02.18.2015
Cloudtract introduces a free and simple cloud based contract management platform for small and medium sized businesses, where they can store contracts and set alerts. “Businesses often waste a lot of money, because they forget to cancel or re-negotiate contracts they no longer want. And we should know,” says Angelique Schouten, co-founder of Cloudtract. “We ourselves forgot to cancel an IT contract and wasted 40.000 euro, paying for a software license we didn’t need anymore.“ When trying to find a software solution, a market study revealed the absence of an easy-to-use platform to store and manage contracts for free.
Contract management neglected by SMEs
Most entrepreneurs and SMEs rightfully focus on growing their business and do not, or to a much lesser extent, pay attention to managing their contract administration. “As current contract management software is either part of an expensive ERP-software package or an over-engineered pay-per-user license model, many entrepreneurs and businesses just avoid the subject of contract management. This often results in unwanted renewed contracts, double contracts or unfavorable conditions,” explains Schouten. It’s a problem that Cloudtract wants to tackle head-on with an online cloud-based platform that makes it easy to store contracts and set alerts.
The founders of Cloudtract experienced first-hand what it is like to forget to cancel a contract, and how difficult it can be to even track down all the contracts within a company. When Schouten started working at an insurance company, it took her two months to gather all the contracts that the marketing department signed during the previous years. In addition Schouten slightly embarrassed adds “The IT department at this insurance company was reviewing all its software licenses and wanted to cancel one of them. But because no one remembered to cancel this contract in time, as the IT department was only focusing on the new license, we ended up paying 40.000 euro for a contract we didn’t need anymore.”
Cloud-based solution
As the founders of Cloudtract have a background in making cloud-based software for financial institutions, they have used the same technology to make a secure and scalable contract management platform in the Amazon Web Services Cloud. While the ultimate goal of Cloudtract is to offer this solution to businesses and consumers as well, the company has launched its beta version for companies only. It is available in English and more languages will follow shortly.
