You have standardized on Box.com. Isn’t it about time you learned about Box.com contract management issues? Isn’t it time to come clean, to air dirty the laundry?
So, what are the contract management issues with Box.com? In a word (OK, in a few words). THERE ARE NONE!
Box is an exceptional, highly functional, highly secure, collaborative file sharing environment. It is a premier Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution that was not developed to handle the unique demands of Contract Life-cycle Management (CLM). So how could it be that there are no issues?
Working in Lock-Step
Operating in the Cloud as it does, Box does not need to natively offer exceptional contract management capabilities, because openSourceCM, a premier Box LCM solution provider partner, has that landscape well covered. OSCM2, openSourceCM’s flagship CLM solution, automatically synchronizes Box contract document data files, giving you the power and flexibility of both environments.
Two Scenarios. Without and With
Let’s look at two different scenarios: managing contracts natively within Box and managing Box contract documents collaboratively with OSCM2. Continue to maintain all your contract documents within Box, while managing them within the openSourceCM environment.
Native Box.com Contract Management
• Collaboratively create contracts within Box.
• Manually track document approvals to assure that approvals are not delayed
• Store documents in the Cloud according to folder, subfolder and file structure
• Create and maintain an MS Access database or Excel spreadsheet with file names and associated contract document related metadata.
• Manually create calendar items out as far as 1-3 years in advance to alert stake holders in advance with reminders and approaching contract-related tasks. Manually update calendar alerts and events when schedules change.
• Manually monitor approaching contract self-renewals to assure that unwanted contracts do not automatically self-renew.
• Manually search internal document file content, document-by document, i.e. by manually reading each document, to discover liability exposure when unplanned events, late deliveries and disruptions impact your ability to meet contract obligations.
• Become a forensic data investigator and attempt to discover who has accessed the system, what they have viewed, changes they have made, and how contacts are changed without your knowledge, if such audit capability is even possible. • Manually review and compare contract documents, line by line to understand how and whether contract terms and obligations could have been changed inadvertently during contract negotiations.
• Manually email negotiated contract changes out of your system to 3rd parties and manually monitor the recipients to assure that changes are reviewed and returned in a timely fashion.
Ad Hoc Contract Management
Is contract management possible within a native Box.com ECM environment? Certainly it is. When managing small numbers of contracts it could be adequate. Please note, however, the number of times the word “manually” appears within the above bullets. Effective contract management in a native Box.com environment will depend significantly on the rigorousness of individual contract managers. This becomes exponentially more complex and error prone as the number of contract documents increase. What this this type of management lacks is an ability to reliably enforce process, standards and best practices, essential to good contract management.
“Turbo Charged” Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) with Box and openSourceCM
• Collect all contracts within your openSourceCM folder within your Box.com system.
• Log into your openSourceCM account. Contract document files within Box will be created within OSCM2 within the same folder. No additional work is required to effect a synchronization.
• Identify the existing MS Excel files with associated contract metadata and the openSourceCM knowledgebase metadata can be mapped by openSourceCM to the appropriate contract document, so no document data is lost.
• Just like in Box. Highly secure access rights provide anywhere access, only to the information and folder structure you wish a user to see. In fact openSourceCm access security is actually greater than Box, which means that your documents are even more secure as they reside in the OSCM2 environment. With OSCM2, access rights are defined, granted and controlled by a system administrator.
• If desired, create unique metadata templates and apply them to different types of business processes or contract types. Use these over and over again.
• Utilize existing original contract templates within Box to originate new contracts from within your openSourceCM contract template folder.
• Create contract approval templates (who, what, when) based on each contract type, associate with the corresponding contract and all contract review notifications and approval routing is managed automatically. Automatically give interested stakeholders not involved in the direct approval process visibility to approval status.
• Create contract event templates and associate them with the appropriate contract and email notifications and calendar entries will be automatically generated days, weeks, months or years prior to the related event. Event and date reminders can also be automatically generated for renewal contracts.
• Within seconds, search within documents, including scanned PDF documents, for any word, phrase, language or value, allowing you to quickly find information across the entire document dataset that is not contained within metadata. Discover liability issues quickly, allowing you to understand and mitigate risk more efficiently and effectively.
• Access a comprehensive audit trail database of all users, seeing everything that they have viewed and changed in the system. This is particularly important as related to SOX, HIPPA and in meeting other compliance requirements.
• Create virtual “deal rooms” where third party negotiations can access a unique location where they can access the system and only see documents you put there. This capability is also particularly useful during M & A activities.
• Using contract compare, see side-by-side comparisons of any two contracts, line-by-line and paragraph-by-paragraph. Avoid any possibility of a contract being changed before signing, without your knowledge.
Basic or Comprehensive, We've Got Your Back!
Whether you have 100 contracts and 2 users or 800,000 contracts and 1000's of users, OpenSourceCM provides the ultimate in performance and scalability. It is arguably the most cost effective, the fastest to implement and deploy, the easiest and most intuitive solution to learn and the more powerful, flexible, customizable and adaptable CLM solution available on the market today.
Due your due diligence, try the OSCM2 for free. You’ll quickly learn what we’re talking about.
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