Contract Lifecycle Management

Request this brief demo video (3:51) to learn how Coupa provides immediate value by optimizing and streamlining your contract lifecycle management process.

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Watch the CLM Demo Video

Why watch this brief on-demand overview?

Learn how to:

  • Effectively balance contract creation and negotiation
  • Minimize risk and ensure compliance
  • Simplify the process of managing multiple contracts across the entire contract lifecycle
  • Quickly find and access contract information and keep it up-to-date
  • And much more.
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When it comes to your contracts, there is never room for the errors or time delays that come with manual processes or tools that are difficult to use.

Coupa helps you keep track of large volumes of contracts, facilitates effective contract creation, negotiation, and risk mitigation, as well as simplifies post-execution compliance and management.

Request an on-demand demo to learn how Coupa will provide immediate value by transforming your contract lifecycle management processes.

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FAQ

What is Contract Lifecycle Management?

Contracts influence almost every aspect of a company, ranging from revenues and expenses to workflows and processes. They thus form the foundation of any enterprise.

Contract lifecycle management, or CLM, describes all of the processes relating to contracts, beginning from their creation and continuing through to their oversight and management. If a company fails to manage contracts properly, it opens itself up to many risks and to lost revenue. Without a digital contract management system, it would be virtually impossible to manage all of the contracts a typical company makes.

CLM solutions should provide actionable insights at every stage in the contracting process. Moreover, it will speed up processes by reducing bottlenecks, improve security, and minimize errors.

What are the main steps in the ideal Contract Lifecycle Management process?

There are nine primary steps in the contract lifecycle:

1. Request. Generally, a specific individual or department requests a contract and outlines what it needs to include. An effective CLM solution will provide a streamlined and consistent approach to contract creation, which minimizes the risk of a rogue deal or risky terms.

2. Creation. With CLM, companies can use a template-based contract creation wizard to ensuring that every contract is drafted correctly and as quickly as possible

3. Approval. Without a centralized, streamlined workflow, the contract approval process can cause delays. CLM ensures that contracts are only approved after going through the proper channels and that there is an audit trail, with meticulous records about approvals and changes.

4. Negotiation. CLM helps streamline the negotiation process by providing “playbooks” that include preferred terms and conditions, clause libraries and issue lists.

5. Signing. CLM makes the process of signing and executing contracts simpler by using digital signatures on electronic documents.

6. Capture. CLM turns the signed contracts into structured data that is stored centrally for easy, quick, and secure access.

7. Compliance. CLM also helps to ensure that all parties comply with all contract obligations, terms and conditions and that the contract is consistent with government regulations. CLM will send alerts and reminders to facilitate compliance.

8. Management. CLM solutions will facilitate the process of keeping track of orders, amendments, renewals, terminations and performance targets. By providing instant access to prevailing terms and key dates, software greatly streamlines this process.

9. Optimization. The final step is to ensure that your data is used to optimize business performance and efficiency. CLM provides a feedback loop between your contract portfolio and business performance to ensure you’re maximizing the value from your contracts.

How do you get the most value from your contracts?

There are four key ways to maximize the value from your contracts using a CLM solution:

1. Collaboration and Control. A crucial part of contracting is the successful collaboration across teams. A CLM platform facilitates this collaboration by ensuring full transparency and full control, as well as by providing audit trails, restricting access to specific data and processes, and ensuring regulatory compliance.

2. Organization. CLM ensures that your contracts are stored in a single, central location in an organized and consistent manner. In this way, everyone knows where to find accurate information.

3. Analysis. With CLM analytics, you can quickly locate and analyze contract terms to find potential risk and minimize it. Analysis of contracts will also increasingly streamline the development of contracts.

4. Integration. A robust CLM platform will integrate with existing platforms, such as your ERP, CRM, SRM and DPM systems, so that information is easily shared. That way, your company will have better visibility into operational responsibilities, relationships and risk.

By giving everyone involved with contracting a 360-degree view of contracts (not just a single viewpoint of the process), a CLM solution will boost the top line while reducing the bottom line, improve compliance, provide more confidence in the overall contracting process, and minimize the risk your business faces. To learn more, request the on-demand demo videos for Coupa Contract Lifecycle Management.