Mid-size and large organizations are often burdened with countless contracts across every department. Outdated manual contracting processes, disorganization, disparate systems, and tedious tasks waste valuable time and cause costly errors that affect a company’s bottom line. Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) organizes the meticulous and complex contractual negotiation process between buyers and suppliers, including creation, negotiation, and execution to performance, analysis, and renewal or expiration.
More specifically, Contract Lifecycle Management helps legal teams and other departments draft agreements efficiently, locate them quickly, and assess their risks and obligations accurately. However, the most effective CLM also provides vital contractual data needed to advise on the overall health of the business. Without it, organizations could miss expiration or key milestones, and even worse, not realize the full value of every agreement.
CLM software enables your legal department to focus on higher-value initiatives by automating and even accelerating their contracting processes. It allows users to improve a business’ operational performance, scrutinize agreements, and receive timely alerts and reminders to meet contractual obligations and compliance requirements. As a result, it helps reduce manual work, costs, and risks, while ensuring compliance and security.
Key Benefits of CLM
Contract Management software offers smart technology features and functionality to optimize a contract’s lifecycle:
Version Control
A contract is rarely executed with just one version due to its complexity and the number of people involved in its negotiation. CLM enables you to easily track all versions and rounds of revisions to ensure you’re always working with the most up-to-date document. Every round is archived so you can view a contract’s history and all changes made throughout its lifecycle.
Real-Time Collaboration
It is important that both internal and external teams are able to collaborate efficiently in order to execute a contract quickly and easily. CLM software offers real-time collaboration from any device, at any time, including approval delegations. This eliminates delays from back-and-forth volleying and speeds up the negotiation and administration of every agreement.
Data Security
Stringent access controls are imperative to keep your contracts safe and secure. CLM software enables system administrators to assign specific permissions, only allowing specified people to access a file. A report provides a quick glance at who has viewed and/or edited a contract.
Pre-Approved Templates
An integrated clause library contains pre-approved clauses and documentation to help teams establish formal processes that allow users to speed up contract lifecycles – all while lowering costs and fueling business growth.
Integrated Analytics
Contract Management (CM) software transforms key terms and obligations into smart analytics, which can be filtered and queried to unlock hidden insights. Intuitive dashboards and a point-and-click custom report builder helps you review and document key data, from obligations and risks to renewals and warranties.
Reduce Compliance Risk
CLM helps you stay compliant and fulfill your contractual obligations – leaving no loopholes for litigation. It also enables you to avoid payment errors that incur fees or penalties.
Automated Approvals
CLM streamlines the approval process for all involved parties to help drastically reduce compliance risk.
Negotiate Renewals
A Contract Management system stores and tracks a contract’s terms and conditions. This valuable information can be leveraged to help negotiate future contract rates, demonstrate performance evaluations, and guide potential Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for upcoming Statements of Work (SOWs).
Secured Central Repository
An intuitive, interactive repository helps you access and manage all your contract and legal data. It includes powerful search and visual components that streamline all of your legal work.
Cognitive Search
Search the entire database of contract and legal documents with ease. Finding specific clauses, agreements, or even terms is instant to save valuable time and effort.
A smart CLM system not only offers benefits to streamline your contracting processes for greater efficiency, it also plays a vital role in your company’s bottom line. Investing in a contract management system can often yield a significant return on investment (ROI). Consider World Commerce & Contracting’s figure that companies lose 9.2% of their bottom line through ineffective contract management. Or Goldman Sachs’ research estimates that automating contract management can help accelerate negotiation cycles by 50% and reduce erroneous payments by 75 to 90%.
How ContractPodAi Improves Contract Lifecycle Management
Ready to explore a world-class Contract Lifecycle Management solution for your organization? ContractPodAi offers a leading CM platform that works with you AND for you. It delivers value to your business through seamless and secure self-service, automates repetitive tasks, and captures data that can be turned into actionable intelligence. Power up your legal operations with ContractPodAi’s groundbreaking technology – book your personalized demo with us today and witness the future of legal technology.
