There’s no doubt that rifling through endless amounts of paperwork to find one specific thing is tedious. Now think about a bigger organization – a company that deals with a large volume of documents every single day, particularly contracts. As volumes continue to grow, there is just no way of dealing with all of the documents without proper systems and processes in place. There is a real risk of losing important files and missing deadlines. Hiring more people to review your contracts, spending more time and money organizing them, may not be the answer either.
But what if there was a solution to all of this? What if there were systems that could do the work for you, preventing you from worrying about the contract side of the equation? This is where an effective contract lifecycle management (CLM) system, which uses artificial intelligence (AI), comes into play.
WHAT IS AI?
Before we get into how AI can transform your contract management process, it is important to understand exactly what it is. Often, AI is confused with machine learning (ML). Although the two are closely related, they are quite different, representing different stages of machine intelligence.
ContractPodAi has developed and embedded AI throughout our contract management software. AI, in our case, is the pre-trained intelligence that gives you the ability to read and contextually review contracts clearly and efficiently. In effect, AI is the machine intelligence that has been trained to do a particular task or series of tasks. This is a rather important nuance for corporate legal counsels, who do not want to spend time reviewing every detail of every contract ad nauseam. Instead, AI steps in, take a first look and identifies where further investigation is needed. Call it a ‘triage’ stage. 
80% of enterprise executives say AI makes workers more productive and creates jobs.
Now ML, by contrast, is the process of training the AI system, itself, if it isn’t pre-trained and customized to your individual needs. And this requires effort.
So when using artificial intelligence for your contract management – after it has been trained specifically for your types of contracts – you will find out firsthand how it supports your department’s contracting needs. Best of all, you don’t have to worry about the six-month training phase that typically ties down legal teams’ resources.
ContractPodAi has developed the E: V artificial intelligence system built on the IBM Watson platform. E: V benefits in-house counsels, as it is out-of-the-box, ready-to-use contract technology. Our legal engineers also tweak and train the system, according to your specific contract database and types. Ultimately, this saves you from having to train the system, yourself, and allows you to use a fully operating contract management system on day one, after a short implementation cycle.
BENEFITS OF AI IN CONTRACT MANAGEMENT:
Contract management, without a form of technology to aid in the organization of documents, is unproductive. Using artificial intelligence for your everyday contract management allows you to focus less on mundane tasks. Among other things, it:
- Increases productivity and efficiency
- Better organizes your legal team’s contracts
- Helps with risk management
- Provides your staff with the latest technology in legal
WHAT ABOUT JOBS?
Using AI in your everyday contract management lets you focus less on mundane tasks. Do you still think that the adoption of AI will take away jobs or replace human labor altogether? Think again to the statistic above, that 80 percent of enterprise executives say that it will make workers more productive and even create jobs. 
So don’t think of AI as something that will compete with you for your work. Instead, consider the probability that it will enhance your job. This is while taking away the mundane, repetitive aspects and letting you focus on higher-value services. It provides you with a document repository and leads to better organization.
According to Consilio, law departments can use AI as a productivity tool to get work done faster and more accurately, and a predictive tool for outcomes, selection of counsel, and more.
Technology is continually evolving, as should you. Just think about how AI can increase organizational productivity in your workplace.
ISSUES WITH MANUAL CONTRACTING:
On average, it takes 92 minutes to review a contract, according to the American Lawyer. Think of all of the time lost while doing this while there are other pressing things that need to be done. Simply put, 92 minutes is far too long to spend on one contract when there are thousands within an organization.
Manual contract review is also prone to errors and misconceptions. There are many things to look for in a contract – auto-renewals, typos, important dates and deadlines, and terms and conditions – and they can be missed by the human eye. But, with AI doing all of this for you, it helps to reduce risk, and the chance of error or missing something important.
According to Forrester, businesses that combine AI with human insights witness more than a 65 percent boost in productivity and more than a 60 percent increase in customer satisfaction. There are many improvements that your company will undergo once AI is implemented in your contract management and brought into action.
If you want one of the best contract management solutions – embedded with E: V – on the market, contact ContractPodAi for a pressure-free discussion. See how you can benefit from using artificial intelligence for your own contract management.
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