Robust contract data management, contract analytics and contract data security provide the necessary insights and protection for organisations to cut contract lifecycle times with enhanced control, governance, security and visibility.  You can transform contracts into powerful, data-driven sources of business intelligence that support contract strategy, contract management KPIs and goals with the help of leading contract management software. 

Utilise VISDOM AI® for contract data extraction

Leading-edge contract management artificial intelligence such as our proprietary contract intelligence engine with machine learning – VISDOM AI – can be leveraged for future-minded contract data extraction and contract data classification.

AI-based contract management software is crucial in helping businesses like yours swiftly import contract records, request records and other contract and related data into your contract management system more time-efficiently and with fewer data entry errors.

With VISDOM AI, contract documents can easily be uploaded to an organisation’s contract management system.  Once these documents are processed (undergo an OCR process), users can determine the type of record they want to create from a list of various options, including contracts, vendor/customer records, requests, purchase order records, employee records and eSourcing records.

Organisations using this VISDOM functionality choose a contract type for a given document and – on processing the document through VISDOM’s data extraction interface – can see field mapping of key data such as key dates, record details, clauses, contact information, addresses, confidentiality notes and renewal notes auto-extracted from that document.  So organisations reduce time wasted on manual data entry and can instead focus on value-driving contract strategy.

VISDOM data extraction is extremely helpful for organisations that must manage legacy contracts but lack adequate resources to import bulk data.  The above mentioned process applies, permitting you to keep both legacy contracts and newly added contracts in a consistent format in a centralised repository.

Leverage VISDOM AI to safeguard data

Contract data can’t be used for the above mentioned helpful processes and contract data analytics if reliability and security are compromised. So it’s best to establish measures to fastidiously protect data.  Organisations need to be equipped with the best tools to identify sensitive data such as payment card information (PCI) and personally identifiable information (PII) so that contract compliance issues and increased contract risk are avoided.

Luckily, VISDOM AI can help users of our leading source-to-contract management software platform – Contract Insight® – identify and safeguard sensitive contract data types such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates, counterparty names, locations and other critical information.  This robust data protection functionality helps organisations configure which sensitive data should be withheld from a contract.

VISDOM users can choose data types and configure rules for access to those data based on contract types.  Once these rules are put in place, they can be automated with the help of VISDOM, promoting heightened contract security, decreased financial losses, an enhanced reputation for organisations and the reduction of time wasted performing tedious data import analysis.

Easily perform automated contract searches

With contracts and related documents stored within shared drives, it can be difficult to keep tabs of document versions and updated contract details due to inadequate and error-prone searching methods and the lack of audit trails.  A contract data management process that maximises a searchable and user-friendly contract repository promotes transparency and visibility into document versions and provides organisations with improved contract tracking and contract status updates.  Contract Insight can provide this useful functionality.

For the improvement of contract search processes, Contract Insight offers several options.  Quick Search in Contract Insight allows you to easily browse through your contract management software system for documents that feature specified keywords. 

Your users can use Contract Insight Simple Search to browse a specific contract data category – such as counterparty name, department, or account number – to narrow down search results.  Simple Search is more granular and specific, so it’s ideal when users already know specifics about a given contract or record.

Users can also search for system reports with ad-hoc report searches to see reports containing specified contract data or counterparty information – for example: service contracts over $10,000.

With contract search data at a glance, organisations can supercharge their data-driven contract management processes.

Take advantage of contract management reports

Organisations using Contract Insight can configure reports based upon key dates, contract financials, and categorised data fields with configurable ad hoc reports.

Contract management reports provide users with transparency of contractual relationships across contract portfolios.  These reports feature comprehensive, full audit trails.

Convenient and user-friendly ad-hoc reporting tools allow youo to generate reports – or saved searches – based on out-of-the-box or user-defined fields.  Your users can make changes to contract records straight from the ad-hoc report view page in Contract Insight, allowing them to maximise data fields for improved, streamlined contract data management.

Contract Insight ad-hoc reports include:

• active contracts in the system
• expiring contracts in the system
• expired contracts in the system
• contract amounts
• contracts by department
• contracts by status
• contracts in review
• contract key dates and milestones.

Users can review reports on their contract management system dashboards or report lists, or they can configure them to be sent via email on a scheduled, recurring basis.

With the help of contract management reports that help you quickly access important data about your contracts, your business can make the most of contract data for smarter source-to-contract management processes.

Supercharge contract data analysis with intuitive dashboards 

Users can access out-of-the-box and user-configured dashboards for more personalised, data-driven contract management processes.

Dashboards can be set to appear by contract status, and system administrators can assign specific dashboards to specific user groups.  Organisations can also configure reports to be sent to employees via automated email in spreadsheet form – even if the employees set to receive the emails are not licensed users – so contract parties and contract stakeholders can easily view essential contract data.

In addition to legacy dashboards, users are encouraged to leverage executive graphical dashboards.  Readily-available system-defined executive graphical dashboard types include the following:

• contracts KPI
• contracts overview
• counts by department
• legal
• vendor management
• year analysis
• bids overview

The ‘Contract Insight Contracts KPI’ Executive Graphical Dashboard is displayed below.

Users can – of course – create their own Executive Graphical Dashboards and configure the display of contract analytics for their organisation’s needs.

Visually engaging and user-friendly dashboards promote efficient contract data management and, consequently, well-governed contract lifecycle management.

Optimise Contract Data Management with Contract Insight

Organisations can position themselves for long-term success with contract data management processes that are founded upon the goal of efficiently and effectively gathering quality contract data and analysing them quickly and accurately to make informed, intelligent business decisions.

With the aid of a contract management solution that equips you with the right tools to extract, search, protect, report, and analyse data effortlessly in one central location, your business can experience more control over contracts, an expedited contract lifecycle, and boosted contract management ROI.  The solution we recommend is Contract Insight.

Contract Insight’s source-to-contract management software provides comprehensive contract tracking, configurable email alerts, calendar notifications, contract workflow management, contract writing, authoring of contract templates with dynamic clauses, robust security options, revenue and cost management, full-text indexing and searching, custom reports, document version control, smarter contracts with artificial intelligence and machine learning, electronic signatures, and more. 

Contract Insight from Four

Contract Insight is a cloud-hosted (SaaS) or deployed (on-premise) contract management solution.  The acclaimed platform is trusted by thousands of professionals for their contract management, legal document management, procurement and sourcing needs.  Used by many Fortune 500 companies, Contract Insight gives you real time visibility into your contracts. It doesn’t just shore up your security; it will help you meet contract compliance regulations, centralise your contract management and improve your overall contract administration process.

For more information, contact John O’Brien, CEO at Four Business Solutions, global business consultants and software integrators providing business processes improvements in Finance, Supply Chain and Operations, across a broad range of industries.