Have you heard about Contract Insight? It’s contract management software from Cobblestone that will make your life easier. If your business is still managing its contracts with filing cabinets and spreadsheets, rather than software, you might be missing out on profits without even realising it.

A report from the Journal of Contract Management  has found that 71 per cent of companies can’t locate up to 10 per cent of their contracts. That’s time, profit and potential growth all lost. Not to mention the stress and wasted hours. These days, it doesn’t have to be that way. The digital revolution means that everyone can enjoy well-organised, easy-access contracts at the press of a button, simply by deploying the right software.

As CEO of Four Business, I’ve seen this transformation many times. One of the many rewarding parts of my job is seeing the relief (and sometimes joy!) on purchasing and contract managers’ faces once they get contract management software installed.

What is Contract Insight?
At Four Business, we recommend a contract management system called Contract Insight, made by the experts at Cobblestone. Its software is already used by many Fortune 500 companies and other large organisations, including banks, law firms, governments, retailers and manufacturers.

Contract Insight is designed for professionals. It lets you track, create, sign and manage contracts through their whole lifecycle. Helpful tools such as e-signatures and collaboration platforms are included, plus deadline alerts, revision tracking and more.

One of the things I particularly like about Contract Insight is that it can be customised to suit each business, with configurable dashboards and alerts.  Our customers also say they enjoy the chance to use cloud-based negotiation, with back-and-forth tracking, negotiation and redlines. Of course, data is always kept safe, but still easy to access, and using Contract Insight means you won’t ever again miss a contract alert or obligation.

We’ve been working with Cobblestone for many years, mainly because I believe it offers one of the best returns on investment. Crucially, it also makes its users happy. That’s important to me – I like to make sure people and technology work well together.  I’ve put together this at-a-glance guide to illustrate why I believe Contract Insight is such a good investment.

Getting started
Contract Insight lets you control every stage of your contract management process at the click of a mouse, from first draft through to compliance and renewal. It’s designed to help you create revenue, drive down costs, speed up sales and stay robustly compliant.

It’s configurable, scalable and will also lower contract expenses, increase margins and limit the total cost of ownership. I’m also keen on this software because it’s so user friendly. Contract Insight doesn’t throw up hurdles, it has a clean, simple database and can be up and running very quickly.

We can deploy Contract Insight in the cloud with minimal hardware and IT costs (Software as a Service) or licensed on your premises, whichever suits your business better. And if you’re not sure, we can help you work that out too.

Contract Insight Features

Return on investment
Contract Insight is used by a wide range of organisations and it has helped all of them save time and money. Here are a few statistics from industry research which show how moving from the filing cabinet to the cloud can provide a dramatic ROI:

• Goldman Sachs estimated that companies spend almost 5% of their revenue to track agreements after signing a contract
• PricewaterhouseCoopers has found that 12% of a company’s total annual costs may be devoted to contract management and administrative tasks
• Goldman Sachs reports that companies using contract management software can reduce annual contract management expenses by 20 to 50 per cent.

(Source: Cobblestone Systems ROI calculator)

Is Contract Insight right for you?
Take a look at the following questions. If any of the issues they raise resonate with you and your own organisation, then Contract Insight might just be what you need to improve your contract management.

• If your contract manager suddenly left, would you have a problem locating information?
• Do your sales employees present non-standard contract terms to potential/prospect clients?
• Have you missed key contract dates, such as option renewal, or automatic term rollover
• Can you quickly recall the number of contracts you manage that will expire in the next 3 months? 6 months?
• Have you ever paid for something you didn’t need because you missed a negative option on a contract?
• If you’re asked by senior management about a specific contract are you able to respond quickly?
• Could risk or business levels be exceeded with a specific supplier due to different departments unknowingly contracting them twice?
• Can you track organisational cash flow back to specific contracts?
• Do you know the status of contracts anywhere in their lifecycle?
• Can you provide a summary of your organisation’s contractual liabilities for a vendor? For a department? For a time-frame?
• Can you quickly determine and account for bottlenecks in the process or flow of contracts?

Why use software?
I’m constantly surprised by the number of organisations that still run a paper-based contract management system.  There are many advantages to going digital, not least your exposure to risk.

The challenge in assessing risk is that mistakes often go unnoticed, then surface later in the details, or when merging contracts. Contract management software starts to mitigate this, by making details visible to all necessary business users. With automated and in-depth reporting, managers can rest assured that, when risk exists, it can be brought to their attention, rather than slipping through the cracks.

Software As A Service (SaaS)
There are two ways that we can install Contract Insight. The first one is called a ‘hosted’ or SaaS licence. This means the software is delivered on-demand, via the web. There is no software to download, no long-term licensing contracts or ongoing maintenance; it’s all included in your subscription. You can access your system anytime, anywhere via a web browser. It includes the latest release of software, full support and maintenance.

The alternative is known as a ‘client deployed’ licence. This puts the software directly onto your organisation’s servers. It means the entire application is in your environment and under your control. It allows you and your employees to access your contract system anytime, anywhere via your hosted servers. Four Business Solutions provides full deployment including installation, configuration and support.

One of our success stories
Recently we deployed Contract Insight for the pharmaceutical company Napp, a successful UK business that manufactures and markets medicines around the world.

Napp was keen to take control of its contract management and wanted an electronic system embedded across operations, so it could manage risks and take advantage of clear, regular reporting. Contract Insight will deal with any type of contract, agreement, patent or licence, a requirement that is particularly relevant for the healthcare industry.

We provided full support to Napp from our platform of installation services, (which includes bulk and large volume training if required), plus online e-video and learning tutorials. Napp was extremely pleased with the results from Contract Insight.

Napp, Project Manager, Taposh Bhattacharya, told us:

‘Four helped us deploy a contract management solution that has improved the processing, management and visibility of all our contract work. As a pharmaceutical business, we have to be able to properly manage risk, which this gives us. Four have been a real pleasure to work with and we now intend to use them across the rest of our group.’

Learn more
For further detail on Contract Insight features, contact me at [email protected] or call us to discuss a free product demonstration on 44 (0) 800 6250 025.