Why you need AI for more effective contract management

Contract management has long caused admin headaches for companies of all sizes. But technology can ease the pressure, notably through the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) solutions can streamline and simplify contracting processes, reducing administrative burdens.

The challenges of contract management

The challenges of contract management are familiar to many. There's the sheer number of contracts you deal with; these can reside in different areas, from hard drives to software applications. Even an apparently simple task like calculating how many contracts the company has can prove difficult, with employees having to approach different departments and collect everything manually.

Then there's the time spent on manual processes. According to Forrester's State of Contract Management 2020 report, about a third of employees surveyed said a typical contract takes 30-plus hours to negotiate, likely due to versioning and modifications.

A quarter said their contracts are modified or change orders are executed every week, while 52 per cent said their company contracts go through three to four versions, on average, before being finalised. Electronic signature solutions can significantly reduce the time and effort involved in finalizing contracts.

Benefits of legal AI software

Legal AI software can ease the pressure, freeing you to focus on more interesting and productive tasks. What's more, it can help identify new opportunities and risks that might otherwise have been hidden.

The use of AI powers deeper insights into contractual terms and similar clauses across the entire enterprise. It can identify compliance risks, finding rogue clauses and ensure the best overall terms are applied to all contracts, no matter their origin. It provides early warnings on known contractual issues to initiate early remedial action, avoiding future cost and risk. And it can cut costs and improve efficiencies by saving your employees' time.

Possessing these insights can help to improve the predictive capabilities of many organisations and enable smarter decision-making and interventions. Consider a supplier contract that includes travel costs – how might an increase in petrol prices affect this?

Docusign Insight

These are some of the major benefits of Seal Software, Docusign's partner in delivering AI-powered contract discovery, extraction and analytics. Powering Docusign Insight, Seal Software makes it easy for organisations to quickly search huge volumes of contracts for a specific phrase or clause, and then analyse these contract groups for trends and behaviours.

Possessing these insights can help to improve the predictive capabilities of many organisations and enable smarter decision-making and interventions. Consider a supplier contract that includes travel costs – how might an increase in petrol prices affect this?

With AI-driven insights, it's possible to predict and ascertain the business impact of such instances before they occur and then work to account for and mitigate them.

These tools can be particularly useful for growing businesses, which also face the challenge of utilising increasingly complex technology. Without an efficient way to oversee the various documents scattered across the company, you could be taking on unnecessary risk and limiting the metrics needed to optimise business practices. The inevitable ad hoc or legal review could bring weeks or months of tedious manual investigation.

Docusign Insight uses Seal resources to make your life easier and more productive. For example, Insight deploys machine-learning algorithms to discover the language and clause combinations that matter to your business, specific to industry, type of contract and geographic location.

The AI is adaptable, so the system can train and refine search and analysis algorithms based on your specific contract clauses, improving accuracy and relevancy. The application can dramatically accelerate review times from months to days, increase the accuracy and breadth of reviews, gain actionable insights for business processes improvements, and more. AI-powered contract analytics can revolutionize how organizations manage and analyze their agreements.

Summary: AI Docusign + Seal partner Software

Technology can't do everything, but it can dramatically reduce the time your people spend on mundane admin tasks like contract management, letting them focus on what really matters: growing your business. Advanced eSignature features can further streamline your contract processes, enhancing efficiency and security.