Four ways to transform your contract management from a source of stress to a driver of transformation with Vendr

Managing your contract renewals and deadlines shouldn’t give you and your team stress. Instead, you should feel empowered when the time comes to renegotiate with vendors to ensure your organization is getting the best price.

Here are Vendr’s four tips to ensure that your contract renewals go from a place of headache and stress to ease and structure.

1. Securely store all contracts in one organized repository.

How many times have you gone to look for a contract, only to waste hours on back-and-forth emails, folder searching, and multiple screens with countless PDFs open, just to find that the contract in question was misnamed and saved in the wrong folder? Searching for a contract shouldn’t be a stressful part of your day.

To ensure your staying organized and keeping compliance across the org, you need to be able to easily find, read, and manage your contracts in one centralized location that you and your teams can access. Using a contract management software solution like Vendr Contracts, you can have your single source of truth regarding contract management, eliminating the stress of finding emails and folders by having Vendr keep contracts tracked for you. You can also closely track changes in contracts over time using Vendr's document version control feature.

First, upload your contract to Vendr. This upload can include your non-SaaS as well as your SaaS contracts. You can do this by logging into your Vendr account, heading over to the contracts page, and clicking on ‘Add Contract.’

Next, add your contract information. This information includes fields for your contract start and end date, payment terms, contract owner, and total contract value. These values will help your team search and find information in your contracts quickly and easily.  

After you’ve filled in the correct information, toggle the “Create renewal workflow” slider on or off. Toggling the “on” switch will launch your renewal reminder when the time comes. Toggled off, it will not give that renewal reminder.

Lastly, hit ‘Create Contract,’ and your documents and information will be uploaded, easily searchable, and ready for you to view anytime.

2. Organize all renewals into one centralized calendar.

It’s no secret that the best way to get the price you want in any vendor renewal negotiation is to start the conversation ahead of your renewal date. But, if you don’t have some way of showing you what contracts are coming up for renewals, how can you and your team prepare for the weeks or months ahead?

With Vendr’s Contract feature, you’ll never miss a due date or the opportunity to get the best deal for your company. It’s as easy as logging into your Vendr homepage to see what Contracts are coming up for renewal and how long you have to sign the contract to ensure there are no stops to your team's work. In addition, a centralized of your contract management view empowers your teams to stay ahead of the messy process of negotiating multiple contracts simultaneously.

3. Surface the intricacies of each contract so there are no surprises.

Negotiating the best contract for your team can be challenging and stressful as understanding what you're paying for is only sometimes clear.  Without a clear understanding of the specifics of a contract, how can you ensure that you aren’t overlooking a contract's specific detail? What hidden terms are there; any price increases, renewal date complexities, or terms of service?

The more information you can source from a contract empowers you to make the best decisions. But, if you have insight into each contract, more information may reassure you that the tools you're paying for are what your company needs.

The Vendr Contracts feature allows you to surface the data and intricacies of each contract to empower you to negotiate renewals with a complete understanding of the contract. Don’t stress about what is in each contract, have a clear vision of the details to empower your teams to make the right decisions.

4. Find opportunities to evaluate your stack, consolidate contracts, and negotiate before the due date.

It is unrealistic to expect you or your procurement team to be aware of all products available, especially when multiple teams are searching for similar products at different times. In addition, as you’re reading this, you may have four or five contracts active with vendors where their solutions are answering similar or the same issues.

You need a tool that helps you evaluate your stack and manage the different contracts to eliminate unnecessary spending for your business.

Vendr’s Overlapping Spend report lets you easily see which SaaS apps are similar when comparing each contract to understand how your teams can consolidate apps.

Shedding some light on shadow spending so you can look at your contractual spending and what your teams are buying on the side. By having this information and understanding of what is being purchased and used, you can negotiate with each vendor with more information about what your team's needs are and what they are already using and ensure that you aren’t overspending on similar apps.

How to start using Vendr to transform your contract management

For our Vendr customers, the Contracts feature and the Overlapping Spend report are now available to jump in and use today. Speak with your CSM on how to add your non-Vendr or non-SaaS contracts to get started, or check out our help docs for more information.

If you’re not yet a Vendr customer, learn how to unlock your software’s full potential and take control of your renewals with a free stack Analysis.