Ever need to pull up a contract with its legal signatures quickly and wish it could be accessed by computer?
According to Matt Lhoumeau, CEO of Concord, an e-signature tool and contract platform company, 96 percent of all contracts are still written and signed on paper. He is passionate about changing this paradigm and feels that e-signing should be free, since signing a paper contract is free.
Concord has developed a cloud-based platform where the contract can be negotiated on the cloud as well as signed. Like Google Docs, those with permission can make alterations to the document and each change is saved. No more emailing back and forth. No more paper contracts to be mailed, Lhoumeau explained.
Lhoumeau feels so strongly about changing the world of contracts to digital methods, he offers the basics of making a contract free, with unlimited contracts and signers, the only company in the world to do so. Concord offers more comprehensive services such as templates, administrator oversight, advanced data support or internal workflow in incremental levels with monthly subscriptions. The service has a free version, a Standard version for $14.99 per user per month and a Plus version for $29.99 per user per month.
Lhoumeau told Small Business Trends in an interview, “Concord is the only platform to cover natively the full life-cycle of a contract. Unlike classic e-signature providers, Concord not only offers e-signature, but also e-negotiation (online collaborative editing with automatic track changes — no more email back and forth with Word or PDF), as well as e-contract management (deadline alerts to never miss a renewal again, clauses comparison between executed documents, etc.).”
Lhoumeau discovered his inspiration for founding Concord a few years ago when he was assigned to renegotiate 500 old contracts. Six months and many paper cuts later, he got disgusted with rummaging file cabinets, scanning the old contracts and sending all those documents back and forth. He couldn’t help but dream of a totally digital system of documents and contracts. His system is used by 25,000 companies in 125 countries including Bosch and Siemens.
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The company is headquartered in San Francisco.
Lhoumeau sums up the idea and philosophy behind the startup in one statement, “We’re on a mission to make sure no one has to manually manage contracts ever again.”
Image: Concord
It is great in terms of efficiency because everything is done on the cloud. I am not so sure about security though. I know that cloud systems are secured but I don’t know if it is secured enough especially for those confidential agreements.
Very cool and love the pricing obviously! I wish e-signing was a more common standard because printing, signing, scanning & emailing a contract is such a hassle. My realtor used e-signing and it was so smooth and easy. Now if only my insurance company would get on board.