And with organizations holding more contracts with third-party vendors and suppliers than ever, an inefficient CLM tool can seriously throw a wrench into any sort of revenue plan. The majority of CLM strategies are less about actually managing their contracts and more about having somewhere to keep them. But this results in outdated or inaccurate information, overlooked contracts, and mismanaged supplier relationships. All of which damage your company’s financial goals, compliance standing, and overall reputation.
Thankfully, there’s a new way to actually manage your contracts — and it takes less work than you might think. Keep reading to learn more.
The Current Model for CLMs
Most organizations rely on legacy (aka outdated) CLM solutions that range from offline, shared spreadsheets to clunky digital contract repositories with no real insights into renewals, spend analysis, or ESG reporting. Even some of the largest, most well-known companies in the world are still in the Dark Ages when it comes to contract management.
The reality is that upgrading your CLM should be at the top of every business’s list of priorities. Especially considering that Goldman Sachs estimates that optimized, automated contract management can result in the following improvements:
90-100% compliance with regulatory guidelines
50% faster contract negotiation cycles
75-90% reduction of erroneous payments
10-30% reduction in operating and processing costs
10-20% headcount reduction
Seems like a no-brainer, right? Yet the majority of organizations are still using archaic forms of CLMs, hemorrhaging money as a result. And regardless of the system they use, they all face the same challenges when it comes to wasted spend, missed renewals, and maintaining supplier relationships.
That’s because from platforms to best practices, each organization’s style and methodology of contract management varies — but there is one common thread: manual processes.
Let’s be clear and concise here: manual processes = human error. People make mistakes, no matter how smart or well-intentioned they are. If you’re depending on humans to do work that AI can do for you — without error — then you might as well be penciling miscalculations and duplicate spend into your annual fiscal plan. The bottom line is that, any way you look at it, current CLMs (those that don’t utilize AI) are seriously lacking in efficiency.
That’s exactly why we created Terzo, a CLM v.2.0 that completely changes the game.
The New Era of Contract Management: Staff Augmentation
What if we told you there was an easier way to keep track of your contracts and cut redundant overhead costs?
The right CLM tool, like Terzo, is a smarter solution that was built for business teams (not just legal) and is powered by advanced AI technology. The AI element means that workflows can be automated, metadata is extracted for you, and features such as spend/risk analysis and vendor performance monitoring are built right into the platform.
But beyond the capabilities of the CLM software, Terzo goes a step further — with staff augmentation services.
Toptal defines it as the following: “Staff augmentation is the use of outside personnel on a temporary basis to augment the capacity of your organization.” Traditionally, staff augmentation is achieved via recruiting agencies, freelance workers, or otherwise outsourced help. However, when using a SaaS tool that provides staff augmentation services, you get to cut out the middleman (and the hiring/onboarding process) of gig workers by using the talent provided by the SaaS solution you already have budget dedicated to. In the case of Terzo, this includes such business process outsourcing capabilities as:
Contract renewal management with alerting, initial contract review, and more
Deploying of best practices in workflow management to execute new contracts, including working with appropriate approvers across cycles to get contracts signed
Ongoing assessments of renewal and new project demand against cost optimization targets defined by the customer
Terzo process implementation and administration of budget planning, including managing calendars, budget set-up, alerting and reporting
Leveraging Terzo’s risk module, building recurring reports to assess vendor risk and workflows to escalate findings for review
Staff augmentation not only helps businesses cut overhead costs, it also accelerates the rate at which tasks can be completed and goals can be hit. Embracing staff augmentation lets your organization pivot away from finding, hiring, and onboarding outsourced employees (i.e. seasonal, project-based, or short-term help), which is a costly and time-consuming process. When you’re paying for a SaaS tool that already includes a service element, a team of trained and trusted experts is already at your disposal, so you can focus on getting things done as opposed to getting people trained.
Discover Improved Contract Management with Our New eBook
The future of contract management is here, and it’s all about leveraging the “service” element of your SaaS solution. Staff augmentation is a major player here, and it’s a premium service we’re excited to be able to offer our customers.
Our latest eBook, Optimization Unlocked: Elevating Your Contract Management Strategy with Services, delves deeper into all the points we’ve covered in this post and then some.
To get your free digital copy, just fill out the form here.
