5 Best Practices for Efficient Contract Management with VirtualTerms

As a business owner or manager, you've probably felt that familiar knot in your stomach when faced with yet another legal agreement. The long, jargon-filled documents seem to multiply endlessly, each one demanding your time and attention. You know these agreements are crucial for protecting your business, but let's be honest – they're about as exciting as watching paint dry.

If you're nodding along, thinking, "Yep, that's me," then you're in good company. A 2024 study by Deloitte and DocuSign found that inefficient agreement processes cost businesses a staggering $1.8 trillion in lost global economic value annually. That's a lot of headaches and wasted time!

But here's the good news: It doesn't have to be this way. By embracing online legal agreements and smart contract management practices, you can transform a tedious task into a streamlined process that actually supports your business growth. And that's exactly what we're going to explore in this article.

So let's dive into five best practices for efficient contract management using VirtualTerms. By the time you finish reading, you'll walk away with practical strategies to:

1. Simplify your agreement creation process
2. Boost collaboration and transparency
3. Streamline your review and approval workflow
4. Maintain better control over your agreements
5. Leverage data for continuous improvement

Let's get started!

1. Simplify Your Agreement Creation Process

Remember the days of starting each agreement from scratch, frantically searching for that "perfect" template you used six months ago? We agree: Let's leave those in the past where they belong.

With VirtualTerms, you don’t have to worry about where to start. Our platform offers a range of pre-built agreement forms, from NDAs to consulting agreements, all designed to get you up and running quickly. Our agreements have been created by business and legal professionals with decades of experience getting the job done right.  But here's where the magic really happens:

Best Practice: Focusing On Your Key Terms

VirtualTerms uses a unique "term sheet" format that puts the most important details front and center. Take advantage of this by customizing the key terms for your most frequently used agreements. This might include:

• Your standard payment terms
• Your preferred warranties and warranty limitations
• How you want to limit your liability

By setting these up once, you'll create a solid foundation for future agreements, saving time and ensuring consistency across your agreements.

2. Boost Trust and Transparency

Gone are the days of both parties having to review long, dense agreements, emailing contract drafts back and forth, losing track of versions, and wondering if everyone's looking at the same document. (We've all been there, and it's not pretty.)

VirtualTerms brings your agreements into the 21st century leveraging our set of open, online, standardized contract terms that are shared across users and agreements.  Instead of making your business partner review your own long, custom agreement, make it easy for them by linking to our third party terms.  

The transparency and trust you build by linking to our standardized third party terms can pay great dividends.   real-time collaboration tools. But to truly harness the power of this feature, follow this best practice:

Best Practice: Leverage Standardized Terms

By focusing on a few pages of your agreement’s key terms while linking to our standardized terms for the rest, you can enhance your agreement process and business relationships by :

• Speeding agreement by linking to trusted, third party terms
• Improving understanding with terms written in Plain English
• Making it easier for your partners to do business with you

3. Streamline Your Review and Signature Workflow

We've all experienced the joy (or to some, frustration) of chasing down signatures for a time-sensitive contract. It's like herding cats, only the cats have law degrees and are really good at finding obscure clauses to nitpick.

VirtualTerms helps tame this process with built-in review and signature. To make the most of this feature, here's your next best practice:

Best Practice: Create Standardized Review Checklists

Develop a set of standardized review checklists for different agreement types. These checklists should cover key points that need to be verified before approval, such as:

• Correct party names and contact information
• Appropriate governing law and jurisdiction clauses
• Alignment with company policies and risk tolerance

By implementing these checklists, you'll ensure a thorough review process while significantly reducing the time spent on each agreement.

Fun fact: A study by Aberdeen Group found that companies with standardized contract management processes are 63% more likely to have contracts that are compliant with corporate policies. That's a win for both efficiency and risk management!

4. Maintain Better Control Over Your Agreements

Picture this: It's audit time, and you're frantically searching for that one crucial agreement from two years ago. Sound familiar?

VirtualTerms acts as a repository for all your Virtual Terms agreements, but to truly stay in control, follow this best practice:

Best Practice: Use a Monitoring System

Take full advantage of VirtualTerms' Dashboard by monitoring status of your VirtualTerms agreements, including:

• Drafts
• Sent agreements (including who you sent them to)
• Agreements with comments for you to respond to
• Agreements ready for you to sign
• Final fully signed agreement)

By utilizing our Dashboard and our search and sorting functionality , you'll be able to quickly locate any agreement at a moment's notice. Plus, you'll sleep better at night knowing your agreements are organized and easily accessible.

5. Leverage Data for Continuous Improvement

VirtualTerms provides several ways you can gain valuable insights into your contract management process. To make the most of this , here's your final best practice:

Best Practice: Regularly Review and Analyze Contract Data

Set aside time each month or quarter to review your agreement activities. Look for patterns and trends such as:

• Number and type of agreement sent and signed by month
• Key changes to your standard key terms
• Most frequently negotiated terms
• Common bottlenecks 

Use these insights to refine your forms, adjust your workflows, and continuously improve your contract management efficiency.

Wrapping It Up (See what we did there?)

By now, you should be armed with practical strategies to transform your agreement process from a necessary evil into a streamlined, value-adding part of your business operations.

Let's recap the key takeaways:

1. Simplify agreement creation by customizing your key terms
2. Boost trust by leveraging our online, standardized, third-party terms collaboration by establishing clear roles and permissions
3. Streamline reviews with standardized checklists
4. Maintain control through a robust monitoring system
5. Leverage data for continuous improvement

Remember, implementing these best practices isn't about achieving perfection overnight. It's about making steady improvements that add up to significant time and cost savings over time. And hey, if you can make the world of legal agreements a little less daunting in the process, that's a win in our book!

So, are you ready to say goodbye to contract chaos and hello to streamlined efficiency? Give these best practices a try with VirtualTerms.