Contracts and collaborative documents across the grant and partnership lifecycle are currently managed primarily through Word documents shared via email. This creates challenges with version control, including multiple document versions, parallel edits, and manual consolidation of changes. Collaboration is fragmented, resulting in limited visibility into document updates, no single source of truth, and limited auditability of changes and negotiations. In addition, the process creates administrative pressure on a small legal function, and contracts are largely managed outside the SmartSimple platform, leading to duplicated documentation and limited traceability.

To address this, improved collaboration functionality is needed. The solution should allow documents to be managed within SmartSimple while preserving core Word capabilities such as Track Changes (redlining), commenting, and collaborative editing with multiple internal and external users. It should also provide clear version control and an auditable history of document changes and negotiations. This would improve transparency, governance, and efficiency while ensuring contracts remain connected to the grant and partnership lifecycle managed in SmartSimple.