Contract Lifecycle Management

Contract lifecycle management, sometimes referred to as “CLM,” is the process of planning, negotiating, and implementing the contracts of a company and monitoring, controlling, and analyzing each contract at each stage of the contract’s existence, from conception to termination.

By actively managing each stage of the contract through its lifecycle, a company’s resources can be deployed in a manner best designed to achieve the enterprise’s objectives. In recent years, advancements in technology have provided new and exciting tools to benefit this process. Contract lifecycle management is effective in any type of organization, and is especially common with companies that buy or sell goods or services. Contract lifecycle management has many benefits for the company, a few of which follow:

• Increased revenues.
• Decreased expenses.
• Helps control vendor relationships.
• Enables organizations to audit all categories of spending.
• Increases transparency and accountability.
• Provides inputs for strategic decision-making.
• Beneficial to both for-profit and nonprofit enterprises.
• When contracting with the government, supports compliance with governmental rules and regulations.

Perhaps the greatest detriment to adoption of contract lifecycle management has been the complexity of some systems. Some products require such complicated integrations that implementation can take months. These systems are difficult for employees to learn and understand, sometimes resulting in abandonment. ContractSafe has dealt with this problem by developing simple integrations, and a product that is so easy to use and understand that it is up and running almost immediately, and with complete employee buy-in.