Contract Management Simplified

Why Zoho contracts? 

Contracts are at the core of all commercial relationships. Every dollar that enters or leaves a business is essentially governed by a contract. However, contracts and contract management are plagued with a lot of challenges. Although these challenges have been evident for a long time, there are some recent factors driving adoption towards contract management, and the most crucial Is the increasing complexity in the global supply chain. 

First, with technology evolving rapidly and with the current geopolitical environment, business landscapes today are extremely volatile, impacting contract management. 

Secondly, irrespective of the industry you are operating in, regulations are cropping up more often than ever before. For example, GDPR CCPA and more and these regulations are going up in frequency. So, whenever there is a government regulation coming up, businesses are forced to change their organization policy, which in turn translates to changes in their contract language. 

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Thirdly, customers now have more options than they’ve ever had. This is forcing businesses to adopt flexible pricing models, flexible based business models. Otherwise, they’ll lose their competitive advantage.

The problem, however, is when you have a flexible pricing model or flexible business models. You also need to think about a contract strategy that can accommodate or even enable this kind of flexibility. 

As risk is an inevitable part of any business, and with the recent pandemic, the emphasis on risk mitigation has gone to an all-time high. So immediately after the pandemic, a lot of businesses started searching for clauses that would protect them from their unfulfilled obligations. 

So, in today’s times, almost all businesses are thinking in terms of risk, mitigation, and contracts become a core piece to solve this risk mitigation problem. 

Finally, there are a lot of mergers and acquisitions that are happening. This emerging consolidation trend is pushing interest towards contract management because for a merger or for two businesses to converge, businesses need forensic analysis of their existing contracts, existing contract liabilities, existing contract obligations, and where they stand from a revenue standpoint in the context of contracts.

All of these factors are geared towards contract management. Zoho is a strong believer in technology as a problem solver, so Zoho decided to put her best efforts to solve this problem. 

What Zoho Offers

Zoho wanted to build a comprehensive contract management software that facilitates Better Business outcomes; to achieve that, a contract management software needs to have futuristic or sophisticated CL and capabilities. 

Ease of access: Although there is legacy software that provides a form of contract management solution. The implementation challenges are enormous, and there is a learning curve to adopt this software internally in any organization. Zoho wanted a contract management software that is really straightforward to use and that’s what is offered to clients. 

Easy to implement: Our approach to contract management is that Zoho enter as a pain relief system. Our aim is to solve the problems mentioned above while seeking more potential in contracts management. 

Zoho CRM Approach to Solving Contract Problems

  1. Zoho has developed a streamlined contract lifecycle from sponsorship to the termination.
  2. Risk mitigation. 
  3. Improving governance. Contracts have a lot of critical business data that are not in a consumable format. Every business needs an analytical engine that can transform their contract data into actual business insights; this is one aspect of governance. The other aspect of governance is compliance and auditability since contracts have critical information. There is a need to have extreme visibility and transparency on what happens within CLM and how users can use this data. 
  4. Zoho contracts is designed to be a platform that enables cross-functional integration.

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The Typical Contract Lifecycle

a typical contract lifecycle starts from a contract request, then goes through an approval cycle, then negotiation, followed by execution, and then a process to manage all the obligations, followed by posting execution stages like amendments and renewals and finally, it gets terminated. 

The Zoho Advantage

In the absence of a CLM, businesses use multiple software to achieve this contract lifecycle or to enable this contract lifecycle. So, they use a Microsoft Word or some word processor for authoring, and then it is sent as an attachment over email applications. They use a third-party electronic signature software to sign these contracts, and then they manage the metadata, the financial details and the milestones in a spreadsheet. They need a document management software to store all of their contracts, and they use a calendar for reminders. 

But with Zoho contracts, you can manage your entire contract lifecycle without ever having to toggle between multiple applications? 

Creating Contracts with Zoho

There are two ways to create a new contract on Zoho. You can either import a contract that is already existing, or you can create a new contract from scratch. 

When creating a contract from scratch, you’ll be asked to choose the contract type. Contract types define the primary attributes of your contract, such as the approval workflow that needs to be associated with the contract, the intent of the contract, Etc. 

A document would be generated automatically generated when you decide to create a new contract. This document can be easy edited by the contract owner. 

Understanding the Need for Zoho CRM

Zoho contracts was very recently launched in July 2021. And immediately got feedback from early users, including those in the health industry. It’s important to note that people across all Industries can use Zoho contracts.

After the recent pandemic, the commerce and contracting organization have identified that risk mitigation has become the number one priority for a lot. These are some of the motivations that are driving people towards buying Zoho contact or any contract management software. Zoho understands that if a prospective client has gotten to the stage of contracts, there is a 90% probability of closure. Therefore, a longer contract cycle and back and forth could hinder sealing the deal. And then with recent regulations cropping up and with complaints and auditability having a contract management system has become increasingly important. 

Acquiring A Zoho CRM Subscription Plan

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When it comes to pricing, Zoho offers a freemium model. There is a free plan and two paid plans. $65 for a professional plan and $50 for the standard plan, all of which are billed annually. However, most of the users are a lot of users who only need to approve a contract, or only need to collaborate at the time of authoring or only to fulfil an obligation. These are termed light uses, so their pricing is slightly lesser than the actual pricing licenses.

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