December 20, 2021 | Fairlyeven

Essential Stages of Contract Management

Essential Stages of Contract Management

Contract management is a vital part of any business. Unfortunately, many businesses don't have a formal contract management system in place. If you are looking to improve your business' contract management process, there are several stages that need to be completed before the final execution of it all.

Read on for more information about these stages and how they can benefit your company.

Planning stage

Developing contract management processes that can be implemented company-wide is crucial for keeping things streamlined and organized.

Your contract management policy should be flexible and cover all types of company contracts and agreements, from standard to highly complex contracts.

Implementation stage

After defining your company’s contract management processes, you should apply your strategy before using it. The best way here is to use contract management software to execute contract-related tasks.

Another crucial thing to remember here is onboarding. Thus, ensure that all of your employees and stakeholders understand your objective for contract management and can use the tools comfortably.

Pre-contract stage

In the pre-contract stage, you have to develop a comprehensive document covering your business needs and preventing threats and risks.

In normal circumstances, this stage is simple. Just find the right contract type, input the relevant details, and that’s all. In more complex contracting scenarios, you will have to draft a new document. After developing the new contract, e-signatures will keep things moving.

Handover stage

It’s also simple, especially in large organizations, as the individuals executing a contract are different from those who negotiated it. Hence, ensuring the process is fulfilled as per expectations is vital to ensure a smooth handover. Read the contract terms and confirm roles, responsibilities, and milestones to them for a smooth handover.

Contract stage

In this stage, all of the contract goals come to life – if handled correctly. At this stage, you need to be vigilant and closely review all of the terms mentioned in the agreement. Besides, regular monitoring is also vital to ensure everything remains as expected.

Here you will need a viable action plan or strategy to do so along with a clear sense of critical objectives and performance metrics that assure that everything is on track – or give an early warning if anything unexpected happens.  

Pre-renewal stage

Your contracts are temporary, and they come to an end in various ways. They may end up; naturally, you may renew the contract, or both parties can terminate it mutually. 

Often there are complex and particular terms and even possibly penalties or actions that can terminate the contract and affect the process. Due to this reason, you should consider the end of the agreement in a proactive and timely way.

At this stage, you should evaluate how your contract went and decide whether you wish to recommence it with or without any changes. Besides, ensure that all parties are aware of termination and renewal deadlines and have sufficient time to think about all the information.

Post-contract stage

Once a contract is terminated, you still need to ensure that everything is completed properly. Here you should ensure that all termination conditions have been fulfilled.

Why Fairly Even

The Fairly Even team is dedicated to making it easy for you to understand the different structured data solutions and how they can help meet your business needs. We have a range of solutions and services that will take care of all aspects of contract digitization - from workflow management systems, through signing processes with the legal review, to final compliance reports.

Let us handle all the work, so you don't have to.