How would you streamline the approval process to accelerate contract finalization?

A sluggish contract approval process can delay projects, strain relationships, and ultimately impact your bottom line. Think of your contract objectives as a roadmap. They outline the desired outcomes, define the key milestones, and provide a clear direction for the approval process. Before initiating any discussions, ensure that all stakeholders have a shared understanding of the contract's purpose, scope, and desired outcomes. This involves clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of each approver, establishing timelines for review and feedback, and identifying potential bottlenecks or areas of contention. By setting clear objectives, you create a shared vision and a sense of urgency, propelling the approval process forward.

Start with clear objectives for the contract. Ensure everyone understands the goals and key terms. When objectives are clear, everyone knows what to look for, speeding up the approval process.

Clear approval process: Define roles, deadlines, and workflow. Centralized system: Use a contract management system for easy access and tracking. Digital tools: Employ e-signatures, automation, and AI for efficiency. Optimized process: Allow parallel reviews, batch approvals, and continuous improvement. Effective communication: Keep everyone informed and address issues promptly. Security: Protect contract data with access controls. In essence, streamline the process, leverage technology, and improve communication.

One of the most important things about objectives is active listening. Not what you know before negotiations is key but also which objectives your partner has. And by enabling him to reach his key objectives you make it much easier for him to grant you the key constraints you need. Boldly going for your key objectives might also be an obstructive strategy. Your partner than knows what you're up for and will increase the price for his wishes.

Clearly defined roles and objectives should be established, as well as a list of key provisions that are non-negotiable/required, desirable and prohibitive as part of the contract. Comprehensive tracking of red-lines and proposed changes, in addition to clearly communicated turnaround time expectations, are also vital parts of successful contract negotiation as these manage timeline expectations, document the evolution of the negotiation and provide insight into the intentions of the parties. A well-organized and robust contract management system and database also streamline the workflow process, including the execution phase, and ensure that the appropriate parties have access to the relevant documents.

Keep all relevant data in one central location. Use a shared platform where all team members can access necessary documents. Centralizing data reduces time wasted searching for information.

To accelerate contract finalization, centralize all relevant data and documents in a single, accessible location. This could be a shared drive, a cloud-based platform, or a dedicated contract management system. By centralizing data, you eliminate the need for endless email threads, frantic searches for missing documents, and frustrating back-and-forth communication. Approvers can easily access the latest version of the contract, review previous comments and feedback, and track the progress of the approval process in real-time. You can monitor approval times, track revisions, and generate reports to identify patterns and trends. You transform the approval process from a chaotic scramble into a well-oiled machine.

Implement automated workflows for the approval process. Use software that can send automatic notifications and track progress. Automation helps ensure that approvals move quickly and nothing gets overlooked.

Assign specific roles and responsibilities to team members. Ensure that each person knows their part in the approval process. Effective delegation prevents bottlenecks and keeps the process moving smoothly.

The question is how many resources you have in your company's staff for contracting. Smaller companies might have only two or three officers for the job. So each of them must cover a broader array of functions. But in any way it's important that all sectors remain represented. And building specialised "silos" is also a curse for bigger entities. Specialist A does data protection, specialist B does data transfer, Specialist C does file specifications for registration, Specialist D does file specifications for authorisation and Specialist E does file specifications for settlements. If no-one orchestrates the parts of the specialists intro a masterpiece, the outcome must be a pure catastrophy!

Legal insight is most important in every transaction but it's significance increases manifold in a regulated environment. Obviously, every transaction has to go through from the applicable approval process. In the similar nature of transactions a blanket approval must be in place before finalising the contract. In this way the relevant authority may have insight before formal approval of the transaction and the same will be less time consuming.

Within our company, contracts need to be very technical and descriptive, giving a clear view of the technical and procedural requirements. But a legal review is always needed to include the legal view and avoiding left out contractual parts that need to be there and to also respect new legal requirements like NIS-2 and DORA.

Establish clear deadlines for each step of the approval process. Communicate these deadlines to all stakeholders. Deadlines help keep everyone on track and ensure timely approvals.

Use pre-approved papers and standardized clauses to reduce negotiation time and ensure consistency. Addition to this use contract management software to automate routing, notifications, and approvals.