Be it a small or a big organization, managing contracts is one of the most important tasks and can also be pretty daunting. For example, settling a simple contract query or not being able to find the latest version of that contract can affect the entire business transaction. To overcome these challenges and promise the organization’s efficiency, most progressive organizations have switched to contract management software.
This software help organizations in better time management, cost-cutting, and avoiding negligible risks.
Featuring for the Cover Story of The Enterprise World’s recent issue of Top 5 Contract Management Solution Providers To Watch Out for 2022 is CobbleStone Software, an award-winning contract management software solution.
The Company-
CobbleStone Software was founded in 1995 by Executive Vice President Mark Nastasi. Originally named CMTS (Contract Management Tracking System), it was the pioneer contract tracking software platform. From there, CobbleStone® developed CobbleStone Contract Insight® – its award-winning enterprise contract management, vendor management, eProcurement, and eSourcing software solution. Based in Princeton, New Jersey, the company has served clients from ranging industries – including healthcare, government, education, pharmaceuticals, and life sciences – for over 20 years and counting.
“Our platform has been acclaimed by customers and analysts alike for its high configurability, user-friendliness, robust integration, and seamless scalability.”
Year after year, CobbleStone continues to exponentially expand its client base, market presence, international presence and agility, legal operations process centralization, ease of use, feature selection, security attestation, partner network, and awards and recognition list.
Cutting Through the Complexities-
Contract management is a multifaceted, highly complex, and error-prone process. At CobbleStone, the team sought to centralize and simplify contract management operations without sacrificing the availability of an abundance of configuration options and contract software functionalities. The challenge was to provide the best of both worlds, so to speak: a platform that is easily navigable and supports an almost endless pool of configuration options for the needs of organizations from various industries in both the public and private sectors.
Given the overwhelmingly positive experiences of their client base and laudatory reception from a plethora of analyst firms and other relevant organizations, it is clear that the company continues to face that challenge with success.
“Our growth has been triggered by the broad realization of ranging organizations that manual contract management methods can quickly reach a point that they no longer cut it as business presence grows – creating demand for a better way.”
Business expansion in the internet age has strengthened the need for legal operations digital transformation for contract professionals across industries. As contract volume and contract complexity have grown for organizations in both the public and private sectors, a need for a more centralized, streamlined, and efficient process has continued to arise.
This demand kickstarted the growth of CobbleStone Software as a contract management software provider that helps organizations automate contract administration from contract requests to contract renewals – including workflow automation, contract redlining, contract collaboration, compliance management, risk management, and contract analytics and reporting.
CobbleStone Software has grown exponentially since its start in the mid-1990s.
“We are happy to see the global expansion and widespread adoption of our leading CLM Software platform and the record-breaking year-after-year growth of the number of records that are managed on CobbleStone Software Contract Insight.”
The Products and Services-
CobbleStone Software offers CobbleStone Contract Insight for integrated contract management, vendor management, eProcurement, and eSourcing processes. This solution can be used for centralizing the comprehensive contract lifecycle management process from contract requests to contract renewals. Their clients use CobbleStone for its secure and centralized contract repository, advanced searching and reporting, proactive key date and task alerts, native online document editing interface, proprietary VISDOM® AI contract intelligence and machine learning engine, and their IntelliSign® electronic signature platform –to name a few features. CobbleStone Contract Insight also supports mission-critical integrations and connectors such as with leading third-party signing tools, MS Word, MS Outlook, Google Workspace, MS Office 365, and so many more.
The company has garnered critical acclaim from many leading analyst firms – often scoring the highest possible. Their customer support has been exceptionally well-received – as the team genuinely puts the client first.
“The future is bright for legal operations – and there will always be more demand for an increasingly centralized, robust, and streamlined contract management process. We will always be there with the ever-evolving CobbleStone Contract Insight.”
What Makes CobbleStone Different?
A base contract management strategy is a minimum requirement for legal operations. Organizations must know where contracts and data are located, where in the contract lifecycle their contracts are, and how they should navigate post-award contract management. But this is not enough.
Outdated contract management methods involving decentralized spreadsheets, emails, and files on shared drives are more than likely to fail – leading to missed deadlines, lost revenue, compliance violations, and more.
Contract management software, such as CobbleStone Software Contract Insight, is instrumental for organizations to oversee the contract lifecycle, record tasks, legal intakes, legal assignments, recognize the revenue of contracts, and gain insights into CLM process improvement.
Tools such as those mentioned above can be leveraged on one centralized system. Contract requests, contract authoring and negotiations collaboration, signatures and approvals, compliance and obligations, contract renewal management, workflow automation, contract analytics, and so much more can be navigated using CobbleStone’s state-of-the-art contract management software.
“CobbleStone Contract Insight can help companies standardize legal operations as a comprehensive contract lifecycle management platform built on a foundation of contract AI and machine learning for process automation.”
Not only can clients automate the contract lifecycle by easily configuring their robust CLM system, but contract intelligence can provide mission-critical insights into processes for future success!
Contract management software for contract lifecycle management is positively transforming how organizations manage contracts. A secure contract repository for contracts and data can allow organizations to quickly access contracts, contract data, and relevant documents within an accessible and centralized location.
Intelligent workflow automation helps organizations meet contract lifecycle tasks and contract obligations requirements with automated email and system alerts and task escalation to a new resource for when a task is not being completed in a timely manner. Rapid contract searching tools allow organizations to search for contract data, documents, clauses, and more with exceptional speed and efficiency.
Document collaboration tools within contract management software can streamline contract authoring and contract negotiations with version tracking, audit trails, enhanced contract redlining, simplified approval routing, and more. Advanced reporting and analytics tools can allow organizations to glean meaningful insights from contracts, track the contract lifecycle, and view necessary CLM data at a glance.
The Road Ahead-
CobbleStone Software is currently a leader in contract lifecycle management – but the innovation will never stop.
“We are always looking to improve our products and services.”
The company maintains a strong relationship with its clients and builds its platform based on their needs. The team stays keenly abreast of ever-evolving industry demands and strengthens CobbleStone Contract Insight accordingly. They continue to introduce user-friendly and mission-critical connectors and integrations to provide clients with an even more robust and centralized process. The team will continue to build its partner network to expand the contract management software offering worldwide.
“We are excited about the further advancements to contract drafting and automation with our robust and user-friendly online, concurrent document editor within CobbleStone Software Contract Insight.”
Users can create new documents straight from a user-friendly CobbleStone Software record page, import new documents straight into a CobbleStone record page, and seamlessly edit existing documents straight from a CobbleStone record information page with very low friction.
Users can easily drag and drop files – such as MS Word and PDF – into the system to get started with a document editing page similar to other, familiar word processing functionality. Clauses from your organizations’ pre-approved CobbleStone Software clause library can be seamlessly introduced via a drop-down menu for insertion. Once a document is saved, the file can automatically be attached to the relevant CobbleStone record information page. Subsequent edits and saves are attached as new versions for comprehensive version tracking and audit trail management.
“This tool is already transforming contract document collaboration processes – and we are excited for future evolutions of our document assembly tools.”
Mark Natasi- Leading the Way-
Vice President
Mark is a Microsoft certified professional with an MBA from Drexel University and has a finance degree from Rutgers University with a concentration in computer information systems. He has developed one of the first contract management software tools in the 90s named CMTS. He then evolved that into what is known as CobbleStone Software today. The company now employs over 120 professionals with deployments around the world.
“I enjoy helping legal professionals do their best work by constantly innovating contract lifecycle management software features within CobbleStone Contract Insight.”
Mark His Words-
“I would advise budding entrepreneurs to seek demand and provide something that solves problems for business professionals. I would also tell budding entrepreneurs to be honest and authentic. Entrepreneurs need to be passionate about their innovations. They must surround themselves with a family of employees and colleagues capable of becoming part of their vision. Entrepreneurs should treat their corporate family with respect, encourage them, and listen to their innovative ideas.
As the organization grows, entrepreneurs must keep their eyes on the original demand that brought them success. They must note how it evolves and continue to provide solutions to clients and potential clients according to their needs. As such, entrepreneurs and their resources can never be stagnant. Entrepreneurs should never stop innovating.
Don’t be afraid of failure. Babe Ruth struck out over 1,000 times; Milton Hershey went bankrupt before beginning a household name. Stay motivated if you love what you do.”
