Managing contracts effectively and efficiently

Published on May 26, 2025 by Akash

Contracts are vital for any business as they help in identifying the rights, obligations, and duties of the parties involved. Moreover, contracts are the backbone of any engagement as they form a framework, and parties must complete their obligations in the manner defined in the respective contract.

What is Contract Lifecycle Management

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) is the process of drafting and negotiating contracts till the termination/dilution. Contracts must be drafted, negotiated, managed, executed, and comply the critical terms and conditions to be considered a successfully executed contract. Businesses around the world save their time, money, and resources, if they can manage their contracts efficiently.

“Gartner defines contract life cycle management market as a solution that proactively manages contracts from initiation through negotiation, execution, compliance, and renewal. Contract is any agreement or contractual document containing rights and obligations that affect an organization now or in the future. CLM solutions allow organizations to create, negotiate and store contracts in a centralized repository.”.

Contract Lifecycle Management Market Size

The CLM market is growing rapidly in the legal services industry as organizations are striving for better visibility and tracking of contract data, with cloud-based providers leading due to their easy to implement, scalable and cost-effective solutions.

Stages in Contract Lifecycle Management

An effective execution of contract can ensure in managing risks and liabilities arising due to not meeting the agreed timelines.

The below are the various stages of contract lifecycle management-

Each of the above stages is vital and requires diligence, effective communication, and adherence to timelines to ensure a contract achieve its intended purpose and risks and losses are minimised. This process also helps in maintaining a strong goodwill with clients.

Contract Lifecycle Management Tools

Contract Lifecycle Management Tools can efficiently manage this process with little or no human intervention. In general,, CLM’s are integrated in client’s servers, and they automate their contracts from it i.e. from execution till the dilution These tools and ooften send reminders timely to stakeholders before trigger events is approaching to ensure timely measures are taken to avoid risks and liabilities occurring out of missed timelines.

Conga, a leading CLM company states that a Contract Lifecycle Management tool can help in reducing turnaround time for a contract, ensuring an effective compliance, and increasing revenue as it helps in automating contract workflows, mitigating risks, and gains dependable insights with 75% faster deal approval times.

A leading investment bank, Goldman Sachs outlines the following benefits in CLM processare with the application of CLM tool -

Conclusion

Contract Lifecycle Management can help organizations in effectively managing risks and liabilities and streamlining the contracts workflow. The adoption of a CLM tool can also help organizations to automate the contract workflow as it reduces execution time and ensures post execution compliance and deadlines are met. CLM tools also work as a repository of contracts and ensures they in a safe environment and can be available in future whenever required.

Acuity’s support in CLM

Acuity provides a pool of resources having prior experience.We can provide a perfect blend of man CLM and technology combination depending on the requirements and volume of contracts for our clients. We can effectively draft, negotiate, execute, and manage contracts for our clients with or without a CLM tool which can lead to cost effectiveness for our prospective clients. For small or mid-sized organizations having less volume of contracts, we can complete the process manually which could eventually help our clients in saving massive amounts of capitalsubscription charges of CLM tools. Furthermore, we can help large organizations having a high volume of contracts in integrating with a CLM tool depending on their requirements and further taking care of there process through the tool which would help them in reducing freeworkload and providing them a specialized and faster solution at a fraction of in-house cost.

References: 

• What is Contract Management - Everything You Need to Know

• Best Contract Life Cycle Management Reviews 2024 | Gartner Peer Insights

• The Best Contract Lifecycle Management Solutions | Conga

• 15 Best Contract Lifecycle Management Software (2024)

• What is Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)? | Icertis

• What is Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)? | Salesforce India

• Contract lifecycle management: An overview

• What is Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)?

• Contract Lifecycle Management Solution Market Growth [2030]

• MEMBA-PwC Report - June 2003

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