Managing SaaS Contracts using Cloud Contract Management Software

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Wouldn't it be frustrating? when the vendor notifies you of the contract renewal, and you can't recall where you stored the signed SaaS contract six months ago.

This is common in organizations that don’t centralize their SaaS contracts.

A SaaS contract is a legal document that holds crucial and sensitive data like renewal dates, contract periods, SLAs, customer details, and vendor details.

But most businesses don’t seem to be bothered about it. They toss them in places they can never recall and end up losing the contracts, leading to auto-renewals and liability issues.

Cloud contract management software

We believe you’re aware of the consequences, and you’re here looking to find out how to manage SaaS contracts effectively to avoid liability risks.

So, here’s the answer without sugarcoating it: use cloud contract management software for managing SaaS contracts.

If you want to learn the secrets of selecting the right software for contract management, click here.

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Read on to discover how cloud-based contract management software can assist you in managing your SaaS contracts and invoices.

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What are SaaS contracts?

We know you’re no stranger to SaaS contracts, but we want to emphasize the severity of the information they hold to folks who overlook them as mere documents.

A SaaS contract is not an informal agreement between the vendor and the buyer. It is a legally binding document with higher precedence that can lead to severe liability issues or lawsuits if not appropriately managed.

It contains information about the contract, like,

• Contract value
• Contract period
• Renewal date
• Agreement status
• Service level agreements
• Legal clauses
• Etc.

These contract elements can make or break your business, so managing SaaS contracts using a standardized approach is a priority.

Why do you need SaaS contracts?

Some businesses consider creating and signing legally binding contracts tedious, so they just use an informal document to sign and purchase the product.

Now, we don’t have to list ten reasons why you need SaaS contracts; just one will suffice.

“Data”

A SaaS application will contain critical information about your customers and business, and a security breach could put this sensitive data at risk.

In such instances, the vendor may hold you accountable for the breach.

As you have not signed a legal contract with the vendor to protect yourself from such situations, you may be held liable and unable to take any action. This could potentially result in the downfall of your business.

This is why signing a legally binding vendor contract before purchasing a SaaS application and managing the contracts effectively is necessary.

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How can cloud contract management software help you manage SaaS software contracts?

With many contract management saas tools available on the market, it can be challenging to select the right one. However, we can make things easier by suggesting a suitable software solution: CloudEagle.

It is a SaaS management software that can help businesses manage their SaaS stack and software contracts without breaking a sweat.

Here’s how,

Centralized contract management

Do you track your SaaS contracts using spreadsheets? Are you using a shared folder to store your SaaS contracts?

Both practices are unsecured and not feasible in the long run.

Upload all your SaaS contracts to the CloudEagle platform. It has a centralized inventory to store sensitive vendor documents, contracts, and invoices in one place.

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You can see all the signed SaaS contracts, invoices, and other documents related to the vendors in a single dashboard.

No more playing detective with scattered emails or searching through shared folders to find SaaS contracts. You can save them in a single place and retrieve them in a few clicks whenever needed.

Resurface your SaaS contracts

On average, a company uses more than 200 applications. There are high chance that many of these applications would have resulted from "shadow IT," where the teams would’ve purchased them without consulting the IT team.

In those cases, how will you recover the contract?

This is why choosing a SaaS management solution like CloudEagle and not just simple SaaS contract management software that can only manage contracts is recommended.

A SaaS management system will integrate with your SSO, finance, and HRIS systems to discover all the applications used by your team.

Each application will have a legally binding contract that contains terms and conditions like renewal dates, contract value, contract start and end dates, legal clauses, and more.

Documenting

A SaaS contract management system like CloudEagle can extract this information from the applications and document it in its centralized inventory for easy tracking and management.

Most businesses document their contract details in Excel sheets and toss them around the corners. That won’t be the case anymore with CloudEagle, as it’ll gather and document the information.

So, don’t sweat it when a SaaS contract stored in shared folders goes missing—you can still resurface the contract details using the CloudEagle platform.

Never miss contract renewals

Finance teams keep telling you they’re losing valuable dollars to auto-renewals due to the lack of a reminder system.

“A spreadsheet is not capable of reminding you about SaaS renewals.”

Now it's not just about managing your contracts; with a cloud contract management tool like CloudEagle, you can also efficiently manage the renewals of your SaaS contracts.

Go ahead and add this to the list of reasons to eliminate spreadsheet-based contract tracking.

CloudEagle’s renewal workflows will begin 90 days in advance and escalate to stakeholders through automated tasks until the contract is renewed.

While other platforms just send reminder alerts via email, CloudEagle goes a step further and assigns dedicated managers to ensure the contract is renewed on time.

Stay ahead and effectively manage SaaS contract renewals with CloudEagle just like Falkonry did it, here's Pratibha Mehta, the Head of Operations at Falkonry sharing her customer story of how they streamline SaaS renewals.

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Robust data extraction and filters

Most contract management SaaS softwares available in the market are built as mere storage to store and retrieve documents. They cannot read the contract details and document them, unlike CloudEagle.

This cloud contract management software can extract all the information from the contracts and organize them in one place.

But this isn’t the only best part.

How will you retrieve a SaaS contract from a list of 300 or 400 documents? Will you manually scroll through the list to find it and lose your productivity?

That’s why CloudEagle has filters to help you rapidly find the right SaaS contract. You can filter the contracts based on various terms, like,

• Contract value
• Contract date
• Renewal data
• Vendor name
• Contract start and end date
• Agreement status
• And many more.

Say goodbye to the overwhelming task of sifting through a sea of contracts during audits or SaaS renewals. With dynamic filters available in CloudEagle, finding the contract you need is a breeze.

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CloudEagle is the best choice to manage your SaaS contracts

Let us reiterate: CloudEagle is not just a storage service to store and track contracts. It is a complete SaaS lifecycle management platform with contract management capabilities.

It can scrape all the metadata from SaaS agreements, document it, and automatically attribute the details to the right application.

You can bulk upload the contracts, and the platform will meticulously curate and organize the facts relevant to each application and vendor.

With centralized contract management, stakeholders and decision-makers can collaborate to review, audit, analyze, and make credible right-sizing decisions.

In the beginning, we discussed "shadow IT," which could have resulted in various applications having contracts owned by different individuals. These contracts can be consolidated into an enterprise agreement.

Additionally, CloudEagle's centralized contract management functionality can identify and optimize contracts for applications with overlapping functionalities.

A software that only offers contract management features is insufficient to manage and optimize SaaS contracts. You need a comprehensive SaaS management system like CloudEagle, and that’s why it is the best choice for SaaS contract management.

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Wrapping up

SaaS contracts are legally binding documents that must be securely stored and managed efficiently. Tossing them around like a random document or using decentralized tracking practices will lead to auto-renewals or the contracts getting lost.

A lost contract will bring a string of hassles, like liability actions or lawsuits, which can greatly affect your organization's reputation.

Now, we don’t want that to happen, do we?

It's never too late to centralize your SaaS contracts using cloud contract management solutions. That’s why we showed you how to manage SaaS contracts using a platform like CloudEagle.

So, are you ready to centralize your SaaS contracts and stay ahead of renewals?

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