Building a business case for CLM: Getting stakeholder buy-in 

We can all write emails. We write them every day in business.

But what if it’s about something important? Something that can make a difference in the effectiveness of your position? Something you’ve researched and seen how it has impacted other organizations? 

We’re talking about contract lifecycle management (CLM) software. There is a lot of proof out there of the effectiveness of CLM, not only for lowering risk but as a solid investment with impactful ROI. While going through the vetting process, you need to bring along your organizational stakeholders with you to help build a business case for CLM. Showing them the benefits of CLM and how it can impact more than just their department, whether it be Legal, Procurement, Sales, or any other department, is critical. Getting them to the discussion table is a task unto itself.  

So, you begin with email.  

There is plenty of advice on the internet about how to write an email and be convincing, but do you know how to write an email to convince your organizational stakeholders that CLM has huge benefits awaiting them?  

You begin with what you’re trying to do: purchasing a CLM. But why should a different department, other than yours, care about this purchase? There are so many proven values to using a full organizational instance of CLM. If you haven’t had much discussion yet with your counterparts, it’s important to open with how a CLM could benefit them.  

Example approaches

Legal

If Legal has a hard time keeping track of contracts as they flow through the approval and signature process, or they rely on spreadsheets and email they need an efficient way to track them. If obligations and contract renewals are not carefully monitored, they may also have revenue leakage and risk exposure. You need the Legal team to imagine the feeling of having a complete pre- and post-signature contracting workflow process with tasks and obligations scheduled and clearly assigned. 

Procurement

If Procurement has difficulty enforcing procurement guidelines or tracking their suppliers’ commitments, they need better controls and insight. If Procurement’s time is taken up looking up standard contracting information and generating reports for others, a CLM could provide that information in seconds. By integrating Procurement’s performance tracking systems into a CLM, the team could have up-to-the-second comparisons between contractually obligated and actual results. You need Procurement to imagine a scenario where they could pull up requested information with the stroke of a few keys when on the phone with auditors. 

Sales

If the Sales team complains about holdups generating a new contract to complete a sale, they need a system that gives them more flexibility and insight. If Sales needs access to more standard contracts that don’t need a lot of oversight, a CLM could lessen the anxiety and frustration while speeding up time to cash flow. You could have Sales imagining a few things, like having access to templated contracts with easy selections, or integrating their customer relationship management (CRM) systems to the CLM so that they always have access to the most current information about their contractual relationships.  

Finance

If Finance is coming to you for the latest information on contract details, they need better access to contract data. If other people are taking up their valuable time to hunt down the information needed by Finance, there needs to be a better way. Imagine Finance integrating their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to the CLM so there is easy insight to ensure that volume discounts are leveraged when earned and that payment terms are used to optimize cash flow. 

In conclusion

In other words, you need to consider a CLM investment from your stakeholders’ point of view and include that in your outreach. By bringing to light the different benefits and pain points solved by a CLM for each different department, you will quickly pique their interest and earn a conversation.

It all starts with an email.  

Don’t miss out on this chance to make your job easier in convincing other stakeholders of the value of a CLM for your organization. Download the complete 4-piece toolkit to today.