Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

‘Sign here, here and here’. Signing a contract makes me a bit tense.

I’m always on the lookout for a hidden trap in-between the many lines. I feel information is asymmetric, and I don’t want that to put me at a disadvantage.

I imagine most people have felt the same.

Contracts nowadays don’t serve people as they should. They are unnecessarily hard to write and read. The endless legalese makes them a daunting matter. Their binding power is not bulletproof.

As SwissRe points out, ‘There are 19.972 words in the iTunes terms and conditions. Shakespeare’s Macbeth has 18.100 words. When you click “I agree”, you’re saying to iTunes that you have read something longer than Macbeth.’ In short, today’s contracts do not enable optimal and risk-free decisions.

At Trakti we are creating a future where contracts serve people and businesses.

In this future, contracts will be simple and transparent.

People and companies will be fully aware of their agreements, rights and obligations.

Young and old, startups and multinationals alike will be empowered to make the best decisions.

Fairness and clarity will eliminate risk and fear of signing.

The contracts of the future will avoid disputes, and eventually facilitate their resolution.

The future is here, and this is how it looks like.

Contracts assist you

The contracts we envision are not an administrative burden, but enablers of success. 

They encourage scalability with streamlined workflows.

They boost the speed of your offers and make the sales processes agile.

Dynamic templates allow salespeople to draft compliant and user friendly offers.

They easily accommodate negotiations while maintaining consistency.

With real-time information on contract status, hesitant prospects are automatically sent a follow-up to increase conversion.

These contracts are just like a virtual assistant.

• They monitor your deadlines and set personalized and customizable alerts.
• They prevent forgotten or undesired renewals, late payment fees and missed delivery deadlines.
• Side-by-side comparisons allow provisioning teams to easily choose the best supplier.

Smart data analytics

The contracts of the future provide insight into your contractual activities with data analysis.

They understand which clauses provide the highest closing rate in different scenarios, and which are the most contested by prospects. Combining this information with artificial intelligence, they give recommendations and set you up for success.

Moreover, contract management software aggregates data to calculate relevant KPIs, such as turnover from new contracts. They integrate with other software to share information and track metrics. Using conditional alerts, they ping you when any of your metrics are at alarming or unusual levels.

This way, you never miss any crucial changes and stay on top of your contracts and wallet.

Transparent collaboration

The contracts we are creating are relational, not unilateral, but multilateral.

Everyone can collaborate on their drafting and negotiation. By being able to involve sales teams, finance and legal teams from the onset, you cut down on drafting time and avoid the confusion of multiple versions with new updates.

In this collaborative environment, customers can suggest arrangements on clauses before signing the contract. Multiple parties, like customers and suppliers, can be involved in the same contract.

This is done transparently, and there is clear visibility over any changes.

Living and breathing contracts

Contracts are not static documents, but smart entities that trigger actions and affect the real world.

Smart Legal Contracts are active on the blockchain and can trigger payments, transfer data, grant access or update account balances. If a service doesn’t work, the smart contracts provide immediate and automated refunds.

These improvements provide better customer experience and save companies time and money in manual transactions.

Security and authenticity

The contracts of the future provide imperturbable security on negotiations and transactions.

Counterfeit is virtually impossible, as they are stored in the blockchain. Sensitive data is encrypted for storage and transmission. Moreover, audit trails of all activities in the negotiations are stored, including authorizations, offers, counteroffers, track-changes and assessments. Compliance reports are produced with a click.

Authenticity of contracts is also not an issue. Anyone can validate a contract’s authenticity by comparing its hash code with the one on the blockchain. Thanks to this decentralised system, no third party needs to be trusted to certify a document’s validity.

We are just at the beginning of this exciting journey, but the contracts of the future we are building pave the way for durable and streamlined business relationships with transparency and fair deals.

They enable win-win agreements and are made for people like you and me, so that we are never again afraid to put pen to paper.

We are still not there yet but at Trakti we are working hard to make this future possible. If you want o know more follow us on LinkedIn Facebook Twitter and check our research project with the European Commission called Open Trust Fabric