by Imed Bouchrika, Phd
Contracts provide businesses with legal protection and growth opportunities in many aspects, from sales to human resources (HR). Over the decades, business software has boosted company scalability, and contract management software solutions certainly have been keeping up with modernization efforts.
Many of these digital tools provide end-to-end automated contract management support for simplified document creation, secure collaboration, and smooth execution and renewal for future transactions. As a result, global adoption in the public and private sectors is expected to continuously increase in the following years. Contract management software statistics show that the 2021 global market was valued at around $2 billion and is projected to increase to $5 billion by 2032 (Future Market Insights, 2022).
The Research.com team compiled the best contract management software solutions of today, their features, and their benefits to assist organizations in deciding which ones are the best for them.
Contracts are central to any organization, ensuring that every agreement among involved parties is honored. Because these formal written promises are at the heart of many major business decisions, contract managers are hired for their legal expertise to thoroughly oversee each step of the contract management process—from creation and collaboration to signing and renewal. Their analysis of contractual information may also provide insights to improve businesses’ operational and financial performance.
Because of the demands of the job, contract management software solutions have been adopted by organizations globally for convenience, efficiency, and engagement. These digital tools not only allow automation but also provide multimedia features to foster an interactive environment between the “buyer” and the “seller.” Many of them have open APIs as well, which may make them compatible with other online solutions, such as HR software and productivity tools.
In 2021, contract management software statistics show that North America dominated the global market with a revenue share of 39.4%. The region was followed by Europe at 28%, Asia-Pacific at 23%, Latin America at 5%, and the Middle East and Africa at 4.6% (Precedence Research, 2022).
Source: Precedence Research, 2022
Additionally, recent market research found that the United States is the “key revenue contributor” to the global contract management software market. By 2032, the U.S. is forecast to gain an absolute dollar opportunity growth of $1.5 billion (Future Market Insights, 2022).
In terms of industry adoption, healthcare and life sciences dominated the market in the vertical segment with a CAGR of 13.9% from 2015 to 2022 (Future Market Insights, 2022). The sector depends on secure and accessible contract management software to procure legally approved drugs, medical equipment, and clinical trial data. The pharmaceutical industry has also reported a reduced contract turnaround for drug trials by 90% with the help of special software features.
The continuous global subscription growth may be due to demands for efficient and sustainable contract management procedures. The COVID-19 pandemic may have also influenced the following contract management software trends:
The current contract management software trends—automation, AI support, and secure data sharing—ensure that each phase of the contract management process is properly documented and that collaboration is optimized for the successful completion of projects and transactions.
Today, many contract management software solutions have already been developed and are used by elite organizations around the world. The Research.com team compiled the best online solutions that may help your business streamline its contract management processes for increased productivity and profitability.
PandaDoc is an all-in-one contract management software that organizations can use to create documents, collaborate among stakeholders, and provide free e-signatures. The platform allows businesses to produce customizable, on-brand documents, such as proposals, quotes, and contracts.
PandaDoc also integrates with CRM software and productivity suites and provides users with real-time insights to assist businesses in making decisions for growth.
PandaDoc offers a free e-signature feature and allows users to create documents for a minimum fee of $19/user/month.
LinkSquares is an AI-powered contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution developed mainly for legal teams. It is an online contract repository that aims to simplify each step of the contract management process, from draft to signature to execution.
LinkSquares has been providing work flexibility for over 700 legal teams from mid-to-large companies as it allows in-app collaboration and integration with CRM and productivity tools, such as Salesforce and Google Drive.
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GetAccept is an “award-winning digital sales room” for B2B organizations, serving more than 50 countries. Developed with the seller-buyer relationship in mind, the platform helps sales teams close deals with their dynamic follow-up features, including video, live chat, and SMS.
GetAccept’s multimedia element keeps the virtual contract management environment “personal and engaging” for clients and prospects. The online solution also centralizes storage for case studies, demos, and presentations to ensure businesses are well-prepared for prospect conversion.
GetAccept offers free accounts for individual sales professionals and plans that start at $15/user/month for sales teams.
Proposify is an online proposal management tool utilized specifically for sales, marketing, and operations. With its Content Library, marketing and sales teams have access to a centralized and organized content catalog, which includes templates, images, and case studies, among others.
With the Design Editor, Proposify enables users to personalize documents with multimedia elements, from font to video. With roles and permissions functionalities, assignments and workflow are clear-cut, avoiding confusion in terms of details and responsibility.
Proposify plans start at $49/user/month with a 14-day free trial.
DealHub.io is a contract management software platform that oversees the entire online sales process from quote to renewal. Its Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) feature generates professional price quotes while its CLM feature automates and streamlines the contract management process.
DealHub.io also automates subscriptions, renewals, and payments, among others, and developed a feature called DealRoom to provide organizations with a single digital location for collaboration with buyers and stakeholders.
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Juro is a contract automation platform developed by lawyers and software engineers and used by legal, HR, sales, finance, and operations teams. It comes equipped with various features that enable the fast creation of contracts as well as seamless online negotiations. The platform even has workflow functions to accelerate approvals.
These aside, Juro supports eSignatures so you can collect signatures on any device. It can also be used to store all of your contracts in one place for easier tracking and renewal processes.
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Oneflow is a contract automation platform that’s popular among legal, sales, HR, and procurement teams owing to its end-to-end automation of the entire contract management process. The platform enables businesses to create documents from scratch or from pre-built templates. With permission control and audit trail options, team heads are assured that Oneflow is a secure digital space for optimized collaboration.
Oneflow also provides users with digital and electronic signing features on any device. Moreover, it comes equipped with tools for PDF contracts, commenting, audit trail creation, data portability, and dashboard generation.
Oneflow offers a free trial and paid plans with a minimum fee of €17/user/month.
Contractbook is a cloud-based contract management software for sales, HR, compliance, and operations teams of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The platform auto-generates documents, offers editable contract templates, and provides businesses with access to all contracts and related documents from a single repository.
Contractbook also ensures that involved entities are aligned and updated through commenting, task management, and file-sharing features. Additionally, the platform allows for multi-signing methods, such as via SMS and valid IDs.
Contractbook plans start at $999/month for companies with 10 to 500 employees.
DocuSign CLM streamlines the contract management process through digital organization and automation while preserving company brands—through document customization, business relationships, and simplified collaboration with internal and external entities.
With software integrations, DocuSign CLM auto-generates existing data from compatible platforms (e.g., Salesforce and Netsuite) into new documents. The online solution also ensures all contracts are organized in a single searchable repository.
DocuSign CLM’s monthly plans start at $15 and its annual plans start at $120.
ContractHero saves businesses from spending essential resources on delving into individual contracts, missing deadlines, and endorsing signatories. The platform’s contract dashboard provides users with a 360-degree view of all company documents. It also automates reminders about due dates and renewals.
Moreover, ContractHero guarantees document security by enabling the management of team access and read-and-write permissions. Businesses are guaranteed secure document storage in ISO 27001-certified data centers in Germany.
ContractHero offers plans that start at €199/month for annual billing (plus VAT).
Contract Logix is a contract management software that is being used by legal, IT, procurement, finance, and sales teams for its safe and convenient online contract repository. The platform has two product editions—Express CMS and Premium CLM. These provide access to a centralized digital storage on any device and automate contract workflows. Thus, the contract management process is simplified from request to execution.
Ultimately, Contract Logix positions businesses on the path toward contract renewal supported by dashboards, reports, and analytics. The online solution also ensures that contract management processes are in compliance with company policies and industry regulations.
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Agiloft Contract Management Suite boasts a 99.6% implementation success rate as it caters to various industries such as pharmaceutical, biotechnology, healthcare, education, financial services, and insurance. The platform ensures secure storage of and access to contracts, key insights and automated workflows, and strict monitoring of industry regulations for compliance.
Agiloft simplifies the contract management process by allowing for instant contract creation with templates and enabling the instant full-text search of documents for reference in future projects and transactions.
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Gatekeeper is a comprehensive contract management software that ensures organizations are on course with projects through the platform’s overview of business contracts, suppliers, projects, teams, and workflows. The online solution also helps in financial decision-making by tracking expenses, monitoring risks, and managing contract renewals.
Gatekeeper also seamlessly integrates with more than 220 third-party solutions, including Salesforce, Google, Single Sign On (SSO), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Finance, and Document Management Solution (DMS). Gatekeeper’s AI Extract™ provides assistance in contract data and clause analytics.
Gatekeeper’s annual plans start at $995/month.
Icertis Contract Intelligence optimizes the contract management process through automation and standardization to increase productivity and reduce unnecessary resources spent on every contract. The online solution also identifies data gaps through analytics and centralization across contract types.
Additionally, Icertis integrates with other online business solutions, such as Microsoft Office, SAP, and Salesforce. Powered by AI, the platform assists with insights-based decision-making and the improvement of contract workflows.
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ContractSafe is an easy-to-use contract management software platform that automates the contract management process from end to end and provides organizations with a secure contract repository. The platform’s strong search features, such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR), help in easily locating different documents and provisions. Users can rest assured that contract alerts and reminders are automatically sent so that all projects are on schedule.
ContractSafe also seamlessly integrates with other online solutions, such as DocuSign, Okta/SAML 2.0, and Salesforce. The online solution caters mainly to the education sector, healthcare industry, hospitality, nonprofit organizations, and small businesses.
ContractSafe’s basic plan includes up to 500 contracts with a fee of $299/month. The online solution can accommodate up to 5,000 contracts at an enterprise fee of $899/month.
Efficient and updated software opens up growth and development opportunities for different industries. As mentioned, the healthcare industry accounts for a large global market share due to high expectations of accuracy and quality of service from stakeholders, considering the state of global health today and that many of their “end-customers” may be experiencing life-or-death situations.
In the construction industry, documentation and collaboration have been two of the major pain points encountered in manual contract management, according to Hanak and Vitkova’s 2022 research titled “Causes and effects of contract management problems: Case study of road construction.”
Follow-through can be difficult to supervise due to human elements, such as self-interest (for instance, in terms of profit for all parties). Maintaining and evaluating mounting physical records may also prove to be challenging. Thus, accountability for blunders can be difficult to settle and potential conflicts between parties may escalate.
In another study titled “Assessing contract management as a strategic tool for achieving quality of work in Ghanaian construction industry: A case study of FPMU and MMDAs” published in the Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction in 2020, Coleman et al. found that the absence of appropriate contract management processes in construction was connected to “the gap between stakeholders’ knowledge and actual practice.”
According to Coleman et al. (2020), “factors such as contractors’ engagement of unqualified supervisory staff, lack of proper projects monitoring, and evaluation by executing agencies mainly contribute to the poor quality of work.”
Source: Coleman et al., 2020
Two groups of respondents from the 2020 study—the Funds and Procurement Management Unit (FPMU) and the Ministry of Education, Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs)—were asked about the regularity of their site visits to ensure that contractors execute the work based on specifications. Results show that 46.9% of FPMU and 10.4% of MMDAs “visited the site ‘daily,’” 20.1% of FMPU and 31.2% of MMDAs “visited the site ‘weekly,’” 15.6% of FPMU and 52.1% of MMDAs “visited the site ‘monthly,’” and 6.2% of FPMU and 4.2% of MMDAs visited the site without a regular schedule.
Source: Coleman et al., 2020
To decide on the contract management software that is best for your business, you may evaluate and discuss the needs and objectives of your business with your team. Adding government procurement software to your technology stack if your organization is from the public sector may enhance your capabilities and improve your contract management procedures. With the level of efficiency of today’s technology, you probably have several competitive options. Your business requirements and goals are the determining factors.
by Imed Bouchrika, Phd
by Imed Bouchrika, Phd
