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thank you everyone for joining this uh zoho crm integration with zoho contract session i'm arjun i'm a product marketer with zoco i've been with zoho for the past five years and for the past two years i've watched this product evolved from very close quarters so this is uh one of our first webinars for these zoho crm users so i'm super excited to share a story with you so this will be our agenda for today i'll first touch upon why we decided to build a contract management software and then what we envision to do in this space and next we jump on to the main aspect of this demo that we will cover uh how zoho crm users can become better users of crm with this zero contracts right and we'll then cover quickly how zoho contracts approaches contract management what are the aspects that we are trying to achieve with this contract management software and then uh we'll conclude this session with the q a right so throughout the course of this session if you have any questions please drop them in the q a tab on the left right so uh we have helena and akhil uh with us today they will help me moderate this session they are content writers for zoho contracts so some of the cool content that you see on our website uh they wrote those pieces yes so i'll jump right in why zoho contracts so if you look at it contracts are at the core of all commercial relationships and essentially every dollar that is entering or leaving a business is governed by a contract right but uh there are several challenges involved in contract management these challenges have always been evident right so we at zoho we deal with a lot of contracts and because we deal with a lot of customers we deal with a lot of suppliers employees so we have faced a lot of these challenges and over the years we have heard from our customers that they are facing these challenges right but in the recent times there are other factors that are driving uh adoption towards contract management right so though these problems have been evident then the adoption for contract management has been very minimal but in the recent times the adoption is going up there are several factors that are driving this adoption so the first factor is increasing complexities in global supply chains right so there are several reasons for this as well right the technology is evolving rapidly and there are geopolitical tensions and uncertainties that are causing complex supply chain environments and the second aspect is irrespective of the industry that we are operating in regulations are cropping up more often than ever before right be it the gdpr ccpa across different aspects as well so whenever there is an regulatory update that's coming out businesses are forced to go and change policies in their organization and whenever there is an organization-wide policy change they will have to go back to their contracts and change some of their clause languages so this is driving a lot of adoption towards contract management softwares and this fits in the context of our today's demo so businesses today are forced to you know have flexible pricing models flexible business models because customers out there have a lot of options so if we do not offer that kind of flexibility for our customers we are just losing our competitive advantage right but the problem is to provide a flexible pricing you need to have a contract management process that is able to accommodate this flexibility right and this is also an important factor risk is an inevitable part of any business but with the recent pandemic the emphasis on risk mitigation is at an all-time high a recent study made by world commerce and contracting has found that contract managers identify risk mitigation as their number one priority right so and contract management is a critical piece to solve this problem of risk mitigation right and there are also other factors like the increasing trends of consolidation that we are seeing the mergers and acquisitions that are happening right but for such mergers to happen businesses need a forensic analysis of their current contracts right they have to know what exactly is their standpoint from a revenue perspective from a compliance perspective only when they have such disability they're able to make such uh mergers and collaborations right so these factors are driving uh this moment towards contract management and we are lucky that we are launching contracts uh at the right time so we launched zoho contracts in july 2021 so we are fairly early in the market so our what we envision to do in this space is uh we of course solve all these problems that we are talking about right now but we also see more potential into contracts right contracts we see contracts as dynamic documents that are touching every part of business and this could actually evolve into growth engines right so our mission is to build a contract management software that holistically approaches this problem to facilitate better business outcomes and how do we do that we uh address these four aspects comprehensively the first one is a very functional one that is streamlining an individual contract lifecycle from its authoring to the termination part but there are other factors like risk mitigation and improving governance that makes auditability uh easy account it makes the users accountable it makes the entire system transparent and it enables the admins with better control right and the last but most important part is the cross-functional integration part like i told you every function has to involve in contracts one whenever there is a deal if it's a huge deal it's not only the sales team that is involving there is a legal team there's a complaints team so all your all the promises that you make in the contract have to be fulfilled so all these obligations need to be tracked and managed when it's handed over to the implementation team so this will be the agenda of today's demo we first start with how zoho contracts and zoho crm integration works and how zoho crm users can derive maximum value from that and then we'll also touch upon these other aspects how so contract streamlines an individual contract lifecycle how we mitigate risk and how we improve governance right but before that i'll show you how a typical contract life cycle looks right whenever a sales person initiates a contract right so the legal associate or the deal disc in most cases there are templates but in special cases people order a contract and then if there are deviations from the standard languages that we are using it goes to an approval it goes for negotiation so this is how a typical contract life cycle looks until it gets terminated right but in the absence of a comprehensive contract lifecycle management software these businesses or all businesses use multiple applications to address this process right they use a word processor to basically author the contract then they attach this word document as email attachments and they send it over email applications back and forth and then they have a third party signature software integrated into this process and then they manage all their metadata like the financial details the renewal dates all of that in a spreadsheet right and then when there are large volumes of contracts they have to manage it in a dropbox or google drive or a work drive right they use a document management software and they use a calendar to basically manage all the contract deadlines so our aim is to replace all of these applications with just one application which is contracts right i'll quickly switch screens and i'll take you to the product so the page that you see on my screen is the home screen of zoho contracts so this is basically a personalized dashboard that gives the users a a high level overview of how their contracts are performed right so first we'll start with these crm and zoho contracts integration okay so and then i'll cover the entire lifecycle within zoho contracts so you'll understand how this tool addresses the contract management problem holistically right so first thing is you will have to this zoho crm uh plugin or the uh third-party integration into zoho crm right so you go to zoho crm you go to the settings module and then under marketplace you will find zoho right you click on zoho and you search for zoho contracts and then you it and at the time of setting up your uh integration you can map your account fields to the counterparty fields in zoho contracts so this is one of the key advantages of this integration that is since you already have the account information in zoho crm you do not have to again enter it into zero contracts you can just map these fields to these contracts counterparty and similarly the contact details in zoho crm can be mapped as the counterparty contact details in zoho contracts right and then you can actually set assignment rules that is if you have a legal team that manages your contracts you can decide what type of contract should be assigned to who and you can also map the fields for these individual contract types right once the setup is over once you have set up your zoho contracts integration when you go to your deal record so this is a deal record in zoho crm you will find this request contract button at the top right so when you click on the request contract button a window opens and there you can choose the contract type that you want to create right so if you choose the contract type i'm choosing product sales agreement as a contract type the fields that are associated with this particular contract type will be displayed here and if you notice the requester is the user who is using the crm and the requested department of sales and the counterparty name is basically the account name in zoho crm and the primary contact is basically the contact details in javascript so if you once you enter all these details and send the request a new contract document will be created in zoho contracts right and it will be assigned to the legal associate that you set during the assignment rule setup and then if you notice in the attachment section of your zoho crm deal record there will be a lot of that will be this contract document that gets created there so the salesperson can also download this document send it over an email or view what exactly is the languages that are used in the contract right and one more value add is that is this related list called zoho contracts right so in the zoho contracts list all the contracts that you initiated from this particular deal record will be displayed and you will be the salesperson will be able to track the status the current status of the contract in zoho contracts like this avoids a lot of email back and forth so this basically improves transparency between these zoho crm users and these old contracts is basically the sales and the legal functions right and from here the sales person will be able to initiate requests based on the stage in which the contractor is in right for example if it is in the approved state this could be actually sent for negotiation so this approved contract could be actually sent for negotiation if it is a negotiated contract the salesperson can actually initiate it for signature and at the time of renewals also this comes in handy because the active contracts when they are approaching expiry the salesperson can initiate the renewal request right from here this saves a lot of time for the sales person and it improves your sales contract management uh efficiency right so this are this is the scope of our zoho contracts and source crm integration we are seeing a lot of uh value add-on that we could bring in to these over crm users with our zoho contracts too right so i'll quickly switch to the zero contracts tool and i'll take you through how zoho contracts within zoho contracts streamlines and individual contracts lifecycle right so it starts from authoring so to create a new contract the user goes to the contracts module the contracts module is basically a central repository that stores all your contracts right so this improves your visibility and if you want to access critical information you can use these filter and search options that will come in handy right so to create a new contract in zoho contracts you can either import your existing contracts irrespective of the status that they are in they could be in the draft state or they could be active contracts you can also import expired contracts to just keep a track of them within solo contracts right so this is the import contract option so here you will see the status of the contracts that you're importing and based on the status that you're choosing you will be asked to fill in the meta details you will be asked to attach the files that are required for us to manage your contracts for you right the other mode is to create a contract from scratch that is basically from a contract template right so when you click new contract you will you will be shown a window from which you can choose the contract type so the contract type in zoho contracts is not just the contract template it is a fundamental configuration that defines all the primary attributes of a contract like the approval workflow that needs to be associated with this contract the intent of the contract so all these could be attributed to the contract type so here we have 13 predefined contract templates some of the most frequently used business contract templates you can also create as many custom contract templates as you want for example this ecommerce window agreement is a contract template that i created right once i select this contract type and click on continue i'll be taken to this contract creation wizard this is basically a new contract form where you just fill in a couple of details whatever details you would need to manage this contract like the contract term the termination notice period if it is manual renewal or auto renewal so all these details could be specified at the time of creating a contract and after you enter all these details when you click on save and continue based on the contract template that is associated with this contract type a new contract document will be automatically generated in this whole contracts authoring section right so this automatically generated document will contain the default classes that are available in the template right but then the user or the contract owner can go on to this document editor panel they can go to the process tab and here the clauses tab lists all the clauses present in this particular contract template and if you notice the contract owner can just unselect the clauses that they want to remove if you notice on the right the arrangement clause has been removed now i am adding the arrangement clause and the arrangement clause gets added so contract authoring becomes extremely simple the other aspect is you can add multiple languages for the same clause right for example if you have an nda con an nda agreement with the customer will look different from an india agreement with a vendor right but most of the languages will still be the same right for these minor tweaks in the nature of the agreement you don't have to create multiple contract type templates you can just have the same contract type template the same clause but have alternate languages within them this basically eliminates the duplication of contract type templates so this is the advanced document assembly that we have added on top of our advanced authoring capabilities i am telling advanced because uh our authoring capability is powered by zoho writer so zoho writer is basically an alternative to microsoft word this is a full-blown word processor so if you notice the formatting options the formatting options that are available in a full-blown word processor will be available in zoho contracts as well right this is the result of 15 years of r d that zoho has made and this comes readily available for all these zoho contracts users so any real-time collaboration angle the reclining the commenting and setting visibility for these comments all of this is possible with contracts as well you can add your collaborators you can set permissions for these collaborators and if you notice there is this collaborate this permission called fill feeds right so at the time of authoring a contract there might be cases where the contract author will not be aware of a few parameters right they can just add a field they can set the type of people that it is and they can add collaborators with this permission and these collaborators can just click on the field and enter the value once the contract authoring is complete once the collaborators and the contract owner have finalized the draft they can complete this draft and after the draft is completed it is sent for approval so configuring an approval workflow for your contracts increases compliance and brings down the risk because all the stakeholders involved in the company will be aware of the potential risks and the potential opportunities of contracts at an individual level right at an individual contract level you are getting this visibility so in zoho contracts you can configure your own approval workflows these approval workflows could either be uh sequential or parallel so now i've submitted this contract for approval and if you notice the contract details panel on the left it automatically switches to the approval tab right so the idea is to not overwhelm the users with a lot of information right only information that is relevant in this context will be displayed so if you notice the approval tab will only have information that is relevant for approval the contract owner can view the approval workflow associated with this particular contract in this contract it is a parallel workflow you can also configure sequential approval workflows based on the the hierarchy right and the activity section avoids a lot of email back and forth or slacking or click things because this activity section tells you what is the current status of the contract within this particular stage so here if you notice you can understand that anna has received the email and she hasn't viewed it and she hasn't approved it yet i'll quickly switch tabs and show you how it looks if one of the approvers has actually approved it so here anna has approved the contract but jack is able to upload i'll switch to apps and take you to jack's profile so this is jack's profile so in the personalized dashboard all your pending approvals will be displayed so here jack can open the document or the contract that is pending his approval the approver can add contextual comments they can add the text select the text and add comments for that they can also set visibility for these comments right and even at the time of approval they can add a message for the contract owner right i am approving this contract so once the contract document is approved it could be sent for negotiation right traditionally negotiation occurs over a series of emails that is this contract document is downloaded as an attachment over an email and it is sent back and forth but the problem with this approach is when there are multiple rounds of negotiation right it becomes extremely hard to track what happened during an individual cycle and compare the changes between these cycles right so how we have addressed this problem in zoho contracts is we have uh provided controlled access for your counterparties that is when you send this contract for negotiation you will be uh able to add the counterparty negotiators for them you can set permissions for them and then you can send a password you can send unique passwords for each of these negotiators and once you send this contract for negotiation the counterparty negotiators will receive an email with the link to review the contract and the best part is these counterparty contacts do not need a zoho account or a zoho contracts account to participate in the negotiation so when they click on this review contract they will be asked for the password so after they enter the password they will be given a controlled access to this contract document because if you notice on the left all the tabs that you see for the contract owner will not be available here it is only the document editor panel that helps them suggest changes to the contract document right i'm i'm emphasizing on suggesting changes because the counterparty negotiators cannot make any change without the contract owner knowing right so all the changes will be reclined and the counterparty negotiators can collaborate in real time right they can collaborate in the real time again they add comments you can set visibility for these comments and getting permission for all of all of the people involved in this negotiation right so these counterparty contacts can collaborate and they can suggest changes make comments and at the time of uh review completion the counterparty's primary contact can complete the review and here they can specify a message to the contract owner they can also show their readiness for signature right they can either check this box saying they are ready to proceed for signature or they can proceed without checking i am proceeding without checking this signature i am submitting it for review so once the review is complete the contract owner so this is the contract from which we sent the contract for negotiation the contract owner will receive a review summary that gives you a summary of what exactly happened during this particular negotiation so the number of changes that were made in this particular contract negotiation the number of commands that were added and their readiness for signature so all these are captured in this review summary and if they had entered a message at the time of review submission that will also be displayed here so now the contract owner can click on ok accept or reject the changes that they have suggested they can reply to or resolve the comments and they can resend it for negotiation right so this process will go on until both the parties agree completely in all the terms so when there are multiple cycles of negotiation right the contract owner will be able to see few previous cycles in the negotiation tab as i mentioned earlier the negotiation tab will be displayed when you open the contract that is in the negotiation stage so when you click on view previous cycles all the previous cycles that this contract has gone through will be displayed the contract owner will be able to view the document that was sent for a particular contract negotiation they'll be able to view the summary on what happened in this particular contract negotiation cycle right a similar feature is also available for the counterparty contacts that the counterparty contacts will be able to compare the changes right so they will be able to compare the latest version which is on the left with any of the previous versions right and they'll also have this option called negotiation history where they will be able to view the document that was sent for a particular cycle and they can also download it right so this is these are the features that are available in the negotiation stage so once the contract is negotiated once both the parties have agreed on all the terms now the contract could be sent for signature right so at the time of signature or at the time of execution contracts zoho contracts is tightly integrated with zero sign so here in zoho contracts you can add your signus so you can add signers from your organization you can add signups from the counterparty organization you can also add other representatives such as weaknesses at the time of execution and you can set an execution workflow that is you can set a signing order for this contract document i'm clicking on update and send so when i send the document for signature i am navigated to this sign ui where i can quickly drag and drop these signature fields right i choose the recipient i drag and drop the signature field wherever i need it in the document right so i'm just dragging and dropping the signature field i'm choosing the other recipient drag and drop so once i have dragged and dropped all the placeholder fields i can send this contract document for signature so similar just like negotiation the signers will receive a link with the they can click on the link and open the document and sign in minutes right so contract execution is done in minutes you avoid the uh print email sign and fax cycles right so once the contract document is signed it becomes active based on the effective date that you set at the time of uh contract creation right so when a contract is active the active contract document is available under the agreement history so if you notice there is this original contract document with these signatures and there is also a e-signature certificate from zoho sign so this is basically to check the validity of the e-signatures that you have done on the contract document so now we have actually looked at an individual contracts lifecycle from authoring to execution but contracts never stay stagnant uh it it goes on through a lot of amendments extensions or renewals right so we have features to make this post-execution phase of contract management easy right so here we have this uh unique feature called smart letter templates so what are smart letter templates is a conventional template is where you have a skeleton and you just go in and customize the skeleton to make changes to the skeleton and to fit it to the current engagement right but in zoho contracts we have a smart letter template where the admin configures a contract letter right so at the time of amendment for example if the contract owner wants to amend the product sales agreement they can just go on start an amendment edit the contract document like they are editing any word document right so the difference is since contracts are made up of these clauses as building blocks any change that is made to any section of the contract the tool is able to identify and it captures this change and it automatically generates the amendment letter right so for example if you notice this amendment letter the whereas clause actually captures the entire history of the contract that is when was this agreement originally entered into and if there were past amendments extensions or renewals that will also be captured under the balance clause and the now therefore clause actually captures all the current changes that were made in this amendment right so in this case the late payments clause has been deleted and the taxes and withholding flaws has been revised and reinserted as follows right so now the contract owner can just send this amendment letter for negotiation approval or signature and the contract is read along with this amendment letter so human intervention at the time of contract post execution management is almost eliminated and this avoids a lot of human errors right so this is the uh post execution management feature so now we have actually covered the entire contract life cycle the second aspect or the next aspect that we are going to touch upon is the risk mitigation right some of the features that we discussed until now like the contract templates uh the upper world workflow the peer review all of these do mitigate contract risks but one of the critical factors that results in contract uh risk is contract obligations right unfulfilled obligations leave businesses with a lot of financial damage and reputational damage right so we have addressed that problem with the contextual obligation module so contract owners will be able to track and manage contracts contractual obligations right from within the context of the contract right at the time of authoring or at the time of execution the contract owner can actually track these obligations they can add it in the obligation module so when we say obligation any promise that you make in a contract is an application right so this promise could be either a task or a non-task for example if we say for a product sales agreement if we say we'll train you with the product updates every year this will be a recurring task right so we can add one time and recurring tasks at the time of contract obligation addition the task the obligation could also be non-task for example in a non-disclosure agreement the promise itself is that we will not disclose this information so even these kind of obligations will be tracked for compliance purposes right so i'll quickly switch to the activities tab so in zoho contracts we call approvals and obligations as activities so if we go to the activities module all the pending approvals and the pending obligations of the user will be displayed right so here the user will be able to quickly check the details of the obligation if they want the context of this obligation they can quickly go to the contract document in which this particular con obligation is sitting right they can also update the status of the contract right from the obligations module or the activities module if you notice there is a status field the obligation owner can actually update the status of the obligation the contract owner will be able to track these changes right from within the contract and if we take a larger picture and if we notice how it looks for the admin the admin can have a high level overview of what is happening across all obligations in the business using their reports model so that will be our next aspect that comes under improving governance right so contracts have a lot of critical information contracts have a lot of data and zoho contracts with its advanced analytics helps you clean uh business insights or strategic insights from your contract data right so this is our reports module so we have an exhaustive reports module with around 35 plus uh reports across different aspects of contract management so the general reports basically groups your contracts based on different parameters just statuses or contract types and then there are these activity or milestone reports which will help you understand where are your contracts stagnating for example if there is a contract that is pending for approval for a long time you can quickly go to that particular contract document right from the table and you can make changes to your processes right and then there are these performance reports so performance reports will help you understand how your contract lifecycle process is performing and then you can make changes to this right so one good metric to understand the health of your contract life cycle is the cycle time that is how long does it take for a contract from its authoring to its execution right so you will be able to get insights like what is the average cycle time by contract type you can understand what type of contracts are actually uh taking long time for execution right and then there are these reports like top contracts with long negotiation times so this will help you revisit your negotiation strategies if you notice what are the clauses that are being constantly defined during negotiation you can make changes to those languages and this can refine your contract management process and then there are these clause-based reports so clause-based reports come in very handy when you have to make organization right policy changes so like i mentioned uh earlier that that could be regulations that are cropping up and these regulations will translate into organization policy changes right but to effectively implement an organization with policy change the admin needs to know how many contracts actually has this particular clause right such an impact study can be quickly done with zoho contracts because all of that information is presented to you in a table format you will quickly for example if this organization weight policy change uh affects your waiver clause for example you will quickly know that this waiver clause is present in 60 contracts and clicking on this table will actually display these 60 contracts that has this particular clause right so this makes change management extremely simple this makes impact steadily when you are making a change extremely simple so similar insights are available uh across obligations counterparty and users right and when we talk about analytics we also have this personalized dashboard that we saw earlier so if you notice this dashboard the intent is to quickly let you know what you should be working on so as soon as you come to zoho contracts the dashboard will tell you what are the contracts by their status what are the contacts that are approved that you would send for negotiation what are the contracts that are negotiated that are actually could be sent for signature and if there are pending contracts that are also displayed here and all your pending activities such as approvals and obligations will be displayed since contracts also contain the financial information you will be able to forecast how your business is performing and you will also be able to track how your contracts are performing across different time filters right and at the time of termination also if you provide the financial details so contracts will be able to tell you what how much gain or loss have your contracts incurred so if you notice the monthly calendar on the right it helps you plan your months better all your contract uh milestones will be displayed here all your overview applications uh your expiry notifications your upcoming renewals will be displayed here so you never miss a renewable opportunity so if you look at it from a sales sample or if you look at it from a revenue perspective right contract renewals are one of the lowest hanging fruits for revenue expansion but you will be amazed on how many uh renewal misses are happening because there is no efficient way to manage your contracts right there are these in-app and email alerts in zoho contracts so if you notice all your contract milestones will be displayed in the in-app notifications you will be notified of all your contract milestones you will also receive email notifications for important milestones so that you never miss any contract milestone right so this is the uh analytical part that we're talking about but when we talk about the broader governance since contracts have critical information it becomes important to you know track what activity is performed by who right there should be an activity tracking that makes auditability extremely simple right so in zoho contracts we have activity tracking on multiple levels for example if you go to the users module if you choose a user and click on the activity tab all the activities performed by anna will be displayed in chronological order and it will also show in which contract this particular change was made so also if you go to that individual contract activity is tracked at an individual contract level also there is this activity tab that displays all the activities performed in this particular contract right so then there are these activity logs it makes auditing simple for example all the changes that are made to the admin console is displayed under the admin audit logs and the user access logs actually tells you who are the users who are logged into your clm system right now and from where are they logged in and since you have the ability to export or you know download the contract data all that logs are also available under the activity logs right and like i mentioned earlier since contracts deal with a lot of critical information regarding your business and your also your counterparty business that should be features that enable you to protect all this data right so one of the common clause that we are looking at on across a lot of industries is at the time of termination the counterparties want the original party to remove all their data from their system right so without a feature intended for this purpose it becomes extremely hard to accept two such demands right so what happens is in zoho contracts we have given data protection settings feature so when you enable the data protection feature you can actually choose the fields that contain the personal information of your counterparties and you can actually restrict your non-admins from downloading all the personal data or the data of the counterparties right and since you have the data protection settings enabled if you go to the counterparty module all the counterparty contacts will be displayed here and all their contracts will also be displayed under the all contracts module so that could be so in in lot of these recently coming up data protection regulations that is this clause that says you should be able to stop processing your counterparty data on demand right so if your counterparty comes and tells you that you will have to stop processing my data you can quickly do it by just going on to the counterparty module you can choose the contact click on the more option and click stop processing data but just a click of this button wherever this information is present inside your clm system the tool will stop processing this data and this data will become anonymized right so even if the time of deletion the tool will ask you if you would like to anonymize this data right so if you want to delete the contract uh counterparty contact and if you want to anonymize the data in all the places since we track all the activity if there are activities that are performed by the counterparty contact in a particular contract the personally identifiable information will be replaced with a number so that you are compliant to all the data protection regulations in the geographies that you are functioning so this data protection regulation is also one of our key strengths uh as a clm so with that i've actually covered the aspects that we that i decided to you know touch upon uh in this demo thank you so much for attending this session