During our development of our Contract Management Solution, we found a common requirement to initiate a contract is the extraction of values from the CRM system.  For one client, the information from their CRM system (Salesforce) was a easy way to jump start the contract development process while improving data integrity and reducing keying.  This post will present how capturing data from the CRM system (ex:Salesforce) can initiate the contract management process.

Initiating the contract management process from Salesforce

In our integration with Salesforce, we begin the process by creating a folder with the data from the Salesforce opportunity used to create/name a contract folder in the ECM repository.  Data could include Company Name, email addresses and other information about the contact that will be required for the contract.   Steps in the process include:

• To initiate the contract development process, a smart form is launched with our Active Wizard product that includes all of the folder/CRM data and is used to capture additional data required in the contract.  (example – effective date, expiration date, clauses…..)
• The Active Wizard form passes the data to HotDocs Cloud Services to generate the contract itself in a word format.
• The word contract, PDF rendition, as well as a PDF rendition of the data values are stored in the ECM repository as documents for easy review.
• The contract and data values document can be routed for internal review and approval (including Annotation with OpenAnnotate) via Active Wizard workflow process.
• Once complete, the contract can be emailed or sent to be signed via DocuSign. Once the contract has been signed, the signed version is uploaded back into the repository and also uploaded to Salesforce for the sales team to review.

In the below video, we will highlight integration between HPI and Salesforce in the following scenarios:

• A “Create Contract” button in Salesforce creates a Contract Request folder in HPI, passing data to that folder.
• Generate the contract from the data passed from Salesforce using Active Wizard for form generation and HotDocs for contract generation.
• Send the contract status back to Salesforce after each event in a workflow.
• Send the contract itself to Salesforce once the contract has been signed.

Updating the Sales Team

Often times, a common legal complaint will be that the sales team is constantly inquiring (or nagging) about where the contract is in the process.  To reduce these calls and emails, the status is updated within Salesforce throughout the process to keep the sales team in the loop.  Status updates can include:

• Contract initiated (started by legal)
• Contract developed and routed for internal approval
• Contract out for external Docusign approval
• Contract in Negotiations
• Contract Approved and Finalized

Dates and other values could be updated to alert the sales team to other status elements.

Let us know your thoughts below.