In the interview with Markus Funk, Head of Contract Management SMARTCONEX a brand of PERCONEX GmbH
Whether for customers or the company itself: managing contracts and documents can be extremely time-consuming. SMARTCONEX offers a solution that takes this work off the hands of medium-sized companies.
What Legal Tech is, what advantages it offers and why it is a good idea for medium-sized companies to take a closer look at this topic – we will clarify all this today in an interview with Markus Funk, Head of Contract Management at SMARTCONEX.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: With the sheer volume of contracts and documents, it is becoming increasingly difficult for decision-makers to keep track of all deadlines and dates reliably. Especially in medium-sized companies, where the focus is more on the core product, things are often forgotten. What experiences have you had with medium-sized companies regarding contract management?
Markus Funk: In general, medium-sized company decision-makers are open and interested in the topic of digitalisation. Through many discussions with medium-sized companies, it quickly became clear to us that our contract management/contract creation service is very well received across the board. This is especially true in comparison to pure software solutions, where the company itself has to manually record the current contract inventory in a time-consuming process using its own staff capacity. For this reason, contracts are still predominantly stored on paper and distributed decentralised throughout the company. Deadlines and dates are often still managed on static lists, and of course, no one in the company is really happy about this. However, medium-sized companies know that “we generally have to do something about digitalisation & contract management”, and this is where we are confident that we will continue to inspire customers with our solution and professional service in the future. After all, which entrepreneur wouldn’t want to have all contract data at the touch of a button or on their smartphone, instead of having to search through folders endlessly?
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: Legal Tech sounds like a highly technical solution at first. What exactly is Legal Tech and what are the advantages?
Markus Funk: The term is made up of “Legal Services” and “Technology” and refers to the digitalisation of legal work. The main goal is to automate recurring and legally administrative work processes to increase efficiency and save costs. The use of technology in legal work leads to the advantages that work can be carried out more effectively, transparently, in a more networked way and at lower cost. Of course, SMARTCONEX does not see itself as a legal service provider, but we digitalise contract management in companies with our service and, on the other hand, our cloud-based contract generator enables customers to provide their clients with legally secure template contracts based on their own templates. Thus, we sustainably simplify our customers’ daily work through the use of technology.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: Your company offers a cloud-based solution here. From your perspective, why choose an online variant for such highly sensitive data rather than storing the data on your own server?
Markus Funk: First of all, our customers have the choice between the cloud solution and an “on premise” variant. However, a cloud-based SaaS solution incurs no costs for software, hardware, or licenses, and no internal effort for maintenance and operation of the solution. Anything installed on an in-house server must be regularly updated and administered manually. This means you have fixed costs for maintenance and operation. In addition, there is the risk of data loss. A SaaS solution, on the other hand, requires no internal installation effort and ties up no staff who would need extensive training. The application is user-friendly and can be used on mobile devices. The location of the cloud solution is Germany and meets the applicable security requirements. Ultimately, the SaaS solution is the more efficient option.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: Once a company has decided on a Legal Tech solution, what are the most important steps to consider during implementation?
Markus Funk: First, it is important to define the company objectives that are to be achieved with digital contract management. Furthermore, processes and workflows must be defined, as well as the group of people who will access the application. It is not always possible—or helpful—to digitize existing organizational structures and processes one-to-one. This is an opportunity for companies to share knowledge and rethink processes. Employees need to be convinced of the benefits of such solutions. If it succeeds in involving employees—and especially knowledge carriers—from the very beginning, creative ideas and the desired results will emerge.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: What happens to existing contracts that are sometimes years old and only available in paper form?
Markus Funk: The contracts are structured by our team, scanned, the metadata recorded, and then made available to our customers in a transparent and easily retrievable and evaluable manner. Our team of experts, in combination with our powerful software solution, captures, manages, and handles the entire contract inventory. All relevant data from your contracts, such as individual terms, deadlines, renewal options, payment dates, and termination options, are transformed into active, trackable workflows and proactive reporting.
DIGITAL FUTUREmag: You also mentioned a contract generator. What is that about?