Improved Contract Management Increases SMBs’ Bottom Line

One, faster contract renewals. Contracts contain critical dates that impact your SMB’s bottom line. Many small businesses track these deadlines, including pending renewals, manually and – at best – fail to take advantage of approaching points in time or – at worst – completely miss time limits. Contract management allows your SMB to take full advantage of opportunities as they approach…and avoid financial and legal risks.

Contract management can alert small business owners when a renewal date is on the horizon. It can also monitor contractual obligations that arise from specific dates, ensuring that whoever is managing a given contractual relationship will be fully informed as to a deadline’s consequences. As a result, relevant SMB staff will be in a stronger position to renegotiate pricing and other terms, potentially lowering costs, reducing risk, or increasing a supplier’s performance.

Two, increased contract security. Many SMBs still rely on file cabinets, email attachments and computer hardware to store contracts. As a result, it can be extremely difficult for SMBs to find, manage and control contract access to important, and often confidential, information. Lack of enhanced contract management exposes your contracts to unauthorized persons like strangers, thieves and hackers.

Contract management security featuring such preventive measures as multi-factor authentication, encryption and data backup, enhances the privacy of your contracts. It also provides an audit trail that tracks all changes made to contracts, enabling SMBs to monitor access, including who has the ability to modify and edit contract data. Improved contract management helps ensure your contracts are in compliance with regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR and CCPA. And confidence in your contract security enhances your confidence in revenue streams arising from that compliance.

Three, responding quickly to requests. Sales are critical to SMB success. But your sales personnel must be kept current regarding contracts and their accompanying obligations. Improved contract management makes such tasks easy. For example, if an account representative receives a complaint significant enough to jeopardize a contract, she can alert the appropriate stakeholder who can then review contract data about the relationship. As a result, sales can maintain revenue that would have otherwise been lost.

Four, encouraging cross-selling. Improved contract management promotes cross-selling (and upselling) opportunities for SMBs. Rather than search through unstructured data or reams of paper, you can search for information among thousands of pages of contracts quickly and easily. Sales personnel, for instance, can compile past performance information and look for opportunities to sell additional products and services, all with the aim of increasing revenue.

Five, aggregating contract data from several sources into a single location. Improved contract management allows SMBs to have a single source of truth; i.e., a trustworthy repository of information about all of the company’s contracts. As a result, SMBs can enjoy smoother, more efficient operations, fewer opportunities for error, and greater opportunity for profit. A single source of truth also means better decisions. Contract management analytics delivers insights that uncover new opportunities for SMB growth, as well as helps identify potential cost-savings.

These are just a handful of ways in which improved contract management can improve SMBs’ bottom line. Whether small business owners need to review contracts, enhance relationships, reduce risk, streamline renewals or increase security, improved contract management delivers timely and deep insights designed to grow your SMB.

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About Vyapi: We’re a global legal services company providing affordable and customized contract solutions designed to meet the unique needs of small and medium-sized businesses.

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