Contract Lifecycle Management, commonly known as CLM, has become an essential technology for law firms and enterprises to create and manage their agreements. Previously, it was used to simplify the management of bulk contracts, but its potential goes far beyond just creating and signing agreements. Effective CLM involves a set of integrated processes that continue even after the conclusion of a contract. With the advent of better technologies and rapidly changing dynamics between contracting parties, enterprises are realising that contract lifecycle automation can accomplish much more for both their contract management and contract performance.
Contract Automation means using the software to automate the contract generation process and eliminating the other routine admin work. This feature enables all the businesses to build, execute, and automate the whole process. The process involves contract drafting, approvals, negotiation, storage, alerts and more.
The main focus points for contract automation are:
Without the contract automation, contract management becomes very hard because of challenges like revisions not controlled, usage of outdated contract templates, critical dates go by without alerts, etc. To Solve all such problems, automating contract really helps.
To carry out the tasks of contract signing manually, it usually means having a group of interested parties, and the whole contract has to go back and forth for a long period, and high risk of errors. Contract automation helps organizations to do this:
According to research by the Aberdeen Group, businesses may cut the typical contract cycle time by up to 50% by utilizing contract automation. Deal cycles are accelerated, and this notable reduction enhances overall business agility.
Additionally, according to the same Aberdeen Group analysis, companies that use contract automation saw a 40% decrease in contract errors and omissions. This enhancement lowers legal risks, improves compliance, and streamlines processes.
Contracts can be easily automated using the contract management tool. CMT automates all your administration tasks for complete contract lifecycle. The tool uses pre-approved templates and automated contract workflows to streamline the tasks such as contract drafting, approvals, eSignature, etc. You can easily add the CLM software with your existing tools and flows which makes the process of automating very simple and easy.
Contract Automation can be beneficial for businesses and many internal departments such as HR, Sales, Finance, Legal Firms and departments, etc. The automation of contracts can be helpful for various industries in streamlining the process, increasing efficiency, avoiding and forgetting tasks or approvals because of alerts and many more.
Contract automation benefits every department by streamlining workflows, reducing risk, and saving time. Here’s how different teams gain value from modern contract systems:
| Role | Key Benefits |
|---|---|
| Legal Teams |
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| Sales Teams |
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| Procurement |
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| HR Departments |
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| Executives |
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Contract automation involves converting physical, repetitive tasks into electronic workflows, thereby significantly reducing the reliance on the legal team for routine agreements. Rather than creating documents from nothing or continuously searching for approvals via emails, automated systems utilize logic-driven rules to generate, review, and manage contracts with a range and quality that is achieved with speed and precision.
The technique for contract automation fundamentally involves the use of contracts prepared by management, inputting correct data via programming, and passing through online functions to automatically process contracts from start to finish—all these lead to compliance, shortened processing times, and increased scalability.
To facilitate smooth departmental communication and ensure compliance at every stage, contemporary legal contract automation tools, such as Legistify, often integrate with CRM, ERP, and eSignature solutions.
Enterprises use contract lifecycle management systems to efficiently manage complex agreements, including detailing liabilities and pricing and ensuring the seamless execution of contracts. However, once such agreements reach the execution stage, the contract lifecycle management process ends, and parties may lose track of their responsibilities, deadlines, renewal dates, and timely payment of dues.
As contract lifecycle management tools continue to evolve rapidly, more enterprises are focusing on how they can help monitor overall contract performance management and risk prevention.
Here’s a comprehensive yet concise overview of the key benefits of contract automation:
| Benefits | Description |
|---|---|
| Accelerated Contract Turnaround | Businesses can quickly close deals through the automated contract drafting and approval processes. |
| Enhanced Compliance | Contract automation ensures adherence to legal standards and company policies, reducing the likelihood of non-compliance. |
| Improved Accuracy | Automated systems reduce human errors in contract creation and management, resulting in more reliable agreements. |
| Scalability | Enables large teams to handle thousands of contracts effortlessly. |
| Cost Savings | Helps companies cut administrative costs and reallocate human resources more effectively. |
Furthermore, 95% of a contract cycle time is devoted to unproductive work delays, with only 5% of that time really related to task execution. Organizations can identify inefficiencies and reduce cycle times by leveraging contract analytics.
Poor management of contracts can lead to financial losses. As per the World commerce and contracting group, because of poor management of contracts, companies loses around 9% of their annual revenues.
Here are eight essential benefits of automating the contract management process, which help not only in reducing financial losses but also in improving various other factors:
Enterprises often have to deal with a large number of contracts that may be in different stages of the contract lifecycle. With the help of AI-based contract management software, enterprises can create a centralised archive of all their contracts, making it easier to implement their provisions accurately. The software can also extract key terms from bulk contracts and generate reports for timely performance monitoring. This enables enterprises to enforce their contracts, fulfil their obligations, renew or terminate agreements on time, and add/remove/amend provisions as per their requirements. Tracking Renewals/Terminations/Amendments with Contract Lifecycle Automation
Contract lifecycle automation with AI can also help enterprises track their requirements relating to renewal, termination or changes to a contract and then notify the legal teams as and when such renewals, terminations and amendments are needed. Contracting parties can also analyse the content of their contracts to identify critical legal data instead of manually going through each agreement.
One of the primary challenges of contract lifecycle management is tracking the time a contract may take to come into force. Parties may not be able to identify when their liabilities and rights have begun until the contract is actually executed. However, contract lifecycle automation can achieve more than this. Parties can realise the benefits and responsibilities that come with their contract even before the contract is operationalised. CLM can use the structured data identified at the time of contract drafting to pre-define the value of a contract and what the practical implementation of each contract term would be like for each party.
A large number of enterprises end up with multiple teams using multiple drives and data units to store contracts. This can wreak havoc on the business as the risk of losing vital data with legal implications for the company. Further, oftentimes than not, such unorganised contract storage can lead to teams missing contract deadlines and payment dates. Contract lifecycle management can create a single space for such record-keeping for enterprises by storing all of the active contracts in one place for teams to track and execute.
An effective contract lifecycle management tool can also automate notifications and reminders for parties about when their liabilities come into play. It can inform the parties when and how they need to act upon a particular contract clause. Contract management teams can get a holistic picture of the different actions that they need to take for different contracts to be simultaneously executed by the enterprise. Not only this, but contract lifecycle management can also help them define responsibilities, segment contracts that need to be renewed or terminated, prioritise high-value agreements, and automate contracts that do not require constant observation.
Additionally, the work for contract management teams does not end with the end of a contract. There remains a lot of administrative tasks and general maintenance to be done, including payment of final invoices, contract storage for future reference and careful termination of liabilities. Contract lifecycle management can help enterprises perform such post-contract completion handling work and minimise their legal risks by automating these functions.
Document migration is one of the most challenging tasks for enterprises, especially when they have thousands of contracts in their storage. CLM can help enterprises execute this function by profiling and segregating contracts based on different parameters. Companies can use contract lifecycle management to classify their contracts as per the contract type, client name, date of creation, date of execution, contract managers, etc.
Once a contract is executed, the parties may want to amend, add or remove a provision. Unfortunately for large companies, this means going through each contract, negotiating with each party and making such changes manually one by one. With online collaboration through contract lifecycle management, enterprises can quickly make such changes, control who has access to make such changes, automate the implementation of such changes, and digitally sign the contract without stalling its execution.
Contract Lifecycle Management can also help companies audit their contract repositories and ensure that they follow all the regulatory and legal standards. They can also ensure that they comply with the latest data privacy laws, corporate standards, and other applicable legal standards when it comes to the execution of their active contracts.
Contract lifecycle management is no longer limited to designing airtight contracts. There lie endless opportunities for automating end-to-end contract execution and post-execution stages of a contract with CLM. The use of AI-based data processing, automated reminders and billing, and machine learning-based contract renewals and terminations are just the tip of this contract lifecycle automation iceberg.
To Know more about Contract automation, you can download the Contract Automation PDF for step by step process.
Here are trends related to Contract Automation:
| Trend | Description |
|---|---|
| Hyper-Intelligent Drafting | Generative AI crafts initial drafts from bullet points and adjusts clauses based on context, enhancing automated contract drafting. |
| Self-Negotiating Contracts | AI agents resolve most redlines instantly and suggest mutual gains using a compromise engine, streamlining automated contract negotiation. |
| Living Compliance | Contracts auto-update with regulatory AI to ensure ongoing legal conformity, boosting legal contract automation and compliance tracking. |
| Frictionless Execution | Biometric e-signatures and smart contracts enable seamless, self-executing agreements, key features of contract workflow automation. |
| Predictive Contract Ops | AI analyzes contracts to predict disputes and assess risks, prioritizing legal attention to enhance automated contract analysis. |
