Our Contract Challenges series has previously talked about search metadata, order vs. chaos in contract data and forgetting signed contracts altogether.
In most companies, contracts are made and managed separately in each department. Sales keeps track of sales agreements. HR has the ball on work contracts. IT and procurement manage their own contracts and so on.
While this sounds perfectly reasonable, it also introduces some problems.
- How can anyone get an overall picture of the company’s contractual obligations? Or check all contracts (sales, HR, procurement, etc.) related to a specific business area within the company?
- If contracts are stored in department-specific silos, where should more generic contracts be archived? Contracts like NDAs, insurances, that one-time contract for the magic performance at the company’s annual party?
- What about contracts that interest several departments at the same time? Say you are hiring a freelance consultant to develop your IT systems: should you store the contract in your HR silo, IT silo or procurement silo? Or in all of them?
When a company has built silos in its contract management, it is typical that some departments do contract management well and others, well, do much worse. When you spend time looking for contracts from email attachments, you know that there is room for improvement.
How Zefort handles this challenge
Zefort is a contract archival solution where you can store all of your organization’s contracts and contract-like documents, easily and efficiently. Zefort’s user management allows you to easily define who in your organization can see specific contracts.
