Contract preparation

Creating and managing customer, vendor, partner, or employee contracts is a routine yet mission-critical activity in all organizations. Major contract preparation activities include contract drafting, baselining, keeping the contract boilerplates accessible, and customizing them for clients.

• Authoring and negotiation is an iterative and collaborative process between business leaders and the legal experts (internal or external). Managing the two-way communication during collaboration is a challenge and has a direct bearing on the final outcome.
• Once a draft meets all the requirements, the contract is baselined. Any improvements or changes are made to the baselined version. Unavailability of the baselined version could result in subsequent versioning issues.
• Once created, boilerplate contracts need optimal visibility to be easily located and accessed by teams and individuals. Not managing this could result in people accessing incorrect or older versions of contracts.
• Customizing a contract for customers, vendors, partners, or employees may require the sales, product/service, pricing, legal, and HR teams to first work on sections of the contract and then collaborate. In such situations, email chains tend to be confusing and could result in communication tangles.

How Qontext Helps

• Create a Contract Development group at the beginning of the contract creation activity. Invite all the contract development stakeholders to the group. You may invite non-members, consultants, or clients as guests. During the contract drafting phase, communicate with the group using short messages or discussions and alert specific individuals you are expecting responses from.
• Upload the baselined version of the contract to a folder within the group and send a short message to the group to point to its location. If appropriate, feature content on the availability of the new contract and details on accessing it.
• When customizing the boilerplate for a client, each member works on the assigned sections and uploads the documents (Qontext saves them as versions). Updates are notified to the group members as alerts. The person assigned to compile the final version goes through the versions, compiles the contract, and invites the group to view and approve it. Once approved, tag the contract for future reference.