Council Post: What Is Contract Intelligence?

"Contracts are the foundation of commerce." Does this sound like an overstatement? When you think about almost any ongoing business transaction (be it with a supplier, a customer, a partner or an employee), there is most likely a contract that defines the terms of the relationship--the obligations, the entitlements, the dollars in and dollars out. Amazingly, the written word itself seems to have been invented to record contracts. According to a recent exhibit at the British Library, cuneiform script has been traced back to traders in Mesopotamia whose commercial agreements became too complex to commit to memory. However, in today's fast, digital-first business environment, the critical data found in contracts is left out of the operational systems of record that companies run on.