Office 365 and SharePoint: The Keys To Contract Lifecycle Management

Selecting an appropriate contract lifecycle management solution that is fit for your organization's specific needs and objectives can be a very difficult process that requires lots of thought and consideration. Businesses of all sizes should take a considerable amount of time when deciding which contact software to use. Enterprises must especially take this process seriously, weighing the pros and cons of the various contract lifecycle management software platforms available. Today, there is a myriad of contract management solutions that use leading business apps and tools. Many of these platforms leverage Office 365, SharePoint, Power BI, Microsoft Dynamics, E-signature integrations, and much more. Choosing a contract lifecycle management system that assimilates with your existing infrastructure offers several advantages that makes the implementation and deployment phase remarkably easy. Leveraging your existing infrastructure allows you to save costs in several places, rather than having to spend additional funds on a third-party system.

Office 365 and SharePoint are the main solutions used by the majority of Fortune 500 companies for workplace collaboration. For optimized and effective contract lifecycle management, there must be streamlined channels of communication that allow for efficient cross-department collaboration. Office 365 and SharePoint are the best solutions offered today for collaboration.

Office 365 and SharePoint are internationally recognized as the leading online workplace collaboration business solutions for enterprise-level organizations. These solutions solve several problems and manage many tasks via automation for contract management teams and legal departments. Because Office 365 and SharePoint are so widely used, employees are often already familiar with these solutions, making it easy for them to transition to such contract lifecycle management software with an Office 365 and SharePoint base. A major highlight of Office 365 and SharePoint for managing contract lifecycles is the way that these solutions can be integrated with additional Microsoft applications and tools including Outlook, Office, and more. Storing documents securely, locating documents, automating contract lifecycles, and staying up to date on obligations is simple and effective with these solutions.

Now, let’s discuss some key reasons why Office 365 and SharePoint are perfect for contract lifecycle management and why you should use them as the central platform for your contracting processes.

Securely Store and Retrieve Documents With a Cloud Secure Repository

Office 365 and SharePoint function as a premiere digital repository for all of your contracts and associated documents. Within your repository, you can document all of your obligations, milestones, profiles, and other relevant contract information in a single place. In this manner, your repository serves as a single source of truth where any of your contract and legal employees can access all contract-related data. Retrieving exact contracts is simple with customizable filters and keyword-based search functionalities.

Increase Productivity with Microsoft App Integrations

Office 365 and SharePoint can be integrated with Microsoft Teams, Power BI, Dynamics 365, Word, Outlook, and more. With these integrations, contract departments and legal teams can swiftly author, review, edit and delegate tasks and documents throughout the company to streamline contract lifecycle management overall.

Keep Contracts Secure with Multi-Factor Authentication, Permissions-Based Access, and Audit Trails

Safeguarding your contract data and confidential client information against a data breach and unauthorized users is made possible with the top-of-the-line security offered by Office 365 and SharePoint. Multi-factor authentication, permissions-based and role-based access, and audit trails work as key contract risk mitigation and security tools that are capable of monitoring sensitive contract data. In addition, we recommend making the most of your system’s audit trail feature so that you can gain full insights on exactly which users accessed, edited, or terminated certain documents and other data within your online contract management software.

Scale Your Contract Lifecycle Management With Office 365 and SharePoint

Office 365 and SharePoint are conducive to scaling your organization’s contract management, as each of these solutions are able to support a maximum of 500 million files. From small business to enterprises, Office 365 and SharePoint are perfect for companies of any size.

Locate Documents Within Seconds With Optimized Search Features

Gain the most effortless contract search and retrieval ability with Office 365 and SharePoint. These solutions assist companies by increasing accessibility to contracts with full-text search, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), multi-language support, and customizable search filters for all of your company’s files and data.

Collaborate and Communicate Effectively

Document collaboration and maintaining accurate version control is easy with Office 365 and SharePoint. These solutions empower organizations with secure collaboration capabilities where users can share files internally and externally. Co-authoring, redlining, and editing documents are activities that are optimized by Office 365 and SharePoint, where users can oversee all contract activities in real-time. In this manner, contract drafting, reviews, approvals, negotiations, and signing and execution are accurate and standardized within the platform. Multiple users can collaborate on any given document at the same time without worrying about being on the wrong draft version, and this allows contract management teams to increase productivity and get more accomplished in less time.

Maintain Contract Version Control

Document version control is one of the star features of Office 365 and SharePoint – perfectly suited for contract lifecycle management. With SharePoint Online, you can enable document “check-in” and “check-out” features, oversee approvals, and effectively control all drafts and versions during every contract’s lifecycle. Both Office 365 and SharePoint do a stellar job at supporting contract management teams in maintaining document accuracy and monitoring the changes within company documents. Every past version and draft of a given document is timestamped and stored securely, where employees can access them whenever desired during the contract management lifecycle.

Improve Management of Organizational Metadata

What contract metadata do you most regularly monitor? Some common examples of contract metadata include contract type, contract value, contract term start and end dates, auto renewal dates, and more. All of these items can be appropriate managed in a centralized manner with Office 365 and SharePoint. Furthermore, these solutions allow users to search and categorize metadata according your business’s needs and requirements.

Conclusion

It’s evident that Office 365 and SharePoint offer incredible capabilities and advantages that will help your organization powerfully manage contracts, boost productivity and scalability, and maximize results. Here at Dock 365, we offer a cost-efficient and proven approach to contract lifecycle management that leverages your existing Office 365 and SharePoint tenant so you can easily implement and use your new contract management system. Optimize your contracts and gain the competitive edge with Dock 365 today.

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