Why Sharepoint Is Not Made for Contract Management

SharePoint is primarily recognized as a collaboration and document management system. However, it is not a solution that was created for large-scale contract collaboration. We expect companies to recognize this issue and start using more appropriate solutions for this very important part of their business.

Here are a few thought-provoking questions:

• Can SharePoint be used for contract management? How well can it manage large volumes of contracts?
• Can SharePoint be used as a sales support tool to close deals faster?
• What are the risks and potential costs of SharePoint?
• What alternatives to SharePoint are there for managing contracts?

“SharePoint is a complete mess. When you do it with a mustang would have to compare, the only valid comparison would be that both are unsafe, inefficient, slow and gas guzzling, like most American cars. “- The average SharePoint user.

This quote is not intended to discriminate against the American automotive industry, but to criticize SharePoint software as a very popular solution which, however, is extremely inefficient for managing contracts on a larger scale.

We believe that SharePoint and any other system that fails miserably at all stages when it comes to improving the contract process, the cannot help companies build valuable business relationships. That is the gist of what we're going to discuss in this article.

What is Inefficient Contract Management?

We define ineffective contract management as a contractual process that results in loss of revenue and high expenditure on administrative tasks. The frustration that comes with trying to negotiate with an outdated contract management system can be too painful not to notice.

For this reason, we have the most important symptoms of a faulty Contract process put together:

• Inconsistent compliance. Sales teams usually want to close contracts faster through more efficient contract drafting, using standardized templates and creating predefined clauses without having to involve the legal department, which slows down the negotiation process.
• Loss of revenue. One of the main reasons for adopting contract management practices is that companies are unable to meet compliance requirements and mitigate risks, which then have a major impact on revenue. According to World Commerce & Contracts, unintelligent compliance management costs 9% of companies' total annual turnover. In a other investigation Have we established that a right A plausible reason for this is to be found in the handling of contract extensions.
• Painful negotiations. Friction losses are caused by different departments such as the legal department and sales, unlimited inquiries and the never-ending process of contract negotiations.

If you'd like to learn more about a detailed analysis of the costs that poor contract management entails on your sales, regulatory compliance, and revenue, you can read the following article:

The costs of poor contract management in the area of revenue and sales

Why Isn't SharePoint the Best Option for Contract Management?

With SharePoint, it takes time 6 to 12 months to set everything up. However, this does not mean that you can get the expected benefit from this system after this period. There can be numerous adjustment problems as this software has no framework for contract management. The entire setup can include things like configuring workflows, which include data modeling of past contracts and standardization of contracts with templates.

With top.legal, the usual setup process does not take longer than 14 days. Our software is designed to manage contracts and get the most out of them. We are not a document management solution. We've automated and perfected the machines to give our customers a flawless experience without the need for massive IT spending. Our goal for you is to build great business relationships and close deals much faster.

Some of the steps we take to provide you with added value as quickly as possible include:

• Identify templates and analyze your situation
• Determining the most important parameters and variables
• Automate your process with contract templates
• Creating a human experience for signing contracts with other parties (as opposed to the traditional black and white signing process such as MS Word)
• Evaluate your contract process

Here are 7 key reasons why SharePoint isn't a suitable solution for contract management:

1. Version control appears to be very inaccurate

Even though some claim that version control is the strongest SharePoint feature for the HR department, it is far from perfect and certainly not good enough for managing contracts. An e-learning company with more than 500 employees found that there is no good built-in system for version tracking, apart from the file names that users give the documents, which are often inconsistent or completely inaccurate. The inability to see which specific time frames apply to each change and what those changes were can be decisive when considering past contract changes.

The storage and version control features of Contract management software far surpass those from SharePoint.

• Internal and external negotiations. Internal negotiations often cost sales managers nerves and money because internal discussions do not want to end. According to Harvard Business University are internal negotiations of Decisive for success factor for external negotiations.
• Complete digital workflow with advanced eSignature. The assumption that only an eSignature solution is enough to improve the contract process and team collaboration is incorrect. Specialized software for scaling and closing deals faster should offer an integrated eSignature solution along with the many features of typical contract management software to create a complete digital workflow.
• Full user management. Manage access to individual contracts in a granular way, add internal and external comments, quickly engage management and legal departments to issue targeted approvals, receive updates from their contractors, and give permission to add signatories.

2. SharePoint has no intuitive interface, it is visually confusing and navigation is tedious

SharePoint was released over two decades ago, in 2001. Since then, attempts have been made to add more storage space, greater file support, and some accessibility and design improvements, which unfortunately has nothing to do with the complexity for normal daily has changed usage. The main reason why this solution is still popular is that it is not easy to find an enterprise-grade contract management solution at an approximate price.

3. The free text field of SharePoint in the search makes the entire system a total mess

This is not a simple problem within SharePoint, such as disabling a search feature or implementing a incorrect authorization. This issue is due to a lack of functionality thats different from traditional folder structures. Smart search functionality should include:

• Intelligent tagging and Find contracts quickly with advanced search

4. Not suitable for larger organizations (no ability to scale)

Is SharePoint scalable or not? This is probably one of the most common questions asked by people who question the potential adaptability of SharePoint to the organization. As explained in this article, there are two preferences when analyzing scalability: performance in exchange for lower scalability or scalability in exchange for performance.

A few reasons why SharePoint is not scalable:

• It is a fact that the architecture must be implemented correctly across different servers for SharePoint to be scalable. In the long term, any scalability will be associated with uncontrollable costs that amount to excessive server requirements, and IT know-how is attributable.
• For a large volume of smaller and medium-sized files, the file system may become a bottleneck in performance. An astronomical amount of data in your database can lead to a serious performance issue if not handled properly

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“Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer from it. Some people can avoid them. Geniuses eliminate them.” - Alan Perlis

5. Setting up the system is tedious

When you opt for an on-premise solution with SharePoint It is not easy to deal with architecture. Responding to variables such as:

• How many servers do you need? How much data do you need to process? How much storage space do you have on your SQL servers?

Considering that you might have to pay for disk space, the cost of the Windows operating system per server, and SharePoint licenses and storage costs, setting up this system can be very tedious.

6. Lack of collaboration (equivalent to Google Drive)

“Despite Microsoft's best attempts to position the SharePoint platform for content and collaboration, many people still see it as a platform for managing business processes. “- “Finding The Sweet Spot” report by Forrester.

Forrester acknowledges that SharePoint is widely used as a collaboration tool but concludes that this is by far not the most important use case. Rather, they point out that there are other, more important workloads, such as application development and business intelligence.

The problem with using SharePoint and collaboration solutions like Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Docs, and even Salesforce is that managing and making contracts accessible creates a dysfunctional system for finding past contracts.

7. Administration and Access security is a nightmare

Many of the modern SharePoint changes related to security restrictions and hierarchy are very difficult to manage, and anonymous users are granted unrestricted access by default.

Some examples include:

• Members within a group have access to the editing level by default. With it, they can do all sorts of things, including deleting applications. In other words, when you create a team site, everyone in the company has access to it.
• Organizations can quickly become cluttered when, for example, every user has the option to create groups.
• Global administrators are not allowed to make any other important changes within a group. The SharePoint Admin Center has limited access to storage management information.
• Many of these management topics are available in the classic admin center, so you'll need to switch to them to see them.

As one user said: “You can't set up a company intranet with Microsoft Teams and/or OneDrive. They're not meant for that. Both simply create endless silos of information in companies.”