Top 5 things general counsel doesn't know about contract lifecycle management

Do you know enough about contract lifecycle management (CLM) software to select the right tool for your company?  

As General Counsel, you are the head lawyer that knows a business’s legal process, understands what they need in a contract solution, and can truly ascertain if a specific CLM will benefit the legal team and the company as a whole.  

After all – the right CLM does so much more than create contracts. CLM software has the ability to make GCs more efficient, increase company-wide productivity, provide actionable insights, and integrate with existing technical infrastructure.

But what GCs don’t know about CLM could create trouble down the road due to a poorly selected or underutilized tool. Once you’re armed with these top 5 points, you can go on to be the hero that introduces CLM to your team and brings greater strategic value to the organization. 

1. 90% of the value of contracts are going to waste

Did you know there’s business gold buried deep within your contracts that you’re not digging up? It’s just sitting there as wasted potential. Why? Only 10% of contract language references deliverables while the other 90% is often passed over or misunderstood.  

Just think about the potential for creating change at your company when you unlock that 90% of contract data that is currently overlooked. The doors would open to a wealth of business-critical intelligence. 

If contract data is not fully recognized as the valuable asset that it is, you or your General Counsel could be making business decisions based on a narrower view of their options. But with the correct systems and processes in place, the contract data becomes actionable insights that deliver strategic value.  

To learn more about capturing that 90% of contract data while mitigating risk, check out our recent webinar featuring Senior Forrester Analyst Alla Valente and CLM Futurist and Agiloft Chief Product Officer Andy Wishart. 

2. Integrations are the key to mitigating risk

When you’re General Counsel, it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day minutia of your job – whether that means keeping an eye on regulatory compliance or managing risk across the enterprise. But what if there was a way to see beyond the horizon and anticipate what’s coming next? You can do this by using a contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution…as long as it can easily integrate. 

CLMs are not just for contracts anymore—they are also tools for digital transformation and innovation. They’ve been adopted by organizations looking for ways to transform their business processes using automation and artificial intelligence. A top-notch CLM will integrate with hundreds of today’s common enterprise systems, allowing your contract data to flow freely throughout your company’s business processes, the information used to attain new streams of revenue, keep up with vendors, manage clients better, and increase efficiency.  

Agiloft’s CLM features the Integration Hub powered by Workato. The Integration Hub is the first of its kind to be embedded within a CLM platform, allowing integration with a company’s centralized enterprise governance system, letting data flow into other areas of the business structure where it is deemed useful, and removing the friction of sourcing and onboarding a new platform among many other use cases.  

3. Flexible CLM tools can handle complex contracting processes

Many companies hesitate when it comes to CLM, thinking that their contract process is too complex to be automated. But a good CLM solution can easily automate complex, tedious processes so employees have time to accomplish more high-value, specialized tasks, which is especially true for legal teams.  

With CLM, a company can have multiple, easily-editable templates, which can be standardized and specialized for locations or departments, creating a more seamless experience and reducing the risk of using outdated or non-compliant language. Additionally, contract information that once lived and died in one person’s computer is now accessible to the entire company, as long as they have the proper permissions. Decision-making becomes a collaborative, holistic process drawing in the necessary stakeholders across the company. 

4. Bad contract processes sink NPS scores and impact customer experience

An NPS score—otherwise known as Net Promoter Score—is extremely important in the business world. After all, customers often choose whether or not to engage in business with potential business partners depending on their NPS score. An investor’s decision to make investments also depends on this score, and slow, frustrating, and manual contract processes have been known to bring down the score significantly. This information leaves little reason for enterprises not to adopt a CLM as part of their infrastructure.  

When a corporation does not have a CLM, the contract process becomes drawn out, riskier, and much less efficient. The back and forth of getting it right can take ages, and the time it takes an initial request to move all the way through to a contract renewal is often a snail’s pace.  

GlobeNewsWire.com reports that by the end of 2032 “the CLM market is expected to reach $3 billion.” That means that if you don’t adopt a CLM, your company will be competing against all those that have already updated their systems. There’s no comparison. Customers are sure to compare your contract processes to other more efficient CLM-based processes and your NPS score will be destined to plummet.  

5. General Counsel that embrace automated CLM can become revenue drivers for an organization

Tapping into a company’s contract data is like tapping into a revenue stream you never knew existed. Once the data gets flowing, there is reduced administrative waste, a decrease in sales cycle times, less risk of noncompliance, and better renewal and expiration management.  

In fact, some companies have seen as much as $1 million in savings in one year. According to analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers, a business can save up to 2% of its annual costs by using CLM and speed up negotiation cycles by 50%. Additionally, erroneous payments went down 75-90%. 

With these five critical points in mind, be the hero to bring the power of CLM to your organization. Who knows, it might just help propel you into the next phase of your career and help your company thrive despite today’s economic uncertainty. 

Let’s book a meeting to discuss how to bring CLM to your organization