Contract Management Planning: How to Understand the Value of Your CLM Technology
Are you and your colleagues in the law department sure that you understand just how transformative Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) technologies can be when implemented smartly and strategically?
Here at Parley Pro, we come across various companies that buy it yet at some point face difficulties in getting less benefits from it than they expected. This can happen either because of obsolescence or poor user adoption. To avoid this situation, you need to realize the fullest value possible from CLM.
By assessing the current state of your organization’s contract management practices, and putting meaningful measures in place to optimize those practices, you can lead the way for your organization to increase revenue, improve efficiency, and reduce unnecessary risk. Or, if we refer to an analogy Parley Pro CEO Olga Mack likes to use, it is like helping a friend upgrade their fashion sense.
After completing the first step in the Contract Management Planning (CMP) process, you now understand how CLM technologies would most likely fit—or not fit—your organization.
You also understand two other important things:
• All of the tactics it will take to properly organize, integrate, and connect everything and everyone involved in the contracting process; and
• The reasons and incentives for users to actually adopt CLM once everything is connected
Maybe it sounds a little esoteric here in a vacuum. Trust us, though: This accrued knowledge puts in you in an excellent position to be both pragmatic and powerful.
To start with, try these two practices from our four-step guide on CMP:
• First, Take an inventory of the technologies you use now that should be involved in the contracting process: e-billing system, matter management, document management systems, ERP suite, etc. Note how or whether these systems are integrated with one another. This will help you prepare to add, alter or adjust everything as needed.
• Next, diagram your contract lifecycle and assign each benefit of a CLM system visually to one or more steps along the lifecycle. Create versions of this diagram to illustrate how specific stakeholders can benefit in specific ways.
Parley Pro’s own contract lifecycle model distills contracting into six phases: Initiate, Review, Negotiate, Approve, Analyze, and Manage. This is a simple model that is easy to work with as you consider how each CLM feature you identify enriches all those contracting stakeholders along the lifecycle.
By completing these two exercises, you will gain the confidence to manage the coming organizational change and excite members of your organization to team with you to make it all happen. That’s something we will discuss in another article soon.
Want to gain confidence when it comes time to select a new CLM system? Read Parley Pro’s four-step guide on CMP and use it as a valuable resource.
Other steps:
Step 1: Goals and Strategies
Step 2: Articulate the Value of CLM Technology
Step 3: Assemble Your CMP Team
Step 4: Identify Your KPIs
