Contract Management Vs Contract Automation: Key Differences

Table of Contents:

1. What is contract management?
2. What is contract automation?
3. Contract management vs contract automation - Key differences
4. What you can achieve with workflow automation software vs contract management software
5. Contract Management and Contract automation with Contractbook

Are you looking for the best way to optimize your contract administration? Then you’ve probably been reading a lot about contract management vs contract automation. 

There’s a lot of confusion around these two terms. It’s no wonder, given the fact that there’s significant overlap between them. However, knowing the difference could help you make much better decisions for your business.   

What Is Contract Management?

Let’s say you believe your company could be better at handling contract-related tasks. You think the entire system is flawed and inefficient, from contract generation to team collaboration. This is where contract management comes in. 

What is contract management? It’s the system you develop for managing your company’s contracts, from the beginning to the end of their lifecycle. That’s why contract management encompasses a lot of different processes within the contract lifecycle, including but not limited to:

• Requisition 
• Review 
• Execution 
• Renewal 
• Reporting 
  

It’s no wonder then that contract management systems are complex and usually inefficient.

What Is Contract Automation?

Let’s say your employees have to generate each new contract from scratch, or use the print-sign-scan method for signing. You could say that doing things this way is the exact opposite of contract automation.

What is contract automation? It’s the process of applying technology to eliminate as much manual work as possible. This is what digital tools and workflow automation software are for.

For example, eSignature tools completely eliminate the need to first print, then sign, and ultimately scan each new contract. You simply receive a digital version of the contract and sign it electronically, right then and there. Contract automation, however, can be used to automate entire stages, not just individual steps in contract management. These stages include:

• Contract generation
• Contract approval
• Contract renewal

Contract Management Vs Contract Automation: Key Differences

Contract Management Vs Contract Automation: Key Differences - Scope 

Although contract automation can be applied to entire stages in contract management, there’s still a difference in scope. 

Namely, you can’t automate the entire contract management system. You’ll always have the human factor that can’t be predicted or broken down into logical steps. 

This is especially true for the negotiation stage. If you could predict what kind of amendments your customers or partners will ask for, you could automate the process. However, in most cases, this is simply not possible. That’s why contract automation refers to processes that are highly predictable, unlike contract management, which refers to all of them.
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Contract Management Vs Contract Automation: Key Differences - Focus

There’s always room for improvement when it comes to handling contracts. Your business could be facing a lot of different issues in this area. However, many of these issues fall into one of two broad categories - reliability and speed. With that, we come to another key difference between contract management and contract automation. 

The purpose and main focus of contract management is to increase the system’s reliability. That’s why it doesn’t stop at optimizing individual stages of the contract lifecycle. Instead, it looks at all aspects of contract administration, from team collaboration to storing and reporting.

On the other hand, the main focus of contract automation is increasing the speed with which contract-related tasks are completed. 
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Contract Management Vs Contract Automation: Key Differences - Benefits 

There’s one last major difference between contract management and contract automation. It has to do with the results you can expect from each. Since they’re different in terms of scope and focus, it doesn’t come as a surprise that they offer different benefits.

Of course, increased reliability and speed are advantages in and of themselves. However, there are plenty of more specific benefits to both contract management and contract automation. They include To give you a better idea, let’s compare workflow automation software and contract management software. 
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What You Can Achieve With Workflow Automation Software Vs. Contract Management Software

So, what are the concrete benefits of contract management and contract automation for your business? 

What does contract management software help you achieve? 

• Reliability. With Contractbook contract management software, you get access to standardized contract templates. This means you don’t have to keep your fingers crossed any time an employee of yours needs to draft a new contract.
• Security. The Contractbook digital repository completely eliminates the need for paper-based filing systems. This doesn’t just reduce costs and makes things more convenient. It also means a much higher level of security for all your documentation.
• Easier collaboration. Contractbook software comes with handy collaboration tools. When you have a single repository and when it’s easier for your employees to communicate, productivity inevitably increases.
• Searchability. This is another huge benefit to using Contractbook’s digital repositories. Thanks to the use of meta tags, all your paperwork becomes instantly searchable.
• Scalability. When you use sophisticated software such as ours, you make all your processes as streamlined as possible. As a result, you increase your company’s capacity to take on new business.
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What does workflow automation software help you achieve? 

• Speed. Automated processes take a lot less time to be completed than high-volume manual tasks. Luckily, most of these can be automated with Contractbook’s workflow automation software.
• Less admin work. When you have our software completing a lot of your time-consuming contract-related tasks, there’s less work for your employees. They finally become able to focus on big-picture stuff.
• Accuracy. Contractbook’s contract automation software doesn’t make mistakes. Sadly, the same can’t be said for even the most conscientious employee. This is why contract automation is your best option when you’re looking to improve your system’s accuracy.
• Accountability. With Contractbook’s workflow automation software, you get detailed records of every executed task. If at any time you spot an error, you don’t have to waste valuable time finding out where things went wrong. Instead, you can instantly identify and nip the problem in the bud.   

Contract Management and Contract automation with Contractbook

So, what do you think would be the best choice for your business? Are you still debating it? Whatever questions you might have on contract management vs contract automation, we’re here to answer them. After all, our mission is to make all this as simple as possible for you. To get the right solution, you only need to get in touch.