Top 5 questions about contract lifecycle management software

At Zefort, we constantly communicate with all kinds of companies, from established enterprises to aspiring startups. Surprisingly enough, no matter the company size, businesses struggle with similar contract management challenges.

When talking with our customers, we also tend to get the same questions. Here’s the TOP 5 questions we get.

#1. Why would we need a separate contract lifecycle management software?

Let’s answer this question with a few counter questions.

Do you know where all your contracts are stored right now?

If you needed a specific contract right now, would you find it easily?

Do you get automatic reminders of important events, such as contract renewal dates?

If you answered “Yes” to all of the above, you might not need a contract management solution.

If you answered “No” or “Not sure”, here’s where a dedicated contract management tool saves your day.

2. What is so smart about your contract management solution?

Let’s face it – the everyday chores of contract management (like entering metadata to enable search) can be somewhat time consuming. You could even say that a professional’s time, expertise, and motivation are wasted lost doing tasks like these.

That’s where smart automation kicks in.

We do most of the boring stuff for you. For example, Zefort automatically searches the essential metadata from new contracts. Or, we make your entire contract base searchable – you can find the exact phrase you are looking for in seconds, not minutes or even hours.

Our guiding design principle is zero-effort contract management. This means saving your time and effort.

3. Is my contract data safe?

Can I trust Zefort to keep my sensitive and valuable data safe?

In short: Yes.

In more detail: information security is our second top priorities in development (the other is User Experience). We have a ISO 27001 certification to prove that our ISMS (Information Security Management System) is a top-notch implementation. Our security solutions have been inspected and evaluated by many of our corporate customers that include IT Security companies, banks and other financial institutions. So, we’re proud to say that Zefort has bank-level security.

4. Does Zefort involve a heavy IT implementation project?

No. All our key features are available through a web browser. You can sign up and start using Zefort right now, if you want. Open an account, add the users you want and start uploading contracts – that’s it.

We can also guide you set up automation from eSignature services, provide an API to integrate Zefort and your existing systems or help you to import your existing contract base to Zefort efficiently. Our service scales to you needs.

Taking a new solution into use always changes existing processes and requires that people change the way they work. We have done our best to flatten the learning curve and to make sure investments made in changing current processes result in more efficient workflows and time savings.

5. How can we justify contract management system cost?

Although we do have a free trial, most of our customers end up selecting a monthly payment plan from the get go.

Typically, we guide our customers to calculate their return on investment with the following scenarios in mind:

a) Time you spend uploading and searching for contracts

With traditional IT solutions, a contract entry may take up to 30 minutes. Finding a contract you need might take hours (or even be impossible, if the contract is physically located somewhere else). With Zefort, automated contract upload takes just a few minutes and all your contracts are right at your fingertips.

Every time saving adds up and you end up saving hours and hours of your time.

b) Costs related to missed activities

Let’s say that you have subscribed to a handy SaaS solution, which you no longer need.

Typically you recall this subscription only when you receive an invoice for the next contract term – meaning you missed the termination date. If only you had had a solution that reminded you about the renewal well in advance…

c) Compliancy and risk management

Ask your CEO or Head of Legal of a price tag related of having all your contracts and other administrative documents in one central location, with secure access from anywhere, powerful search engine to help find the right document and reminders related to all relevant activities.

We wager that “priceless” is a word you might get as an answer.