How to improve contract approval process and efficiency.

Contract approval is an essential part of the purchasing process. Learn more about how your company can streamline the contract approval process flow to keep work moving forward.

A contract approval process is needed to ensure your company can acquire the goods and services it needs to operate. But what happens when the approval process causes delays in getting work done? Try using a PDF contract approval request form and electronic signatures to keep the approval process moving along.

What does the contract approval process involve?

Once a contract has been drafted, the document should pass through a contract approval process flow to ensure it undergoes proper review and receives the required signatures to put it into effect. These steps usually include:

1. Receive a contract request from the appropriate internal team members
2. Generate the contract based on an approved template
3. Route the contract to the legal team for review
4. Implement any requested changes or redlines
5. Route the contract through finance and operations personnel
6. Implement any requested changes or redlines
7. Send the contract to external stakeholders for review and signature
8. Countersign the contract as applicable once all external approvals are received

How to improve your company’s contract approval process.

Here are some ideas to help speed up the contract approval process flow for your team:

1. Use a concurrent approval process rather than a consecutive one. Email an editable PDF version of the contract to all the approvers simultaneously, rather than to one after the other. Then, integrate their responses into a final draft for the last review.
2. Detail the process steps for everyone involved. This task includes accommodating the client’s own deadline requirements and clarifying in advance whether amendments such as redlines will be considered or accepted.
3. Confirm all of the necessary parties, both internal and external, who will need to review and sign the contract.
4. Consider authorizing short-term contingency contracts that will allow work to move forward while the complete agreement is reviewed and negotiated.

Steps to avoid contract approval process delays.

Examining and understanding all the various terms and conditions of a contract can be a lengthy process. But sometimes, to keep work moving forward, there isn’t time to complete a long process — for example, when your company needs to bring on a new subcontractor in a hurry. Having a streamlined approval process can help you get contracts approved and signed quickly.

Other ways to avoid delays in the contract approval process that can impact your operations and your bottom line include:

• Confirm all essential information is included in the contract from the start. This step may require sending the document around several times for internal review before providing it to the client for feedback.
• Leverage a contract template that prompts users to fill in standard details. This strategy can expedite legal review by including required language and terms by default.
• Create reminders for key team members to reach out to required signatories to stay on top of the approval process with clear requirements and deadlines.

Review and revise contract approval process flow.

Even with a solid contract management process in place, administrators should not become complacent. By reviewing the documents, procedures, and supporting systems used to move contracts forward on a regular basis, you can avoid delays resulting from changes to personnel and processes that may no longer be applicable.

Continually optimizing your contract approval process can help you identify applicable improvements long before they are needed. Consider implementing a quarterly or annual review with the following tasks:

• Evaluate assets. Audit existing templates and legal language with your team to confirm that you’re using the most up-to-date and relevant information. Using older information will slow the review and approval process for everyone involved.
• Confirm stakeholders. Roles and employees change over time. Make sure you include the right individuals across legal counsel and team contributors, as well as those representing signing rights for the client at hand.
• Verify workflows. Confirm any tasks that need to be included in contract provisioning and released for approval. Determine whether there are any missing or redundant steps that need to be reconsidered.
• Implement technology. Systems and processes can change, and so can the tools available to suit your needs. Consider leveraging automation solutions that can create efficiencies and reduce room for error along the way.

Using an automated contract approval process vs. manual.

Automating contract approvals presents a number of benefits for companies and teams struggling with manual processes. Here are just a few you can look forward to as you look to use technology to enhance your own procedures.

• Reduce human error. Automated systems can manage sending reminders, centralizing templates, and even populating fields based on CRM fields. These systems cut down the number of mistakes that inadvertently occur during manual contract management.
• Expedite approvals. Technology can streamline the process of requesting and collecting e-signatures from all required individuals. You can also see in real time whether any stakeholder approvals are still pending and take steps of your own to proactively reach out.
• Improve insight. Digitized contracts can provide a key understanding of how your current pipeline stands in comparison to opportunities and pending sales. This insight can provide opportunities for improving the bottom line and help leaders focus on areas that need the most attention.
• Enhance security. Rather than relying on paper printouts or files attached to emails that could be filtered out or, worse, infected with a virus, automated contract approval platforms can accommodate centralized, secure access to the most important files.

Electronic signatures to approve contracts faster.

Remember, you can streamline your company’s contract approval process using PDF forms with electronic signatures. Don’t waste time printing approval requests and waiting for managers to sign them. Simply request a signature by emailing a PDF approval request that managers can sign electronically.

Take a moment to discover everything that’s possible with Adobe Acrobat for business today, from creating electronic signatures and digital signatures to managing digital document workflow.