How can businesses improve the management of their contracts in 2025? With an increasing number of suppliers and employees, the complexity and importance of contracts in business is growing. In this article, you can learn more about the essential elements for getting started with contract management software in Microsoft 365. Whether you’re in the process of upgrading your current systems and processes, or just getting started, this article will give you the inspiration and information you need to take the next step.
What is Contract Management?
Contract management is about taking control of your company’s contracts in a system where you can follow up and manage each contract throughout its lifecycle. A well-functioning system with good processes ensures better operational performance while reducing legal and financial risks.
Today’s technology has made contract management easier and more optimized than ever before. Tools and software make the processing of contracts more efficient and save companies significant time in sales efforts, contract searches, analysis and renegotiations. With secure software, you also ensure that your contracts are stored securely.
Typical contract types
Contract management and follow-up of contracts entered into with customers, suppliers, partners and employees is the cornerstone of most businesses. We can therefore distinguish between three types of essential contracts in a traditional business, these are purchase contracts, procurement contracts and employment contracts. Purchase contracts provide sources of income for the company, while procurement and labor contracts provide the basis for the company’s daily operations.
The benefits of contract management software
Effective contract management is becoming increasingly important as the complexity of business agreements increases. With global markets, complex supply chains and multiple stakeholders, contracts are becoming more comprehensive and detailed. This requires systematic management to avoid errors, misunderstandings and legal conflicts.
Technological advances create new opportunities and challenges in contract management. Tools such asShareControl Contract, built on Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, enable automation and optimization in large parts of contract management. This includes, among other things, storage and organization of contracts, automated notifications and analysis with Power BI.
Read more: How to benefit from digital contract management
How to get started with contract management software
Depending on where you are in your transformation to contract management, the right setup and processes can contribute to an efficient and optimized setup of contract management software. Unfortunately, for most organizations, good software is not enough, internal processes are just as important.
A dedicated contract manager
Depending on the size and number of contracts, there will in most cases be advantages to having a dedicated person responsible for internal processes and handling the contracts in the system.
Ideally, all of your organization’s contracts are kept in a single repository that is accessible to all departments and employees. Unfortunately, this is not always possible with employment contracts and other personal documents. There should therefore be someone responsible for ensuring the correct setup of libraries and access management, preferably from the IT department, while, for example, the HR or finance department has access to all the company’s contracts and documents.
Contract manager for sales documents
When it comes to sales documents, it’s crucial to have a dedicated contract manager who ensures that all sales-related contracts are handled correctly. This means making sure that the contracts are accessible to relevant departments, as well as being correctly filed and updated. The sales team is often on the front line when it comes to negotiating and signing new agreements, and a contract manager can provide legal insight, standardize documents and ensure that all agreements are in line with the company’s overall goals and strategies.
By ensuring you have contract managers in your sales department, you can more easily define notifications to the right sales person before key contract milestones such as payment terms, renewals and changes to contract terms. This allows your business to eliminate inefficiencies in the sales process and mitigate the risk of lost revenue opportunities due to non-compliance with contract terms or outdated information.
Metadata and classification of contracts
With centralized document storage, businesses have the ability to tag, classify and organize the metadata in their contracts. This means that each contract can be assigned specific properties such as contract type, expiration date, parties involved, and key terms. Such a structured approach to metadata helps the business to quickly find, analyze and follow up on contracts based on relevant criteria.
The business should therefore define contract types and key terms in its internal processes to differentiate the contracts and ensure optimized outreach. Using metadata such as dates, contract partners and status, you can quickly filter and find contracts. This improves searchability and makes it easier to keep track of contracts, follow up on renewals and ensure that all contract terms are complied with in an efficient manner.
Read also: 4 reasons to digitize your contract management
Integrations and internal systems
To maximize the effectiveness of a contract management system, it’s important to ensure integrations with the internal systems the business already uses, such as financial systems and reporting platforms like Power BI.
Connecting contract management to your financial system can simplify invoicing, payment follow-up and financial reporting, while ensuring that contracts are directly linked to relevant financial data. Integration with, for example, Power BI can provide the ability to visualize and analyze contract data in an intuitive way, giving management valuable insights into contract portfolio performance, risks and opportunities. This contributes to a more data-driven approach to contract management and ensures better decision-making for the business.
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Signing of contracts
Digital signing of contracts has become a standard in modern contract management, offering both legal and practical benefits. By using digital signatures, businesses can ensure faster, safer and more efficient signing of contracts, regardless of geographical location.
Electronic signatures are legally binding and recognized in most countries, while providing full traceability and security. With integration to the contract management system, signed contracts can be automatically stored and automatic alerts can be set up to follow up on renewals or other milestones. This eliminates the need for paper-based processes, saves time and reduces the risk of lost or delayed documents. When implementing contract management software, the business should therefore define the platform for electronic signing.
Analysis and reporting points
Before implementing a dedicated contract management system, it’s important to define which analysis and reporting points are critical to the business. This ensures that the system can be customized to collect and present relevant data.
By identifying key performance indicators such as contract value, duration, renewal dates and agreed terms, you can structure your metadata so that reporting and analytics provide an accurate and up-to-date picture of your contract portfolio. For example, you can find out the total costs and liabilities of your contracts. This facilitates better decision-making and helps your business monitor risk factors, achieve objectives and ensure compliance with internal and external requirements.
Templates and internal processes
Even though contract management software provides efficient storage, contract retrieval and reporting, many businesses spend unnecessary time preparing contracts. To ensure efficient management throughout the entire contract cycle, businesses should implement templates for their various contracts. These can typically be employment contracts, sales contracts, supplier contracts, etc.
Contract management software
Your contracts are more than just documents – they’re the key to your business’s future success. Effective contract management can be the difference between financial growth and costly losses. With ShareControl Contract, a complete contract management system built on Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, you can take full control of all your contracts, from creation to renewal – all on one secure platform.
ShareControl Contract
ShareControl Contract gives you full overview and control of all your contracts in one place. You avoid time-consuming searches for important agreements and always have up-to-date information on renewals and key details readily available in your SharePoint-based contract library. With the system’s integration with Adobe Sign and DocuSign, it’s easy to automate the signing process, while also enabling reporting via Power Bi and Excel VBA.
Library structure in Microsoft 365
ShareControl Contract is built on the technology of Microsoft 365, ensuring a flexible and clear way to organize your contracts. The system creates a centralized contract library where all contracts are stored in a structure that is easy to navigate for all departments in the business.
With the ability to customize the folder structure as needed, you can also choose to organize your contracts according to your own parameters. Many of our customers therefore have separate libraries for each area, e.g. HR, license agreements, purchase contracts, etc. In this way, you can separate contracts based on contract types, customers, suppliers or other relevant criteria.
In addition, the system supports metadata and classification, allowing each contract to be tagged with key information such as expiry dates, parties involved and contract status. This ensures quick access to the right information, streamlining the search and follow-up of contracts.
Automated notifications at contract milestones
ShareControl Contract includes integration with Power Automate, which enables pre-contract notification functions via email and notifications in the system. This ensures that you always have up-to-date contracts and correct terms.
The system allows you to define a primary manager, who is the main person to receive notifications related to the contract. If the primary manager does not take the necessary actions, you can also add a secondary manager who receives notifications as a backup.
It is possible to configure up to three notifications for each contract. These alerts can be set up to be sent at specific times or based on specific events, such as when a contract is approaching renewal or expiry. This provides an extra layer of security to ensure that contracts are handled in a timely manner and that no critical deadlines are missed.
The security of the ShareControl Contract
By adopting Microsoft 365 fordigital contract management, organizations can gain a number of benefits that can improve the efficiency and security of any business. The platform offers advanced security features such as two-factor authentication, data encryption and regular security updates that protect sensitive contract data against unauthorized access and potential cyber threats. Microsoft 365 is also designed to comply with global privacy and security standards, including GDPR, ensuring that your organization’s data management is legally secure.
Read more about security in Microsot 365 here
Security is a cornerstone of Microsoft 365, and this is especially true for contract management. With ShareControl Contract integrated into Microsoft 365, you can be sure that your contracts will not disappear. The platform offers comprehensive data protection mechanisms such as regular backups and data encryption. These features ensure that contracts are always available and protected, whether due to technical failures or cyber threats.
Microsoft 365 also allows users of ShareControl Contract to implement access control in the contract management system. In this way, you can ensure that documents or libraries remain invisible to unauthorized persons, whether these are employment contracts that are only visible to HR and the employee, or board documents that are only visible to the board.
