Contract Signing in Contract Lifecycle Management
Preamble to Contract Workflow
Contract workflow begins with negotiation of agreements created by contract drafting software. Following the negotiation process, both parties must sign the document bundle for the contracts to be executed. The executed contracts are stored in contract repository which can be searched by contract properties.
Contract Signature Collection
Business or legal team will appoint a signature coordinator who is responsible to collect signatures form the responsible parties. Coordinator will send reminders and escalations through contract workflow software. When the documents are signed, signature coordinator will add additional metadata before saving the repository. Regulatory and institutional requirements dictate the contract security for both inflight and executed contracts.
Manual Signing
Third party contracts, and company papers signed with wet ink are scanned and saved to repository. OCR technology will index the documents and ML enabled contract review will extract metadata, keywords, terms, clauses, and properties from the document. Admin must validate the properties before to saving to repository as record. Physical documents must be stored in offline location and asset details to be marked in the contract screen.
Digital Signing of Contracts
Legally binding signature and approvals are obtained when contract lifecycle management software integrates with eSignature providers like DocuSign or Adobe Sign. Number of signees are determined by contract type. Admins setup the signing order containing both internal and external signatories. After approval stage, coordinators can request for singing. Contract software will prepare the bundle (all documents in contracts are combined), create envelops with signatories’ details and push to digital signature vendors. The eSignature vendor can obtain signature in parallel or in sequential order. Contract owners can monitor the process and request for expedition. Once all parties sign the document, all users in workflow will receive signed document in the email. CLM software like PageLightPrime will copy the signed documents to toe contract folder in cloud repository.
