Resources

Guides for choosing and rolling out contract management

Evaluation methods and checklists for legal, procurement, and IT leads, prepared by Zico, the contract management brand of Beijing FIM Network Technology Co., Ltd.

Article2026-10-23By Zico Team
Should your contract management system run on your own servers? Four questions to ask first
Running a contract management system on your own servers (private deployment) suits companies whose contract data is sensitive, who face regulatory, audit or group-policy requirements to keep data in-house, who need deep integration with internal systems, and who have someone to run the system day to day. If most answers are yes, start with private deployment; if most are no, evaluate cloud options first. Either way, settle upgrades, backups, admin handover and pricing before you sign.
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Article2026-10-22By Zico Team
What features does a contract management system need, and how do you test them before go-live?
Contract management system features usually fall into six groups: drafting and templates, negotiation and versions, approval and sign-off, signing and sealing, performance and reminders, and archiving and the contract register, plus permissions and reporting across all of them. Reading a feature list is easy; testing is what matters. Before go-live, take three to five of your own real contracts and walk each one through all six groups.
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Article2026-10-21By Zico Team
Writing a group contract management policy before you choose a system
A group-wide contract management policy usually needs eight sections: scope and contracting entities, an approval authority matrix, template control, review and sign-off, execution and sealing, performance and amendments, archiving, and reporting and accountability. Write the policy first, then choose a contract system by asking, section by section, where each rule lives in the system's configuration.
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Article2026-10-18By Zico Team
Contract ledger template: which fields you need and how to pull them from the contract text
A workable contract ledger needs five groups of fields - identity (number, name, type), parties (your signing entity, the counterparty), amount and payment, term and obligations, and status and filing. Keep the field list short and define each field and who fills it. For existing contracts, extract candidate values from the text first, then have a person confirm them before they go into the ledger.
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Article2026-10-15By Zico Team
How much does a contract management system cost? What a quote usually includes
There is no single list price for a contract management system. A quote is built from software licensing, implementation and integration, legacy contract migration, maintenance, AI usage and e-signature. To get numbers you can compare, prepare your user count, the systems to integrate and your contract backlog, then ask each vendor for a three-year breakdown.
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Selection guide2026-10-13By Zico Team
How an AI contract management system differs from a regular one: five everyday steps
A regular contract system manages process and records: who drafted, who approved, whether it is signed, where it is stored.
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Selection guide2026-09-22By Zico Team
You already run approvals in your chat suite. Why add a contract system?
For teams already running contract approvals in Lark, Teams, WeCom or DingTalk: when that is enough, when it stops being enough, and how a contract system sits alongside rather than replacing it.
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Selection guide2026-09-22By Zico Team
How a contract system divides work with ERP, CRM and e-signature
When contract data is scattered across ERP, CRM, e-signature and email, which system owns which stretch, which direction fields should flow, where duplicate entry comes from, and one rule for deciding the system of record.
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Selection guide2026-09-22By Zico Team
Which companies a standard CLM does not fit
Standard contract management products rest on three assumptions: one entry point, mostly first-party templates, and a process that can be rearranged to suit the product. Which companies break those assumptions, and what the options are when they do.
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Selection guide2026-09-22By Zico Team
Which contract management products fit which companies
A scenario-based comparison of contract management products by their publicly stated positioning: company size, whether the system of record is being replaced, first-party templates versus inbound paper, and deployment shape. Written by the Zico team, with that interest declared.
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Method2026-09-22By Zico Team
What a contract process diagnosis actually covers
A contract process diagnosis is not requirements gathering. Its purpose is to locate the one stretch worth fixing first. The eight questions to answer beforehand, how the hour is spent, what it produces, and when to skip it.
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Implementation guide2026-09-22By Zico Team
Moving off email and Word: which step comes first
For teams still running contracts through email and Word, importing history is the wrong first step. Which loop to connect first, how much history to migrate, how to run the dual-track period, and how to tell it worked.
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Implementation guide2026-09-22By Zico Team
Seven traps in contract permissions across group subsidiaries
Seven problems specific to group structures: group visibility versus entity isolation, identity across collaboration tenants, authority thresholds, related-party transactions, data residency, register consistency, and permissions left behind after transfers.
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Implementation guide2026-09-22By Zico team
When existing processes cannot change: upfront fields and external approval chains
Form habits and approval systems a company cannot change are usually fixed points, so the contract system adapts. Two patterns from real rollouts: moving register fields to extraction plus confirmation at upload, and handing approval orchestration back to the existing spend-control or OA system.
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Integration guide2026-09-21By Zico Team
Adding AI contract review without replacing your existing system
If contracts already run through your workflow or contract system, AI review can be added alongside it. The three integration paths, where results land, who signs off, and what is out of scope today.
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Buyer guide2026-09-14By Zico Team
How to Choose a Privately Deployed Contract Management System: Deployment, Integration, and AI Review
When evaluating a privately deployed contract management system, check three things: deployment, integration, and AI review. For each: what to ask vendors, how to verify, and how Zico (by FIM) does it.
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