When contract lifecycle management is overlooked in business operations, it leads to unnecessary financial losses and can reduce operational efficiencies. For Sales, Legal, and Finance teams, adhering to contract management best practices is essential.

From contract drafting and storage to speedy approval times, here are 10 key contract management standards and best practices that should be applied to any CLM process.

Welcome to another installment of our series "You ask. We answer" where we answer some of the most common questions that come from people like you. So, let's get started!

How Malbek is like Amazon Prime

You would have to be living under a rock to not know about Amazon Prime these days. You can order anything — from a mattress to a candle — and within two days you get it on your doorstep. You can search for what you need, figure out if it is eligible for two-day delivery, read the reviews on the product, and get it in your hands in a fraction of the time that would take you to use a different online retailer.  Instead of struggling with long delivery times like other companies, Amazon chose to listen to what people wanted and made a fast and easy way to find and get what you need. With all that said, imagine if we applied that concept to contracting. What if you can get your contracts delivered in two days or less? That sounds like a dream, right?

Well, get ready to pinch yourself because two-day contracting is absolutely a reality — with the right provider, of course.

Recently, Team Malbek India held a photography contest as a fun employee activity. They took pictures using their phone or camera devices and submitted them for the contest. Although no one on the team claimed to be a photographer, the talent evident in each of the 30 images that were submitted might say otherwise. Such amazing creativity!

To ensure that the contest was fair, I asked one of my friends, David Adams, who is an experienced photographer on the side, to judgethe pictures and help select the winner. I asked him to spend a few minutes to review the pictures, identify the winners, and give a short reason why he judged the photos the way he did.

When you live in an RV half of the year, like I do (check out my last blog post for some context), conserving resources is more than an environmental choice. I try to organize everything I do based on how much it will save me in time, aggravation, and cost. That means I'm always looking for the fewest steps and miles to drive, the least amount of water, propane, power, gas to consume. I mean, I only do my dishes once a day. It's not because I hate doing the dishes (which I admit is true, but not my point), but because it saves water, work, and future problems from arising.

“Our solution started failing because we did not know how to grow the tool with our business.”
– Shelfware Client

Today we continue our series on Contract Management Shelfware and turn our attention to the topic of how older CLM solutions require so much training to use that they are difficult to use without hours and hours of practice.

Welcome to another installment of our series "You ask. We answer" where we answer some of the most common questions that come from people like you. So, let's get started!

Can You Help Me Better Align Sales and Legal?

When I think of opposition I think of a few scenarios: a fox versus a hound, a parent versus a toddler angling for more dessert, Don Lemon versus Sean Hannity, and, ultimately, Sales versus Legal. Let’s face it. The goals of Sales and Legal are in natural opposition, but that isn't always a bad thing. Just like we don’t expect Sean and Don to have a nice balanced give and take when discussing politics, we expect organic friction between Sales and Legal in the course of getting a contract to signature.

There was a time not that long ago when contracts where simply an instrument of agreement between two or more parties and lived happily in a shared folder without any visibility; but that is no longer the case today. Contracts sit at the heart of business.