about the advantages of contract management software.