Flexible, automated workflows promote speed, accuracy, and consistency in your day-to-day transaction processes. Modern tools, like Pathways, give you the functionality to define, measure, and control your organization’s workflows in ways never before possible for contracts and agreements. With this enhanced control, you can adjust how people and software interact while performing contract tasks and activities with confidence. You can also measure your workflow successes to optimize their usefulness and ensure your organization continually receives benefits. 

In the last article on automation, we went deep trying to help you understand workflow automation and how to tell if you are ready for it as an organization. This article will discuss the real-world benefits of automation for contracts and agreements. Automating your transaction processes can provide several benefits to your business. From reliability and consistency to enhanced visibility with data analytics, automation can help you streamline your processes and maximize efficiency in your organization. 

Reliability 

By automating certain steps of your processes for contracts and agreements, you can ensure that each transaction is processed with consistent and reliable results. Pathways offers a range of features such as a template library, automated creation processes, and electronic signatures that help to create standardized contracts quickly and accurately. This eliminates any risks related to manual errors or inconsistencies that could arise from variations in manual processes. 

Automated workflows avoid this type of variation. The workflows follow the exact steps you set out to eliminate the inconsistencies inherent in personal preferences. Business users answer questions or select drop-down values from menus. Based on their input, Pathways produces a collaborative process that includes all the necessary details and appropriate steps that have worked for the team 

Adherence To Corporate Protocols 

Automated contract processes help to enforce compliance with regulations, policies, or standards set by your organization. For instance, Pathways allows users to set parameters for any given type of transaction which will automatically be applied when creating a new one from a template. This helps ensure that all transactions meet the necessary standards and reduces the risk of non-compliance or other potential process risks down the road. By enabling users to create standardized contracts quickly and accurately. It simplifies the process of creating, reviewing, and negotiating agreements by utilizing pre-defined templates and language as well as electronic signatures for ease of use. 

This helps eliminate any potential errors or inconsistencies that could arise from a manual process. Additionally, Pathways provides visibility into each agreement by using its audit trails to track changes made during negotiation or revisions. This allows users to easily keep up with the most current version of an agreement, ensuring it is compliant with your organization’s policies and best practices. 

Develop Standardized Workflows That Minimize Risk

The third benefit of utilizing an automation tool for contracts and agreements is that it helps to develop standardized workflows that minimize business and legal risk. Automating the contract lifecycle management process gives you control over which steps are executed, in what order and by whom. This ensures that all contracts are processed efficiently and accurately, with no risks associated with manual errors or inconsistencies. 

You can incorporate adherence to your company’s security and governance protocols into your workflow templates. When your teammates use the workflow template, they remain within the guardrails set up by you or by your company's legal team.  

You’re able to embed business rules and policy guidelines in automated workflows to ensure compliance. For example, you can set a contract routing workflow to restrict final approval until all edits and issues are handled and every required approval is obtained. Embedded audit trails and customized dashboard views help you monitor compliance the entire way. 

Make Data-Backed Decisions with Improved Visibility. 

The fourth and final benefit of automation for your contracts and agreements is the ability to make data-backed decisions with improved visibility. Through dashboard and reporting tools, users can easily access up-to-date analytics and insights about their transactions, current and completed. This helps them make informed decisions about which agreements are most beneficial to their organization, as well as identify any potential workflow risks or areas of improvement in the process. 

Finally, Pathways enables users to have complete control over their document repository. They can quickly access any document at any point in the process to keep track of all changes made throughout the agreement's lifecycle – again, helping to minimize business and legal risk by ensuring compliance with company protocols and best practices. 

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Automated transaction management is a powerful tool for modern businesses, enabling them to make data-backed decisions with improved visibility, secure agreements quickly and compliantly, reduce the risk of non-compliance issues arising in the future and ultimately save time, effort, and money. Check out Pathways today, a solution built thoughtfully for growing companies that are looking for a better way to manage contracts and agreements.  

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