If you receive multiple contracts through Outlook every day, then you understand how mundane and draining it is to spend a significant part of your day-to-day in the same cycle of downloading attachments and uploading them to your CLM.

This seemingly simple process often involves several steps and wait times fraught with opportunities for distractions and costly errors. One misstep can result in disputes, confusion, delays, and even financial losses.

In this guide, we explore how a simple tool—SpotDraft’s Outlook plugin—can help you conquer this vicious cycle, empowering you and your team to take full advantage of emails in contract management processes.

What is Microsoft Outlook?

Outlook, formerly known as Hotmail, is a personal information manager (PIM) from Microsoft. While it is primarily used as an email application, it also features other tools, including a calendar, task manager, contact manager, note-taker, journal logger, and web browser.

Its email tool offers a wide range of features designed to enhance user productivity and streamline communication. Here are some of the features you’ll find:

#1 Unified emails: Allows you to bring emails from all platforms under one interface. This includes emails from your Microsoft accounts, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.
#2 Focused inbox: Automatically sorts your most important emails into a focused tab while the rest go to the "Other" tab, helping you focus on what matters most.
#3 Shared mailboxes: Allows multiple users from the same team organization to manage and send emails from a common mailbox, facilitating team collaboration.
‍#4 Sweep: A tool for quickly deleting or moving emails from specific senders, allowing you to keep your inbox organized with minimal effort.
‍#5 Rules: Customizable automation that sorts incoming emails into folders, marks them as read, or forwards them based on defined criteria.
‍#6 Conversation view: Groups emails from the same conversation together, making it easier to follow threads and keep track of ongoing discussions.
‍#7 Integrated calendar: Helps you to schedule and manage appointments and events directly from your email interface.
‍#8 Task management: Integrates with Microsoft To Do, letting you create and manage tasks from within your email.
‍#9 Contact management: Offers robust tools for storing and organizing contacts, complete with detailed information and integration with other Microsoft services.
‍#10 Attachment support: Easily attach files from your computer or cloud storage, including OneDrive, and preview attachments directly in your email.
‍#11 Spam and malware protection: Advanced filters and algorithms help keep your inbox free from spam, phishing attempts, and malware.

The Role of Outlook in Contract Management: Common Challenges

Outlook can be a valuable communication tool for contract-facing teams. With this platform, you can receive contract documents from counterparties, handle negotiations, send reminders, and more.

However, Outlook often functions as a separate tool in a typical contracting process, completely disconnected from the contract management ecosystem. This results in a fragmented, counterproductive process. Here's how:

You receive a contract attached to an email, click save, and wait a few seconds or minutes for it to download into your local storage.

Afterward, you switch to your Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) tool, where you'll probably spend time entering a password or running a two-factor authentication process.

Once logged in, you'll have to find and click the upload button, navigate to the folder where you just saved the downloaded file, and initiate the upload process.

After uploading the contract, you might need to manually categorize it and add metadata such as the contract name, counterparties, and key dates.

If any negotiations or revisions are sent to your email, you'll likely repeat the entire process of downloading, uploading, and updating the contract record. This back-and-forth can quickly become a time sink, and if your organization is handling contracts at scale, the process can become a significant bottleneck.

There is also an increased risk of errors, such as using the wrong contract version, misplacing files, or entering incorrect information, which could result in compliance issues, financial losses, delayed execution, and more.

Introducing SpotDraft’s Outlook Plugin for Contract Managers

“Leveraging a CLM has been key because it has reduced a lot of friction from handoffs between legal and business. Rather than going back and forth over email, Slack, Word, Zoom, DocuSign, and a whole tech stack, the CLM acts as a single source of truth.”

~Jonathan Franz, Head of Legal, Crunchbase
Navigating Economic Turbulence and Thriving in Chaos

SpotDraft is an industry-leading, AI-powered Contract Lifecycle Management system that streamlines contract management processes through its comprehensive ecosystem of tools.

Its Outlook plugin is designed to enable you to push contracts and supporting documents into SpotDraft CLM without exiting your Outlook inbox. This eliminates the constant back-and-forth between your Outlook inbox and CLM interface, allowing you to save valuable time, avoid unnecessary risks, and accelerate your workflow.

Here’s how SpotDraft’s Outlook integration works in two steps:

• You open an email that contains the contract document, click on More Actions, and select SpotDraft for Outlook.

• Using the self-explanatory options displayed by SpotDraft, you can upload the document to start a new workflow, append a signature, or update an older version, all without leaving your inbox.

Note that the Outlook plugin is only available on desktop platforms, and you'll need an account with SpotDraft to use it.

Here’s a detailed guide on how to install it.

Features of the Outlook Integration

The Outlook plugin offers the following features:

#1 Direct upload from Outlook inbox

This is the core functionality. Instead of downloading a contract from an email and navigating to your SpotDraft CLM separately, the plugin lets you upload the contract directly from the email itself.

#2 Version management

Contract negotiations often involve multiple versions. The Outlook plugin simplifies this by letting you replace older contract versions in SpotDraft with newer ones received via email. This ensures all members are working with the most up-to-date document.

“Another problem we face in contract management is version control - different departments may be using old templates and rolling contracts out manually. We want to implement a CLM solution to have better visibility into our contract pipeline, especially when our business is scaling in different countries.”

~Juliette Thirsk, Chief Legal Officer, Peach Payments
Streamlining Legal at a FinTech Startup

#3 Intake forms

If there's an intake form associated with the contract type in SpotDraft, the Outlook plugin allows you to fill these out right from your inbox. The information is then automatically linked to the contract in SpotDraft, reducing manual data entry and potential errors.

#4 Assign additional reviewers

When uploading a contract, you can immediately assign it to colleagues for review or approval. This initiates the next step in your contract workflow without you needing to switch to SpotDraft separately.

#5 Upload supporting documents

Contracts often include additional documents (e.g., exhibits, amendments, certificates of compliance, etc). The Outlook plugin lets you upload these alongside the main contract, keeping all related materials organized within SpotDraft. You can upload up to five documents at a time.

Also read: 6 Must-Have CLM Integrations with Business Tools

Benefits of Using SpotDraft’s Outlook Plugin

Wondering how the Outlook plugin can benefit your organization? Here are some of the perks that come to mind:

#1  Enhanced efficiency and productivity

The plugin eliminates the tedious process of manually downloading contracts from emails, switching to your CLM platform, and uploading them. This saves significant time, especially when dealing with numerous agreements daily. 

Your team can focus more on reviewing and negotiating contract terms rather than getting bogged down in administrative tasks. This translates into faster contract turnaround times and improved overall productivity.

#2 Seamless collaboration and workflow

The plugin facilitates smooth collaboration between team members involved in contract review and approval processes. By allowing you to assign reviewers and fill out intake forms directly from Outlook, you can initiate the next steps in the workflow without switching between platforms. 

This seamless integration enhances communication, accelerates decision-making, and promotes a more efficient contract lifecycle.

Also read: Enabling Business-Legal Collaboration: Advice from 7 GCs

#3 Centralized document management and organization

The Outlook plugin ensures that all contract-related documents, including the main contract, exhibits, and amendments, are centralized within SpotDraft. 

This eliminates the need to search through multiple folders or email threads, simplifying access to relevant information, and promoting better organization of your contract repository. This centralization can be particularly beneficial for teams dealing with a high volume of contracts.

“The importance of simply being able to locate all of the company's contracts and relevant amendments in one place without significant effort cannot be minimized."

~Sterling Miller, CEO and Senior Counsel, Hilgers Graben PLLC
‍Ten Things: Minimizing Risks in Commercial Contracts

#4  Enhanced version control

Keeping track of multiple contract versions and related documents in email threads can be a nightmare. The Outlook plugin solves this challenge by allowing you to upload updated versions of every contract directly from your inbox with a few clicks, ensuring all team members are working with the most current contract version.

#5 Accelerated contract lifecycle

By automating and simplifying many of the manual steps involved in contract management, the plugin significantly speeds up the entire contract lifecycle. From initial review to approval and execution, contracts move through the process more quickly. 

This enables your organization to seize opportunities, seal deals faster, and maintain a competitive advantage.

Also read: Tools & Tips to Automate the Contract Creation Process

“I have seen a demo of SpotDraft’s CLM technology and they should be on your short list of vendors to talk to about a contract management system.”

~Sterling Miller, CEO and Senior Counsel at Hilgers Grabens PLLC
Ten Things: “Cool Tech” For In-House Counsel (2022 Edition)

Ready to Turn your Inbox Into a Contracting Machine?

SpotDraft’s Outlook plugin is a game-changer, particularly for legal professionals and business teams that constantly deal with an influx of contracts via email.

By bridging the gap between your inbox and your CLM, the integration empowers you to eliminate productivity-draining processes and achieve a more efficient, organized, and error-free contract management workflow.

Ready to give it a try? Click here to access a personalized demo.

Want to learn more about the plugin? Click here.