Integration with CPQ
One of the key benefits of utilizing a CLM in tandem with configure, price, quote (CPQ) software is that CLM enables the establishment of a repeatable, traceable and optimized contract management process. Similarly, one of the key benefits of a CPQ system is that with CPQ, sales organizations can create a repeatable and traceable pricing and configuration process – why not extend that goal to the management of the documents that actually govern the customer relationship? CLM systems are built to help sales organizations establish best practices to allow contract execution to be seamless and intuitive.
Likewise, CPQ plus CLM can help legal teams accelerate redlining. Nothing causes more angst between sales and legal teams than the redlining process. Sales teams always feel the delays in their sales cycle that arise during contract negotiation, while legal teams are always feeling the pressure to turn contracts around more quickly. CPQ solutions aim to help standardize the input into the contract process, but can fall short at enabling legal to redline contracts in a streamlined, repeatable fashion. Using a CLM integrated into a CPQ solution allows legal teams to take advantage of an integrated clause library that provides increased efficiency and productivity during contract redlining, leading to less pain for both legal and sales teams when it comes time to redline.
Smarter Insights
A CLM can provide additional insights that people might miss or overlook. For instance, some companies need to comply with certain regulations; if a CLM can flag any clauses or parts of a contract that do not comply with laws or regulations and alert a company what needs to be fixed, it can help a company avoid fines or penalties for non-compliance.
Additionally, if a CLM that can highlight contract terms unfavorable to the business, they can be adjusted during the contract management process and not later, when the stakes are higher (because of lawsuits, fines, etc.).
And now that we live in the age of data analytics, a CLM should have a way to analyze data and generate reports. Mining and analyzing data can add transparency and optimize a workforce by revealing process inefficiencies; participants can see where processes are being held up and avoid these bottlenecks in the future as well as better determine when a deal will close.
Mike brings 25 years of experience helping organizations solve content and document-centric problems, automating critical business processes and accelerating productivity for enterprises worldwide. The most successful “sales professionals” have a level of curiosity and empathy that stretches well beyond hitting a quota. They deeply understand the customer, their customer’s customer’s customer and their customer’s competitive landscape. Mike was a key contributor at Mobius Management Systems, serving as Vice President of Sales for The Americas, where Mike helped his customer deliver award winning projects and helped Mobius grow from start-up to IPO to $100MM in revenue. After Mobius, Mike joined cloud supply chain management software company Kinaxis, where he launched the firm’s mid-market sales strategy. At SpringCM, Mike oversees all direct sales.
Mike attended Iona College, a private Business school in New York. Mike received a coveted internship with IBM where he competed against the top Marketing and Management students.
Clause and Template Library
Clauses are required in a contract to reduce business risk and protect a company from negative scenarios. Contracts are diverse entities, and a company should be able to control the language of a contract on a case-by-case basis, as different clauses will create different outcomes – but all should be engineered to reduce risks and shield a company. These clauses need to be organized and managed in a way that makes them easily searchable and able to be plugged into a contract.
Some organizations also have multiple contract templates with various SLAs and statutes that require those documents to be cataloged, indexed and organized even before they become a signed contract, so those templates have to be managed as well.
A CLM that keeps all clauses with all variations and all templates in one centralized repository makes it easy to search for, find and insert the appropriate clauses into a template and build the most robust contract possible.
Searchability
In addition to the content of a contract, there also are metadata, such as the author, date created, type of contract, who the customer is, etc., that help participants find it. If the contract is not being managed as a document, then the contract itself is just a blob – there is no context for it; it’s just a file and is not able to be easily searched.
In a CRM, a user might be able to find attachments such as a data record associated with a contract, or a customer account record, but the user would not be able to find the contract itself because it is simply a file name. A CLM should give the ability to manage contract as documents; a contract should be treated as an individual entity and not just a data object within a CRM. If a user can search an entire repository for particular types of documents or key phrasing/clauses, he or she then can go right to the contract itself – whether that user is searching for a contract template, work in process or an executed agreement.
A contract that has been highly negotiated drives an even greater need for the ability to easily search for it. A user would need to be able to find contracts based on certain characteristics, including different SLAs, clauses, wording and more.
If a complex contract – or even a simpler one – is not kept in a centralized repository, this creates business risk as well as customer service issues because a contract cannot be immediately searched for and found.
Speed Up Your Process
Every business wants a way to generate more revenue and close more deals – and to do that, you need to accelerate the sales process and free up sellers, giving them more time to get out and sell.
A CLM platform with the right attributes can shorten the time it takes contracts to be processed and signed, cutting the sales cycle from three weeks to three days and allowing a company to bring in more revenue in less time – making it a smart investment for a savvy business in the digital age.
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