We are, all of us, being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century’s 21st Century. In the last ten years we have seen an incredible leap forwards in technology that has necessitated an equally fast change in education and in priorities for departments. Advanced technology is everywhere around us, and people who are already behind the curve do not yet know how far behind that is. That’s why we think that this era is the tipping point for CLM adoption – the more things automate the more discerning and well-educated the decision makers needs to be to select the correct tools for the job so that your smart technology can be even smarter and even better for your company and you!
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The age of legal automation has dawned, and its mechanical star will continue to rise no matter what we do about it now. Legal automation has already happened across organisations, and CMO’s and CRO’s that use solid data with a world-class tech stack are consistently placed to beat the competition. It’s also more important than ever that legal is both ahead and aware of current legal tech developments and the interesting relationship between legal and accessible tech. The job has expanded: GC’s need to be able to use both legal expertise and technical know-how to embrace automation that helps and reject automation that hinders.
Faster Than A Speeding Tweet
From the pandemic to the war in Ukraine to the Ever Given getting stuck in the Suez Canal to ‘Tweet Shift’ no longer being called ‘Tweet Shift’, organisations are struggling to adjust to sudden and shocking changes to the world market. Changes in environment neccessitates changes to operation – and, as a result, CLMs are moving from “cool to have” to crucial to survival. While the terminology has changed since last year, the sentiment remains the same - your company needs to be able to shift on a tweet. ‘Current’ is no longer enough: companies need to be operating as close to real-time as possible.
Customer Contract Woes
Burdensome, frustrating manual contract processes drag down NPS scores. What is an NPS score, you might ask? An NPS (or Net Promoter Score) score measures customer satisfaction on a scale of 1-10 – you might have even seen these kinds of surveys pop up while browsing or accessing online services. In your day-to-day life they might not seem that important, but NPS scores are business critical – customers choose vendors by them and investors make investments based on them. The angst around contract processes is growing, and improving customer satisfaction has become a top 5 strategic priority for CLM purchases.
Break Glass In Case Of Global Economic Slowdown
Global revenue growth is predicted to continue to slow, but CLM can seriously help. The number one reason we have seen for CLM adoption is around maximising revenue, and for good reason: CLM grows revenue by an average of 9.2%. In choppy economic waters, having the ability to make your contracts more efficient and actively save you money is one of the best and simplest things that CLM can do for you.
Evolving The Legal Tech Pro
The heat is on for legal operations to exploit legal tech innovations, and that pressure might not necessarily be beneficial if legal teams lack the knowledge or expertise required to guide or make those decisions – from a Deliotte legal ops survey made in 2021 only 35% of legal have “good” tech skills. It is now on legal teams to get informed and guide their companies to better tech solutions - relatively recently a lawyer used ChatGPT to represent himself in court to disastrous results, so part of embracing tech must include prizing legal tech pros higher and upskilling legal professionals to be more knowledgeable about the tech that they use or are considering using. Without the right talent, technology is powerless and the investment is worthless.
We've talked about this earlier but it bears repeating the belief that: a) the legal tech pro will become one of the most valued positions in a legal team, and b) that every legal professional will need to become (at the barest minimum) familiar with current and future tech.
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Data trapped in contracts holds unbelievable value and can help manage risks and make better decisions. Without a CLM to unlock that data and share it with other solutions it becomes difficult to put that data into action. CLM systems that let that data sluice easily into the broadest range of other technologies are the ones that truly deliver on the promise of CLM. This means that adopting and implementing a CLM needs to be communicated internally to reach as many relevant parts of the company as possible - from Legal to Procurement to Sales and beyond the more people communicating and using CLM together, the better the end result will be. This is Contract Lifecycle Management, not Procurement Contract Lifecycle Management - that would need to be a completely different acronym - and restricting the managing of your contracts to a single area or entity is to restrict the ability of CLM to help your compnay as a whole.
If you want to join us in the business tech future, please feel free to contact us directly at solutions@saasamgroup.com to organise a call!
Original article by Jeffery Miesbauer (https://www.agiloft.com/blog/future-of-contract-automation/) additional words by C. Redpath
