The challenges of contract lifecycle management (CLM)

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) follows a contract throughout its entire lifecycle, from creation to execution to expiry. The process includes tracking key dates and obligations, as well as ensuring legal and regulatory compliance.

CLM software plays an essential role in the success of a company. It unlocks the critical and crucial data within contracts, making the information accessible and useable. But as there are many CLM providers on the market, it can be challenging to understand which features and functionality to look out for.

"Overlooking CLM challenges can cause serious risks, such as increased legal bottlenecks which delay sales-cycles and potentially lead to lost revenue. At Summize, our Sales Team work with potential customers who encounter contract issues daily - often without realising they are. We provide these businesses with practical solutions that show them the full potential of efficient CLM processes." Mo Syed, SDR Manager at Summize.

Businesses with effective CLM software can address their contract challenges and apply the right CLM processes to see company-wide benefits. Benefits such as reduced risk, improved compliance and access to new revenue opportunities.

But how? Let’s explore the most common contract management challenges and the practical solutions to overcome them.
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Challenge 1: Unlocatable contracts

According to a survey by EY Law, 90% of contracting professionals admitted they face difficulties finding their contracts. The inability to find contracts quickly can lead to a lack of visibility regarding a contract's status or even whether the contract exists at all.

Storing your contracts in one location won’t overcome this challenge, as legal teams will still face difficulties searching for contract details such as payment terms, clauses and dates.

A practical solution is to opt for a CLM tool that includes a smart repository. A smart repository, often using AI, provides one central storage location as well as search and filtering options to pull out clauses, payment terms and key dates across all your contracts.

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Summize’s CLM solution is no different. Our customers manage their contract portfolio in Summize’s dynamic repository. Using our repository's AI-powered search, it's easy to find contract terms, clauses and instant contract summaries, all in just a few clicks.
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Challenge 2: Lack of contract standardisation

Many legal teams are overwhelmed by manual paperwork, making it hard to establish standardised processes. Combined with manual contract creation, this process becomes time-consuming, drains resources and creates compliance issues, often leading to delays in negotiations.

Summize addresses these issues in a self-serve approach to CLM.

Directly within familiar tools such as Teams, Outlook, Salesforce and HubSpot, non-legal users can create contracts in as little as two minutes. By selecting the contract type and answering a few pre-defined questions, business users are able to generate contracts without needing access to master templates.

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This approach, combined with Summize’s field-mapping features – syncing HubSpot and Salesforce deal and opportunity data directly into the contract – reduces data errors and provides legal teams with standardised contract processes.
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Challenge 3: Lengthy reviews

Contract reviews can create significant delays in the contract process. With complex language, terms and obligations, legal teams must carefully assess and negotiate each agreement, all of which can cause time-consuming bottlenecks.

Leading CLM solutions accelerate contract reviews by using automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI). In a survey conducted by Weshare, automated contract management processes reduce negotiation time by up to 50%!

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Summize’s CLM and AI contract review functionality saves up to 85% in manual review time. Directly in Microsoft Word, legal teams have access to AI-powered contract summaries, highlighting key information and any contract red flags.

But the solution doesn't stop there. Summize’s AI redlining feature transforms slow and cumbersome contract redlining tasks. Using Summize, legal teams reduce the manual work on high-volume, low-risk contracts by generating a redlined and amended version of the contract in as little as 60 seconds.
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Challenge 4: Contract Security

Contract security typically means protecting the contents of the contract from external threats. Most businesses will have measures to protect access, such as firewalls on emails and password requirements. But businesses need to pay more attention to contractual threats such as non-compliant contracts across the entire workflow.

Today, the best CLM software has built-in automated workflows. This ensures the contract is tracked and accelerated throughout its lifecycle, with clear roles and responsibilities at each stage.

Summize enables every area of the business to track a contract's progress, all without needing to leave their everyday tools. Via integrated workflows into tools such as Outlook, Teams, Slack and Salesforce, non-legal users can view a contract’s status without needing to request the information from their legal team.
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Challenge 5: Full business adoption

Successful adoption of your CLM across the business is crucial to avoiding contract challenges. This can be challenging when asking non-legal users to change their ways of working or to learn how to use a new tool.

"It’s not always a great experience with CLM vendors. We’ve used several, and they either feel too complicated or make the legal team manage every step of the process, which slows down company growth. We wanted something more collaborative, where sales could manage their contract process with legal oversight." Kimberly Trull, Head of Legal at Matillion before switching to Summize.

With Summize, it’s simple to get your whole business onboard! Summize is a decentralised CLM that integrates efficient contract processes into your familiar business tools - such as Teams, Slack, HubSpot, Outlook and Word. Our approach empowers non-legal with true self-serve functionality, while legal users have the confidence of controlled processes, automation and improved business collaboration.
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How CLM software overcomes challenges

Businesses who don’t confront their CLM and contract management challenges face the risk of creating even more inefficient contract processes.

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We understand how challenging it can be to find a CLM provider that meets your needs and delivers practical solutions in both for short and long term. This is why Summize takes a different approach with our integrated CLM, designed to offer practical contract solutions and benefits for the entire business.
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Summize's CLM benefits

Summize’s CLM benefits are clear. Our integrated CLM shortens contract cycles and accelerates reviews, providing a faster path to revenue. With AI-powered functionality at every stage in the lifecycle – from review, to redlining, to your central repository – your business will experience enhanced workflows and faster sales-cycles.

"For the sales team, I would say it's really been game changing because it just speeds everything up." Leah Samia, VP of Sales Operations at Ikon Science.

To start transforming your contract lifecycle management challenges into contract opportunities, explore Summize’s CLM today. Book a demo with our expert team and discover why Summize is the best CLM software on the market.