In the age of accelerating digital transformation, IT services now embrace multiple functions within organizations. They develop products, coordinate sales and marketing go-to-market teams, and support strategic teams with new insights and data capabilities. In short, IT focuses on making every business department faster, smarter, and more connected. With one exception: the legal department. In this new article, we study this paradoxical phenomenon in the light of an emblematic solution: the electronic contract.
The legal service: a poor parent disconnected from technological transformation?
The legal sector has long been considered to be a real silo, apparently operating in a vacuum, independent of the company's other departments. This perception has led to the underestimation of its technological potential for transformation. ; this being considered specialized and limited, with little interest for the company as a whole. Today, a typical business value model doesn't even take into account the legal dimension of a solution, focusing exclusively on processes that impact performance indicators.
This vision can no longer be supported with credibility today. Continue to isolate in this way what is called the “legal technology” has serious implications for a global digital transformation strategy.
Indeed, each operational process in a modern organization involves various legal agreements - agreements for selling, buying, providing services, protecting information. Leveraging technology to improve and innovate in this respect seems to be an obvious fundamental consideration that has an impact on commercial value in all areas. The fact that the CLM solutions have been complex, difficult to use, and frustrating to implement for many years did not help. Rigid and limited, they are generally intimidating for non-specialists.
However, the legal field is becoming a critical area in which to invest. Even minimal savings in time and money can have a huge impact. Finding a more efficient, faster and smarter way to conclude and manage contracts and agreements must therefore become a priority.
The new position of the legal sector driven by the emergence of electronic contracts
Recent innovation in the CLM sector has resulted in a radical change. A new wave of solutions based on electronic contracts has emerged and is profoundly changing the contracting process.
Electronic contracting is a concept that takes a broader and more holistic perspective than traditional CLM. He recognizes that what matters most is not the contract itself, but rather the rights and obligations it specifies, and the people who interact with and around it. In other words, The most important thing is not the document, but the agreement and the expectations it represents.
Therefore, platforms for generating electronic contracts focus on people, offering experiences that are truly user-centered and custom-built according to their needs. So, instead of requiring specific skills and detailed legal understanding, platforms allow casual users to create and execute simple agreements themselves. In addition, business partners and counterparties have the opportunity to collaborate transparently throughout the contracting process.
How to choose your platform for generating electronic contracts?
Not all solutions for generating electronic contracts online take the same approach. Their evaluation of course involves the usual questions of partnership concerning the supplier: is it viable, does it have a healthy customer and partner community, are its pricing and support models aligned with your needs, etc. But electronic contracting solutions must above all be evaluated in light of their role as horizontal platforms that are fundamental to your organization.
An important principle to remember is the ability of the platform to make all the parties of the contract interact within your organization during the contracting process. Sales and purchasing users have their own systems (CRM, supplier management systems, etc.). It is therefore crucial that the electronic contract involves them in these systems. So, for your current collaboration scenarios between the legal department and these professional users, the platform must be able to provide ready-to-use or easily configurable integration with the systems in question, in order to support the processes of reception/initiation of agreements, the synchronization of data and processes between systems, but also the integration with collaboration tools and the accessibility of the data and information incorporated into your electronic contracts.
Finally, when these integrations are not yet possible, the platform must nevertheless enable investment in custom integrations when it is of commercial interest, in order to maintain control of your solution without losing speed or innovation.
