What is Contract Lifecycle Management software?

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software streamlines the contract process through automation of manual tasks such as searching for existing contracts, creating new ones and administering them.

Corcentric’s CLM solution turns contracts  into valuable assets

Contracts aren’t static documents; they’re leverageable assets your organization can use to minimize risk, maximize opportunities, achieve compliance, and generate revenue. Corcentric’s modular, platform-based Contract Lifecycle Management software makes them fast to create, with self-service and collaborative functionality that simplifies day-to-day searching, authoring, and administration. Verified, real-time data gives all users, from procurement to legal to sales, the visibility and insights to turn every contract into a powerful decision-making tool.

What Is Contract Lifecycle  Management Software?

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software streamlines the contract process through automation of manual tasks such as searching for existing contracts, creating new ones and administering them.

Corcentric’s CLM Solution Turns Contracts  Into Valuable Assets

Contracts aren’t static documents; they’re leverageable assets your organization can use to minimize risk, maximize opportunities, achieve compliance, and generate revenue. Corcentric’s modular, platform-based Contract Lifecycle Management software makes them fast to create, with self-service and collaborative functionality that simplifies day-to-day searching, authoring, and administration. Verified, real-time data gives all users, from procurement to legal to sales, the visibility and insights to turn every contract into a powerful decision-making tool.

Easy access

Access contracts quickly and control access across your organization

Efficient execution

Remove tedious processes and long cycle times that frustrate your business

Manage risks

Eliminate missed deadlines, renewals, expirations and unnecessary costs

Contract repository

Control starts with access 

Finding and reviewing contracts is the first step to contract management. Our CLM lets you leverage a responsive cloud-based central repository for easy access in discovering contracts, importing contracts, and managing expiry and renewals.

  • CLM 360° dashboard
  • Contract data & metadata management
  • Contract import & export
  • Amendment management

Contract request & approval workflows

Increase users, increase compliance

Involving a wider set of users for initiating and managing contract approvals will improve your contract management process. The Corcentric Contract Lifecycle Management system features contract request, routing and approval workflows to improve collaboration and expand the use of electronic contracts and documents.

  • Contract requests
  • Contract templates
  • Advanced workflow management

Contract authoring & negotiation

Make contracts a collaborative effort 

Collaborative authoring with internal and external counterparties gets everyone on the same page. Microsoft Word add-on for creating, authoring, editing, and checking ensures a smooth transition between paper and electronic-based contracts. Accelerate contract workflow with advanced contract redlining for managing new and renegotiated contracts.

  • Collaborative authoring & redlining
  • Contract negotiation workflow
  • Contract process validation

Obligations management

Post execution is when active contract management starts 

Organizations need a specific ongoing process for managing the obligations that each party is legally responsible for in a contract. CLM technology makes the contracting process more flexible, effective, and easy to meet compliance and financial goals while mitigating contract risk.

  • Monitoring and measuring contract obligations
  • Terms and conditions, milestone dates, delivery requirements, service levels, discounts, security, etc.
  • Frictionless contract management evaluates supplier compliance

Clause management

Contract creation with built-in compliance

The ability to create contracts dynamically takes contract management to the next level. Our CLM solution empowers users through self-service and clause library access to create and organize contracts based on clause groups and best-in-class contract blueprints.

  • Dynamic rules-driven templates
  • Comparison of side-by-side versions
  • Clause library filtering by category, risk level, parent level, and more

E-signature

Accelerate from dotted line to bottom line

Integrated e-signature capabilities with leading solutions like DocuSign (embedded in the application), take you to the last step in executing your contracts, while maintaining a complete audit trail of all signatures internally and those with your contract counterparties.

  • Fast, easy and secure to use; if you can click, you can sign
  • Fully traceable as to who signed, when, and where
  • Faster turnaround since all parties can sign within seconds

Active lifecycle management

Adopt a proactive, dynamic contract strategy

Don’t file contracts, keep them dialed-in to ensure that you don’t miss important milestones (and opportunities) to evaluate contract relationships and supplier performance prior to renewal.

  • Add notifications and tasks for expirations, renewals, and obligations
  • Four renewal types: Renewable, Tacit Renewable, Automatic Limited, and Automatic Indefinite
  • Establish parent-child relationships between contracts, including master agreements

Integrated contracts

Put contracts at the center of everything

Contracts touch every part of an organization, so the more seamlessly they can be integrated across key systems, functions, and departments, the more effective they are as tools.

  • Sourcing: simplify creation of item pricing
  • Supplier Management: enable management of supplier performance to SLAs
  • Systems: integrate pricing with ERP, Procurement, and/or other external systems
  • Master Data: ensure contract information is up-to-date, accurate, accessible, and collaborative

Contract Repository

Control starts with access 

Finding and reviewing contracts is the first step to contract management. Our CLM lets you leverage a responsive cloud-based central repository for easy access in discovering contracts, importing contracts, and managing expiry and renewals.

  • CLM 360° dashboard
  • Contract data + metadata management
  • Contract import + export
  • Amendment management

Contract Request + Approval Workflows

Increase users, increase compliance

Involving a wider set of users for initiating and managing contract approvals will improve your contract management process. The Corcentric Contract Lifecycle Management system features contract request, routing and approval workflows to improve collaboration and expand the use of electronic contracts and documents.

  • Contract requests
  • Contract templates
  • Advanced workflow management

Contract Authoring + Negotiation

Make contracts a collaborative effort 

Collaborative authoring with internal and external counterparties gets everyone on the same page. Microsoft Word add-on for creating, authoring, editing, and checking ensures a smooth transition between paper and electronic-based contracts. Accelerate contract workflow with advanced contract redlining for managing new and renegotiated contracts.

  • Collaborative authoring + redlining
  • Contract negotiation workflow
  • Contract process validation

Obligations Management

Post execution is when active contract management starts 

Organizations need a specific ongoing process for managing the obligations that each party is legally responsible for in a contract. CLM technology makes the contracting process more flexible, effective, and easy to meet compliance and financial goals while mitigating contract risk.

  • Monitoring and measuring contract obligations
  • Terms and conditions, milestone dates, delivery requirements, service levels, discounts, security, and etc.
  • Frictionless contract management evaluates supplier compliance

Clause Management

Contract creation with built-in compliance

The ability to create contracts dynamically takes contract management to the next level. Our CLM solution empowers users through self-service and clause library access to create and organize contracts based on clause groups, and best-in-class contract blueprints.

  • Dynamic rules-driven templates
  • Comparison of side-by-side versions
  • Clause library filtering by category, risk level, parent level, and more

E-Signature

Accelerate from dotted line to bottom line

Integrated e-Signature capabilities with leading solutions like DocuSign (embedded in the application), take you to the last step in executing your contracts, while maintaining a complete audit trail of all signatures internally and those with your contract counterparties.

  • Fast, easy and secure to use – if you can click, you can sign
  • Fully traceable as to who signed, when, and where
  • Faster turnaround since all parties can sign within seconds

Active Lifecycle Management

Adopt a proactive, dynamic contract strategy

Don’t file contracts — keep them dialed-in to ensure that you do not miss important milestones (and opportunities) to evaluate contract relationships and supplier performance prior to renewal.

  • Add notifications and tasks for expirations, renewals, and obligations
  • Four renewal types – Renewable, Tacit Renewable, Automatic Limited, and Automatic Indefinite
  • Establish parent-child relationships between contracts, including master agreements

Integrated Contracts

Put contracts at the center of everything

Contracts touch every part of an organization, so the more seamlessly they can be integrated across key systems, functions, and departments, the more effective they are as tools.

  • Sourcing – Simplify creation of item pricing
  • Supplier Management – Enable management of supplier performance to SLAs
  • Systems – Integrate pricing with ERP, Procurement, and/or other external systems
  • Master Data – Ensure contract information is up-to-date, accurate, accessible, and collaborative

Fully leverage and monetize your contracts with CLM

“(Corcentric)’s CLM pedigree started on the sell-side and is well suited to both buy-side and sell-side usage…the solution has an intuitive user interface and should meet most procurement organizations’ product needs.”

“(Corcentric)’s CLM pedigree started on the sell-side and is well suited to both buy-side and sell-side usage…the solution has an intuitive user interface and should meet most procurement organizations’ product needs.”

See what it takes to make your contracts work harder than ever

See What It Takes to Make Your Contracts Work Harder than Ever

Why do you need CLM?

60%

of corporate litigations are related to contract disputes

73%

indicated “price changes” as the most common dispute

12%-15%

of contracts are lost or unaccounted for in organizations

SOURCE: ABERDEEN GROUP

Control, leverage, and monetize your contract assets with Corcentric CLM

Product Tour

Contract Lifecycle Management FAQs

Just about every contract, including third-party and internal agreements in areas like procurement, employment, services outsourcing, leases, sales, NDAs, intellectual property (IP), facilities, and others – regardless of how simple or complex – goes through the same basic set of stages. These contract stages are:

  • Contract Request
  • Contract Authoring
  • Contract Negotiation
  • Contract Approval Process (with electronic signature capability)
  • Contract Execution
  • Contract Obligations Management
  • Contract Renewals
  • Contract Audit & Reporting
  • Contract Amendment

There really isn’t one precise model of what’s included in the contract lifecycle, but the stages in the previous FAQ are a good working guideline to what you should expect in a CLM system. With the right digital contract lifecycle management in place, users can quickly and easily request, initiate, track, measure, and execute contracts and related documents by leveraging the user-friendly features located in the dashboard of your contract automation software. Permissions will vary according to company needs, but generally a user will either open an existing contract or create a new one starting with a pre-approved contract template. The contents of the contract, assuming the vendor contract management software includes data integration with ERP, CRM, financial, and other systems, can then be easily populated using a few clicks and drop-down menus, including the clause library. A good CLM system features automated workflow for contract review and approvals, integrated document creation – such as MS Word – and email for negotiations, as well as electronic signature capability. Once executed, managing contract milestones, obligations, KPIs, and automated alerts are built-in to better control contract compliance and performance measurement.

Contracts house valuable data needed for companies to remain compliant with regulations and prevent or respond to legal disputes. But the number of contracts, their complexity, and the volume of data associated with them have grown beyond what companies and stakeholders can manage without the assistance of CLM technology. A contract management platform makes it fast and simple to find and administer contracts, measure performance – such as supplier procurement KPIs – ensure compliance, monitor risk and alerts, enact reporting, and other tasks that are arduous or impossible with manual methods. The first objective of digital contract lifecycle management is to increase visibility into the company’s entire contract assets. With litigation and data proliferation on the rise, not going digital in your CM practices will cost you more time and likely more money if you are still using manual contracting processes versus digital.

A contract management – or contract lifecycle management (CLM) – software solution provides full-time, automated contract monitoring and helps optimize each stage of the contract lifecycle. Automated processes include: workflows for contract review, approvals, and signatures, making it easy for anyone in an organization to initiate contracts from within familiar applications and devices; creation tasks, like dynamically inserting required language for specific clauses and terms, and tracking clause- and provision-level changes, with a goal of total compliance with minimum effort; identifying changes between versions that have not been redlined, discouraging “stealth” changes that can undermine contract integrity; configuring parallel and serial approval workflows to match the idiosyncrasies of any contract to eliminate bottlenecks and minimize costly delays; uploading of hard copies through OCR and other technologies; fulfillment tracking and automated alerts linked to expirations, renewals, and key events, post-execution workflows; identifying contract renewal candidates, alerting managers in time to act and/or automatically create new contract drafts based on the contract in force.

There are a lot of moving parts to any business deal and lot of places for legal risk to creep in and opportunity to fall through the cracks. Procurement needs to manage and monitor relationships across the supply chain, as well as ensure compliance with spend management policies. Sales wants to speed the cycle to keep business moving monthly, quarterly, and yearly without delays and bottlenecks. Human Resources has to manage a shifting and growing workforce of full-time and contract employees. Operations has ongoing maintenance and replacement requirements for fleets, facilities, and equipment. And of course, Legal needs to ensure adherence to an expanding and changing list of regulatory and industry rules. All of these areas require fast, easy, and full access to new and existing contracts, something that is only possible with cloud-based contract management software technology integrated across enterprise systems – like ERP and CRM – that leaves no room for anything but efficiency, productivity, and compliance.

As a source-to-pay, order-to-cash, fleet solutions, or other professional, you need to focus on making better, more informed decisions and delivering sustainable bottom line impact, and not get distracted by clerical contract issues. That’s why so many leading companies around the world rely on Corcentric’s modular, integrated, SaaS platform-based best-of-breed repository system and other solutions. Our unique format enables companies in highly-regulated industries to implement as few or as many solutions as they need for accessible cost of entry, lower TCO, and faster ROI. Corcentric Contract Lifecycle Management provides:

  • A single source of verified contract data for complete spend and risk control
  • Dynamic contract workflows for agility and collaboration
  • Total adaptability to existing processes and contract rules
  • Complete contract self-service user configurability without the need for costly IT resources
  • CLM solution technology that meets your contract and risk goals now, with the flexibility to add on additional procurement, sourcing, supplier management, and other functionality quickly and easily as business needs grow

As business in general and contracts in particular become more integrated, complex, and sophisticated, Corcentric is thinking ahead to advanced technology features based on artificial intelligence (AI), block chain, RPA, and other machine-learning tools. Learn more by downloading our CLM Starter Kit.

Resources

Related contract management resources

VIDEO

Build Resilience with Procurement

Now more than ever, a company’s ability to be agile is critical to its success. Learn how to build an effective procurement strategy that minimizes impact from disruption.

WHITE PAPER

Sign Here: The Value of Digital Signatures

We explore what digital signatures are, the benefits they offer and how to implement them in your document processes.

CASE STUDY

Watermark Retirement Communities: Elevating the Source-to-Pay Process

With the Corcentric Platform, a senior living company has the visibility and control needed to support growth and remain agile.

VIEW ALL RESOURCES

Resources

Related Contract Management Resources

VIDEO

Build Resilience with Procurement

Now more than ever, a company’s ability to be agile is critical to its success. Learn how to build an effective procurement strategy that minimizes impact from disruption.

WHITE PAPER

Sign Here: The Value of Digital Signatures

We explore what digital signatures are, the benefits they offer and how to implement them in your document processes.

CASE STUDY

Watermark Retirement Communities: Elevating the Source-to-Pay Process

With the Corcentric Platform, a senior living company has the visibility and control needed to support growth and remain agile.

VIEW ALL RESOURCES