Legal Process Outsourcing
Why contract lifecycle management matters more today?
Various factors have pushed the digitisation, access, and automated management of contracts at every stage into the spotlight. Let’s look at why legal contract lifecycle management (CLM) is a significant point of discussion for all the stakeholders involved.
The recent pandemic generated a storm of ‘force majeure’ as businesses came to a standstill, accentuating the risk of contract failure. And, although 4 out of 5 force majeure clauses don’t mention ‘pandemic’ or any global health-related crises, force majeure terms were widely reviewed, negotiated, and reframed across organisations and industries of all sizes.
The growing customer expectations and rising complexities in a volatile market have, therefore, led organisations to hunt for innovative solutions that help effectively manage contracts through their lifecycle and mitigate legal risks while saving precious time and financial resources.
Top contract lifecycle management challenges
Vendors, customers, business associates, and employees expect organisations to be transparent and accountable for their contract management (and that is a fair expectation).
Even a minor error in your CLM process can lead to damaging consequences and impact your brand’s reputation. Some of the most common challenges in CLM processes include:
Inconsistent legal language
Using standardised terms and lingo in your contracts is essential. If there are irregularities or inaccuracies in your legal language, your lawyers might need to be involved in every single deal, which is no longer a practical option.
Lack of a consistent and efficient process
Making any process consistent is central to ensuring that there is a semblance of structure and efficiency. Disorganised CLM processes can hurt your business, especially when you do not have standardised templates for various use cases that can otherwise be easily customised according to your needs.
Storage issue and disorganisation
Contracts and related documents are often stored in multiple repositories that aren’t necessarily equipped for an easy search-and-find operation when you need it. Disorganised and disparate storage systems can hurt visibility and create issues like financial losses or missed revenue opportunities due to non-compliance.
Inability to track contracts
Varying currency formats, terms and conditions, escalation or de-escalation clauses, as well as ever-increasing workloads, result in cumbersome and slow navigation through large volumes of contracts and inability to draw key insights.
Stakeholder alignment
The absence of an efficient interface also makes it difficult to align all the stakeholders and ensure seamless collaboration between them and thus complicates the process of amending contract terms and conditions.
Lack of clarity and transparency
Like any business process, lack of clarity, visibility, and transparency can complicate your CLM process and plague it with issues that only come to the fore at the execution stage.
Importance of contract lifecycle management
An efficient CLM solution can not only help overcome the aforesaid challenges but also result in the following benefits:
Improved efficiency, transparency, and accuracy
Modern CLM software solutions can make your contract process more efficient by helping automate repetitive or manual tasks, improving visibility, and flagging problems before they reach the execution stage.
Data security and compliance
Contract lifecycle management enables the prevention of potential data breaches and ensures regulatory and compliance requirements.
Lower costs and higher revenue
By accelerating the review, negotiation, and execution of a contract, you can bring down the overall contract management costs and drive revenue.
Lesser time for contract processes
Increased contract visibility can help shorten approval times and accelerate the contract lifecycle completion rates.
How will enterprises benefit from automated CLM technologies?
Broadly speaking, advanced AI- and ML-powered CLM software solutions can effectively bridge the gap between every contract stage, from initiation to renewal. Here’s looking at some of the top advantages of CLM automation:
- Streamlining routine legal tasks and providing intelligent recommendations.
- Converting unstructured contract documents into structured enterprise data.
- Identifying and analysing contract language, clauses, and other data.
- Processing massive volumes of structured and unstructured data in complex contracts.
- Extracting and filtering important information via AI algorithms backed by NLP.
Navigate the smart way forward with Infosys BPM
There is no one-size-fits-all CLM solution, which is why Infosys BPM implements an intelligent solution for contract lifecycle management based on your unique contract management requirements .
Our CLM solution encompasses services like:
- Contract lifecycle management
- Contract creation and negotiation
- Contract execution and approval
- Technology for contract management
- Contract intelligence (use of deep learning techniques, AI-based contract analysis, etc.
Take a step towards a smarter legal contract management process with Infosys BPM!