A digital contract management system optimizes your processes

Contracts play a key role in every business, and the process usually involves several departments, whether legal, purchasing, or HR. Keeping your contracts organized is a critical success factor. This is where the challenge lies given that deadlines are an essential element of contracts. With all the information you need to keep track of, not losing sight of what is important is easier said than done.

Add to that ever stricter compliance and auditing requirements or even the specifications of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

At the end of the day, it’s about efficiently using the data in the contracts and ensuring that information can be found quickly when responding to queries – something that benefits the whole company. But how can you efficiently store and retrieve information?

Contracts as an important part of modern information management

With a digital contract management system, you can easily overcome these challenges. The solution is to digitalize your business processes, including your contract management process. Combined with an enterprise content management (ECM) system, you are off to a good start.

“Digital contract management” white paper

Do you want to manage your contracts digitally? Our white paper reveals what you have to consider when implementing software to digitalize your company processes.

White paper

How do enterprise content management systems help businesses?

Enterprise content management comprises all technologies, methods, and tools for capturing, digitalizing, saving, managing, and providing all company information (documents, data, images, videos, etc.).

The benefits of digital contract management combined with ECM

Data capture

Capture contracts digitally including all their associated information. From A like aleatory contract to Z like zoning – all types of contracts can be mapped digitally.

Archiving

Contracts are stored in a central location in line with law in a digital contract file. Defining access rights beforehand also ensures compliance with data protection regulations.

Automation

Structures in the contract file created automatically make for improved organization. Continuously generated contract numbers allow for the unique identification of contracts.

Collaboration

Feeds on the contracts keep changes transparent. Contract conclusions or negotiations can thus be expanded with important information.

Visualization

Dashboards improve information availability, e.g. on contracts with critical deadlines. These allow contract terms to be displayed as colored bars, thereby accelerating data capture.

Availability of information

Find contracts in no time with a fast search function. This not only includes searching for contracts with unique characteristics like an ID but also “rough” search requests based on keywords.

Signatures

Digitally sign contracts and other important documents or send them to others for signing – with digital signatures, you no longer need to print out, sign, scan, and file contracts.

Compliance

Our clause management tool allows members of your legal team to create and maintain custom texts that are not included in the standard clause templates.

Learn more about the benefits of an enterprise content management system.

Allianz MTV Stuttgart relies on digital contract management

“The overall usability of the ELO solution won us over pretty quickly, and it was an added bonus that the company offers digital solutions for contract management and HR, which were implemented in no time at all.”

Aurel Irion, Managing Director, stuttgart indoors GmbH

Project details

Answers to the most important questions about digital contract management

What is digital contract management?

Digital contract management is a process that includes all the steps from creating a contract to signing it with an electronic signature.

What is contract governance?

With contract governance, a user can apply certain measures to evaluate all the risks that arise in current contracts. Monitor all contracts in the dashboard, see deadlines in the timeline view, and incorporate daily exchange rates in your payment plans.

Why is professional software important for contract management?

Contract management software integrates contract data with the systems and processes that are connected to it. This means that as soon as a contract is concluded, the connected systems can access and transmit the data. Department-specific requirements can also be preconfigured, saving time and work.

Are scanned contracts legally binding?

The German Civil Code (BGB) differentiates between what is referred to as the text form (Section 126b BGB) and the written form (Section 126 BGB).

The text form requirement in the BGB stipulates that contracts are also valid with a scanned signature.

However, the requirements are stricter if the BGB requires the written form. In this case, neither an e-mail nor a scanned signature are sufficient. The contract must be signed by hand, excluding any mechanical reproduction, including scans. In general, the written form according to Section 126 III BGB can be replaced by the electronic form. However, according to Section 126a I BGB, the electronic form requires a qualified electronic signature. This means that a scanned signature is not valid as is the case for the text form.

Can a contract be signed digitally and are signed PDF files also legally binding?

According to the eIDAS Regulation (2017), all forms of electronic signature are legally binding. However, it should be noted that only qualified electronic signatures (QeS) are comparable to handwritten signatures.

Accordingly, digital signatures in PDF files are, in principle, also legally binding. The only exceptions are documents in which the electronic form is expressly excluded. Electronic signatures have been recognized and standardized across Europe since July 2016, thanks to the European eIDAS Regulation.

Do you want to digitalize your contract management?

ELO Contract streamlines your daily work by managing your contracts with digital, automated processes

ELO Contract