Organizations aren't exactly rushing into the waiting arms of contract management solutions, according to DocuSign's 2019 State of Contract Management survey released last week.

In the survey, comprised of 802 responses from employees at companies occupying a range of industries that includes technology, finance and legal, only 27% of respondents indicated that they were using a contract management tool, with the majority (31%) favoring Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet software.

However, 94% of respondents also said that human error was impacting the contract process. So what's keeping people from fully embracing contract management tools?

Austin Miller, director of product marketing at DocuSign, thinks that most vendors in the space have been concentrating on products geared towards large-scale organizations.

"The result has been very heavy CLM applications that require high up-front costs for implementation and very technical employees to maintain the system. We have talked to prospects who have invested millions in implementation work that still weren't live years after initial purchase," Miller said.

Ben Weinberger, legal operations director at Nextlaw In-House Solutions, said that the need for contract management tools definitely exists among organizations, but isn't sure if companies really prefer spreadsheets or just have a narrow awareness of what's on the market.

"In their minds it's a budget thing… so maybe they haven't looked at enough options that are affordable or reasonable," Weinberger said.

The headaches associated with contract management certainly don't seem to be going way, starting with the variety of methods used to share agreements with different parties. The vast majority (80%) of respondents favored email, followed by file transfer protocol or another secure platform (44%) and fax (34%).

Miller expects to see less used options as Slack (21%) drop even further as concerns about data security continue to rise.

"As we all know, contracts contain some of the most sensitive information a company or organization handles. Protection of that data is not only important for maintaining public trust, but also to avoid fees and penalties," Miller said.

Weinberger, on the other hand, thinks that contracts and security are still taking a back seat to efficiency—or at least what people think is efficient.

"And I think the bigger issue that almost everyone is guilty of is utilizing too many channels for that communication," Weinberger said.

The array of channels being leveraged doesn't just pose security issues. Efficiency also takes a ding, with 68% of respondents indicating it took them more than 10 minutes to locate a typical contract. 

Still, only 20% of survey respondents identified tracking as one of the biggest challenges in the contract process. But Weinberger thinks the ability for organizations to easily locate their contracts will matter a great deal.

"Leases are a very common one for some of these businesses, where they've got numerous leases. If they don't have a really well-thought out method for tracking… I think they struggle quite a bit," he said.

However, the survey indicates that respondents are more concerned with other contract process challenges. The top three included approvals (53%), clause management (33%) and workflow (27%).

Many of the contract slowdowns employees experience with regards to approvals or workflow appear to be caused by revisions. For example, 52% of respondents indicated that company contracts go through an average of three to four versions before being finalized, while 33% said a typical contract takes 30 hours or more to negotiate versioning and modifications.

Per Miller, DocuSign isn't expecting to see a significant shift in how pain points like approvals and workflow are ranked in next year's survey. He does, however, think that as the agreement process becomes increasingly digitized, it could help organizations address gaps in the approval or workflow processes that breed contract inefficiencies.

"The end result isn't necessarily shorter cycle times to get work done. However, it will mean that employees will have increased understanding of where their contract is being held up and will have more opportunities to intervene and accelerate," Miller said.