The Rapid Expansion of the Contract Management Market

The contract management market continues to grow, with figures predicting an increase from $1.3 billion in 2024 to $3.6 billion by 2032. This is due to more investments into efficient and time-saving contract management software and automation.

At eSign, we’re passionate about helping organisations across a wide range of industries digitally transform their processes. As an eSignature and digital document solutions provider, we strive to empower businesses to streamline their contract operations, minimise risks, and unlock significant value that encourages growth.

In this article, we look at why the contract management market is expanding so quickly and the benefits it provides to businesses.

What is Contract Management?

Contract management is a process that various businesses, organisations, and institutions have implemented in order to successfully manage their entire contracting operations. A contract lifecycle management software can handle each stage of the process, which helps to ensure efficient administration for inter-entity agreements and contracts.

For example, starting a new contract and requesting for its renewal or cancellation, or any other relevant details relating to it can be managed by a contract system. A high quality document management system aims to streamline document processes with automation during essential stages. These include authoring, process and workflow, negotiation and approval, execution, and continued management. E-Sign provides efficient contract management, with our electronic signatures enabling the creation of an easy to use and secure central storage solution.

What are the Key Growth Factors in Contract Management?

The modern business landscape has evolved significantly in recent years, one of the biggest driving forces behind this evolution was the coronavirus pandemic. During a time when minimising physical interactions and contact was essential, most organisations had to adapt to new ways of working, with many implementing digital solutions such as an effective document management system.

2020 saw a massive uptake in the adoption of digital ways of working and when businesses started to see the beneficial impact these technologies could have, they have maintained and expanded upon it in the years following. Contract management software is one example of a technology that can enhance organisational efficiency.

The pandemic might have been a main cause for increased use of digital products, but there are other factors that continue to increase growth in the contract management market. These include:

1. The need for more stringent security measures.
2. A desire to ensure document processes are as efficient as possible.
3. Reducing unnecessary costs.
4. Valuing the important environmental benefits that can be achieved by going paperless and reducing carbon emissions.
5. Protecting businesses from undesirable outcomes such as penalties, missed deadlines, and extra payments.
6. Simplifying the steps in forming partnerships, collaborating, and gathering new assets.

Our first-hand experience with our customers verifies this, as clients have often approached eSign wanting to address these factors within their organisation. By improving their contract workflows they can provide a better customer experience and stay ahead of competitors in their industries as well as maintain clear margins and reduce overheads.

Which Sectors are the Biggest Adopters of Contract Management Software?

There are many sectors that are starting to adopt contract management software into their document processes. The biggest examples include:

• Legal
• Finance
• Automotive
• Healthcare
• E-commerce
• HR

eSign works within a wide range of industries, including those listed above, to help them achieve their operational goals of simplifying complex processes. Our platform can help with this by improving turnaround time for onboarding a customer, using automation to streamline workflows and go paperless, and meeting important regulatory compliance requirements.

Why is the Contract Management Market Growing so Quickly?

The main unique selling point of contract management software and why it continues to surge in usage and popularity is largely down to its transformative potential. There are several benefits organisations can take advantage of by utilising contract management including:

• Increased Efficiency – automating repetitive and time consuming tasks like creating contracts, approval workflows, and extracting data, can free up time for your team to focus on other higher value tasks, therefore improving process efficiency and productivity.
• Greater Control and Visibility – effective contract management can allow you to gain real-time insights across your entire contract pipeline. Therefore, you can highlight any potential risks, and easily track key performance indicators.
• Smoother Collaboration – establish seamless communication and collaboration between internal and external stakeholders, simplifying contract approvals and negotiations to complete transactions quicker and more successfully.
• Improved Compliance – contract management can make sure your organisation is adhering to the relevant legal and regulatory requirements through the use of audit trails, automated reminders, and version control.
• Minimise Human Errors – mistakes are a natural occurrence in any business, but by supporting your team with automation you can minimise the risk of errors that could negatively impact your processes.
• Reduce Costs – optimising your contract processes can help to reduce costs by removing the need for paper and allowing you to negotiate better deals with suppliers.

Market growth is sustained through demand for the product or service, and as the world continues to become more digital, there is an expectation on organisations to ensure their processes reflect these modern ideals. Therefore, high quality contract management solutions are becoming a must, which is why we are likely seeing such significant growth over only a short period of a few years.

Innovative Solutions that Meet Business Needs

The features and capabilities of digital document management systems are key to their popularity and increased use. They are designed to effectively tackle the biggest challenges and pain points that modern businesses experience. Some interesting topics have been discussed recently regarding digital solutions and contract management software:

• There is an increased focus on cloud-based services, which can provide useful benefits of scalability, flexibility and accessibility to businesses of all sizes.
• More emphasis is being placed on systems with user-friendly interfaces with mobile compatibility proving essential for increasing implementation numbers and maximising the benefits of contract management.
• Integration with artificial intelligence (AI) is boosting advanced features like sentiment analysis, contract redlining, and identifying automated risks.

What is Driving the Contract Management Market?

The main factors that are driving the contract management market are time integrity and flaws, detection, according to one report. To break this down and apply it to a contextual example, the legal sector can use contract management software to find similar contracts in their library for research and view them in their preferred application such as Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

This significantly reduces the time required for document review and allows organisations to identify any weaknesses within their workflows and systems. Also, in sectors like legal, finance, government, and healthcare the transparency and efficiency a contract management system can provide allows organisations to remain compliant with essential regulations that are implemented by governing authorities.

Document management systems can help to seamlessly manage the entire process of creating, signing, and implementing a contract that is signed by two or more parties. Every step can be handled by the right software from drafting the contract, negotiations, approval, administration, and repository, to optimising compliance, contract retrieval, amendments, and disposition. It breaks down barriers and simplifies the process of collaborating and establishing new partnerships for organisations to expand their customer base.

All these factors and more are consequently growing the demand for contract management solutions across several sectors around the world.

Conclusion

The rapidly increasing expansion of the contract management market is a reflection of a worldwide shift to a digital way of working. It is not simply about automating tasks, but transforming your entire contract lifecycle, ensuring quicker and more efficient transactions, better optimised costs and risk management, and so much more.

If you’re considering a contract management software for your organisation, it’s important to ensure that you choose the right solution for your needs, including any budget constraints and integration capabilities that need to be accounted for.

As an industry leading eSignature and digital document solutions provider, eSign understands the challenges that businesses face when relying on outdated and ineffective paper-based contract processes. That’s why our secure and user-friendly platform is designed to digitise and streamline your document management, ensuring you can complete important contract and agreement transactions more efficiently.

Register for our 14-day free trial today to experience the features and benefits of eSign for yourself. Our services can be tailored to fit the specific requirements of your organisation, whether you need electronic seals, web forms, or an integration with an existing application, we can work with you to create the right solution.

Contact us to discuss any questions or queries you have and our friendly team of digital transformation specialists will be on hand to support your digital transformation.