The Power of Search
When an organization needs something fast, it needs to be digital so it’s easily findable and searchable.
Ever since Google came onto the internet scene and became a verb used by even the least tech-savvy users, expectations for search engines have become much higher. People now expect this to be a seamless experience translating to all products, providing the same quality across all the tools. With an inquiry to Google taking approximately 0.2 seconds to bring an answer back, expectations of search are high.
This includes a contract management platform. Many people think of managing contracts as just a repository, but if contract management is done well, nothing is further from the truth. All content should be well-organized and fully searchable.
For example, let’s say a company knows there is a contract expiring in a few months. Finding it is the first step, especially if there are a large number of contracts within the platform. In a contract management platform, searching for a document title, description, tags, and other metadata should be able to quickly bring the most relevant documents up within milliseconds. If the contract is auto-renewing, both sides need to take action to review the document and ensure it’s still in their best interest to go through with the renewal. Especially in longer contracts, being able to find a clause quickly is critical for making the right decision in a timely manner while having all the information necessary. In a contract management platform, searching a document should be simple.
What if that same auto-renewing contract was uploaded as a PDF? At this point repositories become less useful and many contract management platforms fall short. This is where the technology behind a platform comes into play. With so many documents in image, PDF, or even paper formats that were not originally created in a platform, it’s critical to have Optical Character Recognition, or OCR software as part of any contract management platform. Before OCR, documents had to be manually read and retyped if the information was going to be in the system. OCR technology scans every document uploaded and makes it fully searchable—allowing every contract in the system to have equal power to help employees work faster and smarter. Searchability in legal documents is often a requirement, especially when eFiling. Analyzation is much easier and errors go down when OCR is used, making it easier to have an exact replica of the original document.
Staying connected to company contracts is important to staying in touch with the overall business. If a contract management platform is just a repository, it’s not working to the best of its abilities. A powerful search engine that includes OCR, real-time results as a phrase is being typed, and auto-correction are all essential elements of a contract management platform.
