Weagree - Contract automation accelerated business transactions

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Contract automation accelerates

Without adequate contract automation (aka contract assembly or document automation), creating a contract can be an uphill battle. Contracting processes often contain complications. Some business transactions are not even agreed in a contract (exposing the company to excessive liability).

Most parts of contract creation are fact-finding, can be delegated, allow process optimisation and risk management to be automated. With contract automation, response times turn to zero, you will sprint at deal-momentum.

For clarity of terminology: if we talk about contract automation (or document assembly), that relates to the contract creation stage (incl. e-signing). If you are interested in the post-negotiation stage, visit our contract lifecycle management software (CLM) pages.

With contract automation software, contract creation processes are streamlined, consistent and controlled: you will answer a questionnaire and generate a first-time-right draft agreement, based on your own model contract templates.

Optimise contract creation by integrating Weagree with SharePoint, Salesforce, CRM and other applications, with advanced approval workflows and plug in e-signing. Cycling is fun. Try it yourself:

Experience the Weagree Wizard yourself (it’s free, secure and anonymous).

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Contract automation - business case

Weagree’s contract automation wizard solves many problems:

  1. Long response times of a legal department
  2. Slow contract creation and struggles in contract fact-finding
  3. Inconsistencies and noise in your first-draft contracts
  4. Long transaction cycle (slow time-to-signature)
  5. Non-compliance with contracting requirements
  6. Poor or absent contract know-how management
  7. Inadequate internal controls and poor status monitoring
  8. Senior people do bottom-end work

If you want to understand your business case for contract automation better, we have explained it in more detail.

There’s more to contract automation than ‘just’ an acceleration. Let’s dive into it. Weagree solves more of your problems:

The business case is impressive, solving at least eight contract and process-related challenges.

Realtime editor (WYSIWYG)

For many people, contract automation feels like abandoning control. Filling out a questionnaire is unsettling, like walking through a dark tunnel. If you cannot immediately check your answer or verify if the necessary nuance is present, you prefer a word document (for ease of use). This is where delay and inefficiency join the race. 

What if you can keep track of every change to your contract because it’s right there on your screen, or on your monitor next to it? Starting with the answers to your Q&A, the final Word document will include all your tweaks as if they had been in the model contract all the time. 

You would have a realtime editor (WYSIWYG) in contract automation that combines the best of old-school and new-age worlds. (And if you click feedback the admin can update the template for your modifications… with just a few clicks.)

While answering the questionnaire, you can detach Weagree’s real-time editor (WYSIWYG) and position it on a second monitor. On mobile phones, you must swipe to activate the real-time editor.

The realtime editor, especially if you detach it onto your monitor, makes contract automation super comfortable.
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Clause library

– prevent re-inventing the wheel

Contracts for which legal counsel are consulted, usually require a specialty. The one additional arrangement unanticipated in your template: for the transaction with a key supplier, for the one strategic element in a collaboration, or the risky part of supplying a competitor. A clause library integrated with contract automation…

Otherwise the legal counsel was called upon to draft a provision. Often from scratch (aka: re-invent the wheel). Or to consult colleagues to find a proper example.

A key characteristic of the Weagree Wizard is the central, searchable clause library. This central clausebook for reusable contract building blocks reinforces a high quality and consistency of the contract templates. With a clause library errors and inconsistencies are avoided.

A clause library empowers legal counsel with direct access:

  1. for exceptional cases not covered by the contract template, and
  2. for tailoring mark-up clauses in a contract received from the other party.

Thanks to the centralised and integrated nature of Weagree’s clause library integrated with contract automation, your contract-maintenance work is minimised.

A clause library integrated with contract automation is what makes the difference for every lawyer: plugging in clauses with just one mouse-click into your contract.

Guest-user access

– to complete your Q&A

The small things in contract automation are still inhibitory. More than you like. They slow down the process. Contracting has become collaborative, and so has Weagree. Invite the other party as a guest to help you answering the questionnaire.

They’ll like your acceleration and progressiveness. Just enter e-mail address, write a personal invite, click send, and wait… (for the remaining answers to come in ‘automatically’).

Happy to complete the deal expeditiously.

It is so convenient if you can invite third persons to answer the Q&A and fill in the gaps.
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DMS contract versions management

Contract-versions management

The Weagree Wizard contains a DMS (document management solution) to support the negotiations stage, and is a complete end-to-end contract management solution – the Weagree Workspace – the user’s permanent workplace for managing all pending transactions. It is possible to upload contracts, contract-related files schedules and contract versions not originating from Weagree’s contract automation (so both contracts received from the other party and contracts from Word-templates outside the Weagree Wizard).

Managing contract versions and making compares takes only two clicks, as the video demonstrates:

It is so convenient, managing all contracts or transaction-related files from one central place.

Approval workflows

If any contract or given Q&A-answer requires the prior approval by senior management or any other stakeholder, the contract approval can be obtained through Weagree. Weagree’s contract approval workflow functionality is advanced:

  • senior-management approvals can be preceded by junior-level checks and filtering;
  • contract approval workflows can operate parallel (e.g. such that an approval by operational or financial approvers is not delayed by waiting for legal approval);
  • approvers can communicate with each other and the submitter (to ask the submitter for explanation, to given conditions for approval, or to explain a rejection);
  • Q&A questions may trigger answer-dependent approval workflows (e.g. dependent on value or costs).

Weagree’s approval workflow allows a legal department to introduce or differentiate approval requirements and to monitor compliance. An adequate contract-creation-approval workflow justifies access rights to the contract creation stage for business managers, with the option to release the contract itself only after approval by the responsible in-house lawyer.

Weagree’s contract approval workflow is probably more extensive and might have more features than you think.

Approval workflows provide a legal department with adequate internal controls and robust risk management: enforcing compliance and permitting delegation of contract creation work.

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Contract reporting and monitoring

Prevent unsigned contracts

When a deal seems done, some people start the race before the starting shot. Contracts that remain unsigned are bothersome and imply betting the company:

  • no limitations of liability, and
  • loss of intellectual property rights.

Minimise risks and keeping track of unsigned contracts must be very easy. Awaiting contract signing is not everyone’s first priority… One click, and you’ll see all unsigned contracts awaiting the starting shot.

Oh, and when you set a date, it moves along. (You filter on a certain date or period, and in a month from now, the filter is automatically updated.) Weagree’s buttons stay up to date.

Adequate and intuitive monitoring enables a legal counsel to keep track of all pending transactions.

e-Signing

Storing all contracts and project documentation in a central document management system (or retrieving them from there). Weagree has a well-developed, state-of-the-art API, enabling integration with various IT applications (e.g. CRM, DMS, ERP, public sources).

No extra charge for using the existing plugins; no extra charge for supporting you configuring our plugins, and if you want an integration that we have on our roadmap, we are happy to develop it for you.

Quick and intuitive implementation of Weagree’s e-signing plugins accelerate your business.

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Contract reporting and monitoring

Reporting and monitoring

– oversee your team’s busyness and (pending) contracts

Team leaders may have difficulties keeping track

  • of pending transactions, or
  • the busy-ness of their team.

A lack of insight complicates guiding your struggling team member. Some may underperform… others might be drowning.

A good road captain has an overview on pending business and immediate insight in everyone’s busy-ness. Not everyone reaches out when something goes wrong. (Real cyclists don’t whine after falling into barbed wire.) It takes one click to monitor your team’s busy-ness.

Adequate reporting and monitoring of busyness and pending transactions are an inherent result of contract automation.

Many top-class templates included

The Weagree Wizard is equipped with a set of high quality contract templates. Customers are free to modify and expand the automated templates or Q&A-options according to your business requirements.

The model contracts include (without limitation) those that we have shared in Word-format (in the Weagree Wizard they are automated with an advanced questionnaire). As a licensee, you are free to use them in your own business.

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API integrations

– your external connectivity

Storing all contracts and project documentation in a central document management system (or retrieving them from there). Weagree has a well-developed, state-of-the-art API, enabling integration with various IT applications. For example:

  • E-signing (e.g. DocuSign, Adobe Sign, Evidos)
  • Single sign-on (SSO (e.a. Azure, SAML, ADFS))
  • CRM (customer relations management (e.g. Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce))
  • DMS (document management system (e.g. SharePoint or iManage))
  • ERP (e.g. SAP or Oracle)
  • Public sources

No extra charge for using the existing plugins; no extra charge for supporting you configuring our plugins, and if you want an integration that we have on our roadmap or wish list, we are happy to develop it for you.

Weagree’s vision is to increase connectivity (and facilitate collaboration).

Try contract automation yourself

Now that you’ve come this far, why don’t you try it yourself? We have automated a contract template, guiding you through a questionnaire and highlighting a few key functionalities:

Experience Weagree’s contract automation yourself (it’s free, secure, and anonymous).

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Terms of Use

I hereby accept (or reconfirm my acceptance of) Weagree’ Terms of use, in which:

Terms of Use

I hereby accept (or reconfirm my acceptance of) Weagree’ Terms of use, in which: