Your contract management process can either speed up approvals or cause bottlenecks in decision-making. Quite often, signing contracts manually is associated with slow turnaround times and longer contract lifecycles.
To help legal teams move quickly, it’s worth adding an online PDF editor to your contract management system. This will improve the team’s ability to sign contracts and track upcoming deadlines.
There are other guidelines to help you optimize contract management. In this article, we’ll discuss ten best practices for working with legal contracts in business.
Centralize document management
In the past, offices relied on email and fax to centralize business communication, but vital documents could get lost in a pool of messages. After countless edits, it may also be difficult to locate the latest version of a contract.
However, centralized contract storage prevents team members from having a frustrating experience by keeping documents organized and accessible to all.
To send contracts, you only need to share a link and notify the user by email. This centralized hub allows you to store legal agreements securely in one place and never worry about deleted emails or missing paperwork.
Consult your team before choosing
Let your team see the need to introduce processes for automating contract management. Some people are fine with doing things manually, but providing familiar tools can fast-track how they create, sign, send, review, monitor, and edit contracts in the workflow.
Luckily, PDF editors online can easily perform these functions. However, selecting compatible software depends on the team’s direct needs and expectations for managing contracts.
Streamlining the contract process also promises a seamless experience for customers and other stakeholders. It’s important to inform these groups when making significant changes to how legal documents will be prepared and signed.
Choose a document management software
It’s common for businesses to discard executed contracts across drives, computers, or filing cabinets. But how about a secure location that neatly captures all confidential and non-essential contracts?
An edit PDF free software like Lumin acts as a repository for all business-critical files. With this solution, you can:
- Edit PDF contracts from any device,
- Control who has access to legal agreements,
- Access editable contract templates,
- Capture useful data from form fields for data-driven decisions,
- Invite participants to make changes to contracts.
Focus on collaboration features
Everyone needs to be on the same page to achieve faster close rates. To ensure contract success, you must also observe how the document moves from one desk to another.
Document collaboration is an easier way to achieve cohesion and active participation among team members. Use contract management software to set reminders and measure the speed of contract workflows.
With a PDF to editable PDF converter, you can access PDF annotation features for commenting, highlighting, and marking up contracts.
Use version control and audit trail
An audit trail helps you track how changes are made over time, keeping things organized and transparent. During contract negotiations, every business needs software that encourages transparency and accountability.
To deal with the issue of different versions of the same file, use contract management software to standardize versioning. This feature within every document editor ensures consistency in the contracts you create.
Maintain compliance regulations
Another contract management best practice is to ensure compliance with industry regulations. This actively guards your company against any potential legal matters that can arise due to disregard or oversight.
Some essential considerations include updating contract language to reflect current terms, enforcing contract renewals when due, and communicating changes to all stakeholders involved.
You can definitely use software to automate these tasks and ensure legal compliance to protect your company. In case of complex compliance laws, you should seek professional counsel.
Set and track performance indicators
Legal departments are often pressured to go above and beyond to secure contracts and enact approvals quickly. Instead of becoming overwhelmed by the burden of handling office communications, set reasonable KPIs to ensure you follow through.
The metrics you choose should inch you closer to team goals. For instance, your objective could be to get contracts signed faster. Then, break this process into actionable steps that can reduce approval time.
Document collaboration software also helps you maintain visibility on contract status as a way of tracking performance metrics. You can set up reminders for important dates so teams hit targets faster.
Automate manual tasks
Find other routine admin tasks to automate so the legal team can focus on high-value activities. Any repetitive action that drains productive hours should be automated or simplified.
One example is manually collecting data from individual contracts. A contract management tool can automatically capture all the required data on a spreadsheet, allowing you to concentrate on other work.
Many contract management software programs also integrate with the tools your employees already use. This reduces the burden of sharing documents and producing scattered versions of the same file.
Add electronic signature tools
With many businesses moving away from wet ink signatures, your legal team shouldn’t be left behind. Another way to manage contracts faster is to get them signed before the deadline.
Our recommended practice is to enable electronic signatures rather than their scanned or physical counterparts. This action can be completed on an eSigning app like Lumin or Adobe Sign.
Remember, electronic signing features are usually present in advanced tools used to edit PDF pages online. In case you can’t afford dedicated contract automation software, they provide easier ways to attach legally binding signatures on contracts.
Use only storage platforms
You may opt for quick fixes when you notice errors on your contract minutes before hitting Send. However, you shouldn’t upload sensitive documents to the web without first ensuring their security.
A web-based PDF modifier online doesn’t guarantee the security of data uploaded on their sites. In fact, your data can be stolen when you expose them to free-to-use malicious software.
It’s good practice to use only secure cloud services as interfaces for editing legal agreements. The last thing you want is to run into legal problems for ethical misconduct and non-compliance.
Six things to consider when choosing the right PDF editing tool
A PDF tool can serve as an all-in-one contract automation software for managing contracts. To ensure good returns on investment, only select tools that match your current needs.
When dealing with legal PDFs, here are important questions to ask before choosing a PDF editor:
- Do I want to edit or view PDF only?
- Can I get a built-in PDF highlighter online to annotate sections of text?
- Does it have features to extract data from forms?
- Do I need to split or merge PDFs sometimes?
- Does it offer advanced security features?
- How secure will my PDF contracts be?
Answering these questions will help you choose editing software that can address all your legal contract creation problems.
Conclusion
Applying these best practices will help you get the most out of contract management. Your workflows will be easier to handle, negotiations will be swifter, and your teams will record shorter approval times.
More so, contractual agreements are highly sensitive documents that require the utmost care. When handling contracts and legal docs, you also need to ensure compliance with industry standards.
That’s where automation tools come in. Invest in an easy-to-use online PDF editor to automate all kinds of contract tasks for a more secure engagement.
