How to Simplify Contract Renewals

Too many modern sales teams still rely on simple spreadsheets or calendars to track customer contract renewals and expirations. These tools aren’t connected to the tools used in the agreement process, so team members have to manually enter dates and then repeatedly refer back to the tracker to act on the information. 

Sometimes dates are entered incorrectly or aren’t updated at all. In a fragmented system, it's easy to lose track of critical information, like contract renewal dates, and contracts can unexpectedly lapse. In the hurried negotiations that follow, it’s common for sales teams to underbill or even cause churn.

Recent Deloitte and Docusign research on modern agreement management found that the average organization misses out on $1.5M in revenue because of contracting inefficiencies. A significant percentage of that loss is related to ineffective renewal processes.

Our solution to simplifying customer contract renewals: Docusign IAM for Sales, a platform that connects every tool used in the end-to-end sales agreement workflow.

Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) is a new category of AI-powered cloud software designed to connect and automate every step of agreement work.

IAM helps you:

• Monitor sales contract expiration dates in one central dashboard

• Sort customer contracts by dollar amount, date, agreement type, or other variables to prioritize renewal conversations

• Create alerts to kick off renewal negotiations before agreements expire

• Streamline and speed up contract renewals

• Maintain visibility across renewal agreement requests

Navigator, an AI-powered repository, scans stored agreements for key attributes, including expiration and renewal dates, and can be configured to send sellers notifications so they kick off renewal conversations well in advance of a contract’s end date. Since it stores every sales agreement (even those created and signed outside Docusign), Navigator can also be a centralized source of truth for sellers to verify that they have up-to-date terms and pricing to serve as a baseline for a new deal.

Once a seller has targeted an account for renewal and put together a pitch for a new contract, they can kick off an automated renewal workflow in Maestro or easily initiate the creation of the renewal agreement by submitting a request in Agreement Desk. Agreement Desk brings in all reviewers to collaborate in one place, for smooth processes and full visibility on status and next steps. Once the new terms are finalized, the latest signed agreement will be available in Navigator, where it can be easily found and even used to kick off another renewal conversation when the time is right. 

To learn more about how your team can track and automate customer renewals, check out our free guided tour of IAM for Sales.