GLOBAL-WIDE: An Introduction to Contract Lifecycle Management

Unlocking Value Through Readiness and Technology

Contract life cycle management (CLM) systems have long held out substantial promise: driving efficiency, unlocking visibility into contract terms, reducing risk and delivering enterprise-wide return on investment. The ecosystem of vendors continues to grow with market forecasts predicting the sector to triple over the next decade. Fact.MR, for example, calculated the global CLM market at USD1.07 billion in 2024 and forecasts a USD3.46 billion USD value in 2034.

Yet, for all the acceleration in CLM adoption, more sophisticated capabilities and many teams seeing progress, implementation challenges persist. Undeniably, achieving a CLM’s potential requires far more than deploying technology. Ultimately, readiness, alignment and ongoing commitment to programmatic change are as crucial to success as the vendor and solution chosen.

Organisational Readiness: The True Foundation

The key to any successful CLM implementation starts at the very beginning. Adopting a “CLM program” mindset even before demoing AI-powered features or shortlisting potential vendors is the best approach. This means mapping people, processes, clause libraries, templates and contract-related data flows – not merely automating existing workflows.

Conducting a readiness assessment (sometimes called “maturity mapping”) is a vital up-front exercise. This step can identify challenges such as intake slowdowns, non-standard templates, siloed contract repositories and absent metrics, all of which should be resolved in advance or planned for in CLM implementation. Skipping this phase risks the project’s success and could instead exacerbate problems. To begin the assessment, organisations should ask:

• if their templates and playbooks are standardised and accessible;
• whether their contract workflows are clear and documented end-to-end, including approvals, escalations and exceptions;
• which KPIs and metrics will define CLM success for legal, procurement, commercial and compliance teams; and
• how change management can be embedded from the outset, with champions identified at every level.

Creating a foundation of clearly defined, repeatable and optimised processes in advance of implementing a CLM solution is the best way to ensure its success and maximise its value. A comprehensive assessment also clarifies the goals and priorities that are most important in implementing a CLM solution – invaluable information for the CLM selection as well.

Choosing the Right Solution in a Complex Landscape

Once an organisation has a clear understanding of its internal needs and readiness, the next challenge is navigating an increasingly crowded, and fast-evolving, CLM marketplace. The past year alone has seen a surge in both established enterprise platforms, like enterprise resource planning and HR systems acquiring niche contract tech, and new pure-play CLM-focused providers. This vendor expansion, combined with growing pressures to adopt artificial intelligence features, can complicate decision-making for in-house teams.

While AI is now standard in modern CLM deployments, expectations need to be grounded in tested capabilities. Today’s most reliable use remains in post-signature processes: extracting metadata, generating dashboard analytics and enabling conversational repository searches. CLMs can surface obligations, flag risks and enhance visibility with meaningful impact. More ambitious goals like fully automated drafting and negotiation are, for now, catching up.

Ultimately, the best CLM solution for a change-ready organisation is the one users will embrace. Legal and procurement teams that can get past the noise and focus on platforms that offer meaningful, intelligent features delivered through an intuitive interface and integrated with the systems their teams already use will be positioned for long-term success. When thoughtful design meets reliable AI for search and analytics, readiness becomes sustained performance, and CLM becomes an indispensable business engine.

Why Implementations Fail – and How to Avoid It

Despite advances in readiness and technology, CLM implementations can still fail. Common factors often combine in such cases and include the following.

• Insufficient preparation: Automating manually intensive, fragmented or undocumented workflows without first redesigning them can multiply complexity.
• Stakeholder misalignment: Excluding key voices – whether from procurement, IT, finance or compliance – leaves requirements unmet and threatens adoption rates.
• Resource gaps: Underestimating the time, budget and commitment needed for implementation leads to incomplete data migrations, poor training and frustration.
• Technical and installation issues: Integration challenges, data errors and scope creep can quickly derail an implementation or impact the CLM’s reliability.
• Neglecting change management: Success demands clear communication, tailored training, internal champions and phased rollouts with time for feedback.
• Unrealistic expectations: Overpromising by vendors and underestimating requirements to implement and maintain systems are a common recipe for failure.

These setbacks need not be fatal, though. Stumbles are great opportunities to reassess, regroup and relaunch on a firmer footing. Recovery steps may include conducting a candid, root-cause review to diagnose what went wrong and why. Consider returning to the readiness assessment phase to address newly surfaced pain points and re-enlisting internal champions to help improve buy-in from users across departments. Piloting improvements in a targeted contract area or region before rolling them out more widely can be another good step. In all cases, data-driven decisions about whether to reconfigure, retrain or embrace a new vendor are often the best course of action.

Even well-resourced organisations can stumble. Consider these two examples of implementation failures and how the CLM teams recovered.

• A multinational company piloting a CLM tool found that despite investing in world-class software, user adoption lagged. Teams continued to work outside the system. The fix? A targeted change management campaign, led by internal “contract evangelists” and paired with short-form training and executive reinforcement. Within a quarter, usage spiked and measurable contract cycle times improved.
• Another organisation saw its rollout collapse under the weight of poor data migration planning. Contract metadata was inconsistently mapped, which led to search, reporting and workflow errors. The implementation was paused and eventually relaunched successfully, but only after dedicating significant additional budget to technical consulting and stakeholder reengagement.

In both cases, recovery was possible but costly. This underscores a critical lesson: many implementation challenges are avoidable with proper up-front planning, a realistic understanding of internal capabilities and a willingness to iterate. Recovery requires transparency, strong leadership and the discipline to re-establish alignment before moving forward.

Optimising Ongoing Performance: CLM as a Living Programme

For on-track CLM programs – including those that have recently recovered – optimisation never stops. Top focus areas include the following.

• Linking key systems first: Integrate key tools (CRM, e-signature, ERP) before enabling advanced features to eliminate double entry and data silos.
• Implementing streamlined workflows: Stand up structured intake, expedited approval routing and timely automated notifications to keep contracts moving.
• Delivering quick wins: Roll out high-impact, visible use cases (eg, a self-service NDA portal) to build momentum and credibility.
• Leveraging feedback and KPIs: Use dashboards, user surveys and data quality checks to measure performance and iterate on the program’s value.

Even organisations that achieve CLM success eventually face a crossroad; keep iterating or start a simple decision framework that considers (i) the gaps between current capability and future needs, (ii) anticipated technology advances, (iii) user adoption and satisfaction, (iv) the current vendor’s road map and strategic fit, (v) the cost, effort and change fatigue of each option. When patching yields diminishing returns, a greenfield replacement is likely the wiser long-term move.

CLM’s True Value: Programmatic Change

CLM is not a one-and-done deployment; it’s a journey. Technology is essential, but readiness, stakeholder alignment and continual improvement are what separate stalled projects from transformational ones. Investing up front in mapping the current state, piloting thoughtfully and treating CLM as a living program unlock transparency, agility and the power to elevate contracting from a compliance function to a strategic advantage.