Most of the businesses today are on a lookout for efficient contract management techniques to streamline their dealings and related administrative tasks. The best way to encourage operational efficiency and to maximize growth in your business can be to adopt a powerful contract life management system.
Before the advent of technology, contracts were on paper. They were stored in the physical locations that gave the chance of theft, damage, or loss.
In today’s era, you can fearlessly create and store contracts with the help of contract management software. Without any hassle, you can draft, negotiate, and manage contractual agreements with this app. It provides an attentive approach that allows you to deal with thousands of contracts.
A recent study indicates that the global contract management software market is likely to touch US$ 3417.3 million by 2022.
What is Contract Management?
The process of managing contract creation, implementing and examining which in turn boosts the operational and financial performance in an organization is known as contract management. It helps in reducing business risk.
The contract or agreement can be between two companies that are involved in business dealings, and it can be with freelancers or the employees too.
How can businesses benefit with Contract Management Software?
Who exercises contract management software?
How to choose the right Contract Management Software?
To accomplish your business needs, you need the best contract management system. Let’s have a look at the points to be considered for your contract management tool.
What is Contract Lifecycle Management?
There are thousands of contracts in big companies. All these contracts have hundreds of pages, documents and other related information. The main target of the organization is to improve performance and simultaneously save time. With the contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution, companies can make faster and smarter decisions in their business proceedings. It will allow users to reduce risks and increase profits.
Let’s discuss the steps involved in CLM process:
Key features of Contract Management Software
As in businesses, contract management plays a crucial role. If you are running a small set-up, and prefer to customize the features of the contract management system as per your business requirements, then you can try free, open source contract management software in your organization.
In this article, you can explore the list of top quality free contract management software. Before that, let's have a quick look at the comparison chart of the best free and open source contract management software.
Comparison Chart of Best 10 Free and Open Source Contract Management Software
Free and open source Contract Management Software
1 Docxpresso (open source, free trial, free for one user)
Docxpresso is a free and open source contract management software system that can help you to easily sign contracts and manage reports. You can work with your customers online by generating dynamic documents with this app. It will allow you to build surveys and capture user data.
You will find this app as a cost-effective way to run your business. It will provide you with faster and better services. You can transform documents into intelligent online forms, can share it securely with your partners and can also track the progress, and finally collect and manage captured data. This open source contract management system is free forever for the first account along with the free trial.
Docxpresso is ideal for all types of businesses and of all sizes, including;starters, small companies, medium-sized, growing companies, and large companies. You can create beautiful sales orders and invoices with this technology.
With this software, you can automatically convert your office documents into online apps. It is best for education, legal, finance, and IT sectors.
(Source:Docxpresso)
Key features:
- Id Validation
- E-signature
- Validation
- Data Management
- Blockchain
- Workflow
- Negotiation
- Notifications
- Collaboration
- Version Control
- Archiving and Retention
- Process and Workflow automation
2 Contractbook (free)
Contractbook is free contract management software for modern businesses. It is transparent, efficient, and secure compliance. On a single digital platform, you can create, sign, and store all the legal documents that will help you in increasing transparency in your organization.
This app will save your valuable time.For legal professionals; it serves as the client-centric contract management technique. Digitally, efficiently, and securely the software can monitor and manage your clients’ contracts.
It supports businesses of all sizes. From start to finish, drafting to signing, sharing and storing; the users can manage contracts effortlessly. To ensure the paperless and timely transaction, users can track the status of the contract sent to the recipients.
(Source:Contractbook)
Key features:
- Create and collaborate
- Sign digitally
- Store in the cloud
- Suits legal professionals
- New business models
- Data and insights
- Legal reviews
- White Labels
- Template Management
- Compliance and milestone tracking
- Version Control
- Completion Tracking
- Contract Lifecycle and Workflow management
- Speciality Contracts
- Contract drafting
3 Agiloft (free)
Agiloft is the free contract management software that you will find scalable and secure. Without learning custom code, you can automate and manage your business process due to its powerful workflow functionality.
This agile app offers an unconditional guarantee on both software and implementation costs. As per your business needs you can easily make use of this tool. You can configure business rules to validate or update data in your external systems.
The software allows you to control status and state transitions. With drag-and-drop and user-friendly graphical workflow editor, you can build your workflow. The deep and rapid customization of this software serves a wide range of vertical industries. It focuses on mid to large companies that require vigorous automation.
(Source:Agiloft)
Key Features:
- Tables and Fields
- Charts and Reports
- Email, Chat, SMS
- Auditability
- Automated Contract Authoring
- Configurable Interfaces
- Prebuilt Integrations
- Installation and Upgrades
- Approval Workflows
- Electronic Signature Integration
- Contract Lifecycle Management
- Completion Tracking
- Custom Workflow
- Precise Access Control
4 WebCM (90 days free trial)
If you are searching for a powerful and easy-to-use contract management software, then WebCM is the apt option for you. With 90 days of free trial, this app provides better and faster results. It is 100% trusted software.
For a modern business, this technology serves as the contract automation platform. You can focus on high-value work and strategies by accelerating your contract administration time. Without any loss to data integrity, you can add and delete fields as per the business needs.
You can achieve high-quality contracts and work on more productive collaboration to enhance contract outcomes. The deals operate in a dynamic environment. This simple and smart software can be accessed at any time and anywhere. In standalone contract management systems, this app serves as the gold standard. The parties can process and track the execution of the contract.
(Source:WebCM)
Key Features:
- Unlimited Access
- Notifications
- Automatic Reporting
- Multilingual
- Training Videos
- Action Lists
- Workflows
- Different lingo and templates
- Anywhere, Anytime
- Performance Management
- Dynamic Environments
- Continuous Improvement
5 Proposable (open source, 14 days free trial)
Proposable is the open source contract management software that provides 14 days of a free trial. It serves as the proposal app that meets the requirements of all sizes of businesses ranging from start-ups to large enterprises.
It offers better contract management workflow that helps in simplifying the process of creation, delivery, tracking, and eSigning the contracts. The software allows you to effortlessly collaborate with your teammates on any given proposal.
This user-friendly software provides you with editable templates, advanced proposal collaboration, flexible document library, real-time activity monitoring, and simplified approval workflow. This tool can be a great fit for all digital business owners.
(Source:Proposable)
Key Features:
- Drag and drop builder
- Flexible estimates
- Sales Content Library
- Collaboration and Customizability
- Electronic Signatures
- Sales Events Alerts
- Sales Activity and Analytics
- Real-time activity monitoring
- Template Creation
- Alerts and notifications
6 Bupros Contracts (30 days free trial, open source)
If you are looking for open source contract management software solutions, then Bupros Contracts is here to support the creation of contracts. It helps in giving overviews of current agreements and contract parties. At any time, the deals can be centrally created, edited and stored. Instantaneously you can retrieve the contracts at any time.
The interface of this tool is simple and easy. You require little training to start the interface. Due to timely implementation, this app provides a quick return on investment. For all authorized users, there is visibility and control over organization-wide contracts.
When integrated with eProcurement, this technology monitors supplier compliance. It provides 30 days free trial along with free community edition. Whenever necessary, the app provides alerts that help in preventing the automatic renewal of contracts.
Only the authorized personnel can access the contracts. All the administrative process of contracting along with compliance management, amendments, and renewals is automated and controlled by this app. You can analyze the performance of contracts through reporting and analytics feature.
(Source:Bupros Contracts)
Key features:
- On-demand model
- Search and retrieve the contract
- Audit trails
- Levels of Authorization
- Reporting tools
- Contract templates
- Easy catalogue publishing
- Alerts for contract creation
- Contract Repository
7 openSourceCM (open source, free demo)
openSourceCM is the open source contract management app for small businesses. It efficiently manages contracts from inception to archive. The software deploys quickly in a secure and high-performance cloud (SaaS). From a contract, this tool realizes all the potential liability and revenue.
The tool receives notifications on calendar events and tasks. It has executive visibility and control, compliance and audit trail.
The app extracts contract actionable business intelligence (BI). It serves as an enterprise-level product that holds a long and varied features list. The users can navigate through the platform efficiently and effectively. The folder library of this software can be designed based on the way a company conducts its business that includes, departments, international divisions, and client types.
(Source:openSourceCM)
Key Features:
- Flexible Reporting
- Customizable Contract Profile
- Intuitive and easy-to-use tools
- Access Rights
- Monitoring, Alerts and Calendar
- System Tools
- On-demand delivery
- Secure Centralized Repository
- Compliance/ Audit Trail
- Elastic search engine and reporting tools
- Versions Tools
- Comprehensive Workflow
- Advanced API libraries
- Virtual Data Room (VDR) functionality
- Authoring flow, clauses and templates
- Electronic Signature
8 OneSoft Connect (free)
Onesoft Connect is a free contract management software that can manage anything within minutes. You can efficiently organize your customers, people, relationships, assets, risks, projects, and job descriptions. The app can distribute information and send reminders. For your business issues, you will get a fully customized solution from this flexible tool. You can generate reports and overviews.
The platform allows its users to hold all information related to any contract under one platform.The tool is highly adjustable and can be used as a spreadsheet. You can access data from any device and from anywhere. It is apt for daily issues and any business. Foressential business needs, it contains predefined datasheets.
(Source:Onesoft Connect)
Key Features:
- Manage assets
- Keep records
- Manage projects and contracts
- Manage human resources
- Compliance Tracking
- Contract Lifecycle Management
- Buy-Side (Suppliers) and Sell-Side (Customers)
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management)- Business and customers
- Task Management
- Packaged solutions
9 Concord (free trial of 30 days)
Concord is the contract management platform that everyone can agree on. It helps businesses in increasing revenue and reducing costs. This tool guarantees compliance by automating the manual business process.
This tool provides 30 days of free trial and allows businesses to scale faster and be more sustainable. It keeps track of existing contracts and supports companies in creating new contracts. By employing this tool, you can drive scalability and achieve flawless and efficient compliance.
Through an online interface, the users can directly edit contracts. With the help of e-signature functionality, it can legally bind contracts. From multinational corporations to freelancers, this app is going well with all types of businesses. Globally, more than 100,000 companies trust this software.
(Source:Concord)
Key Features:
- Customizable templates
- Deadline alerts
- Change Tracking
- Document Versioning
- Send bulk notifications
- LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) integration
- Contract Authoring
- Track proposals
- Enforce Workflows
- Audit Contracts
- Native e-signature processes
- Automates contract management
- Workflow Management
- Integrations with cloud storage platforms
- Secure Collaboration
- Online redlining
10 bitfarm-ARCHIV (open source, free)
bitfarm-ARCHIV is the open source contract management tool that automatically submits contracts. The contract staff can overview the current contracts along with the associated costs and deadlines with the help of appropriate bookmarks.
In your organization, you can explore the results on Excel file regarding the expiration of contracts and liabilities in the next five years. For each new contract, this app assigns a unique internal contract number. This number is used for all metadata.
There is a flexible and convenient use of this free contract management software for small business due to extensive integration options. It automatically calculates possible contract termination dates. For reviewing the same, this app submits the details to the responsible employees. To administer the contracts, the app employs the dynamic process.
(Source: bitfarm-ARCHIV)
Key Features:
- Integration and Collaboration
- Controlling and Security
- Flexibility and Adaptability
- Implement Work processes
- Access Possibilities
- Workflow Management
- Archiving and User Interface
- Architecture and Scalability
- Compatibility
- Document distribution
Apart from free and open source contract management software mentioned above, you can also consider this popular contract management software - SpringCM that can offer exceptional benefits for all dealing with contract lifecycle management process.
SpringCM (Popular)
If you want to reduce your contract process by 75%, then SpringCM is apt for you. This powerful tool helps you in increasing revenue. The app allows you to generate, share, track, approve, renew, and store contracts.
You can accommodate your business workflow by making use of cloud-based central repository and an organized, intuitive folder structure. To generate contracts, you can make use of the most up-to-date information. It is flexible, so it allows you to handle the third-party paper. For reviews, approvals and signatures; the contract process sends each contract to internal and external parties. It helps in streamlining the contract review and increase visibility.
(Source: SpringCM)
Key Features:
- Contract Automation
- Share and Collaborate
- Central Repository
- Analysis, Tracking and Reporting
- Salesforce Integration
- Redlining and negotiations
- Document Generation
- Mobile Access
- Version and track history
Summing Up!
The contract management software allows businesses to manage their challenging tasks efficiently. The business users can proficiently gain their business goals if there is a correct implementation of the contract management tool. It will allow you to have in-depth insights into contract data and helps in saving the cost and time. You will enjoy the abilities of collaboration along with better decision-making that involves the lowest risks.
If you are running a small set up and would like to try a few contract management software, then do not hesitate to try the list of free and open source contract management software presented in this article. If you prefer more advanced features, then you can try Odoo Sign, Contractworks, Contractroom, Icertis, Outlaw, Coupa.
Feel free to share your valuable reviews in case you have come across with any of the software mentioned in this piece of writing.
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