Choosing the right contracting system is one of the most critical technology purchases a legal department will make. To provide a clearer picture on the process, last December, ZentLaw, UpLevel Ops, Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions and Evolve the Law hosted the “In-house Contracting System Selection and Implementation” roundtable, which covered how to pick, roll out, and gain internal adoption for a contracting system in a legal department.
I had the pleasure of leading this discussion along with Stephanie Corey, Co-founder of UpLevel Ops, featuring our panelists Sangeetha Raghunathan, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Earnin, and Tal Samet, Director and Assistant General Counsel at Marvell Semiconductor.
The conversation and interaction with attendees was spirited and heavy on best practices. Here’s a sampling of the key takeaways:
- Start with determining which types of contracts you’ll capture – all types or certain types, and make sure that your contracting systems for all contracts for the company are the same or speak to one another.
- For system selection, build a Business Requirements Document (BRD), which helps define selection criteria, and get content and buy-in from key stakeholders on what the BRD contains. Demo different products and document stakeholders’ feedback from each one to narrow down your decision.
- Avoid a home-brewed solution, and consider cloud-based, sophisticated yet easy-to-use Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) systems that have features that can be implemented or used quickly, have self-service capabilities and solid support, and provide the ability to retrieve data if needed. Many systems include powerful AI capabilities, which can be leveraged to reduce time and churn in contracting.
- Look for CLM solutions that are easy to implement and do not require significant time or cost on your part to do so. For lean legal departments, signing shorter term contracts will allow you to grow with the solution over time or make a change if needed.
- Adoption of the CLM and understanding how to use it is key to ensuring you achieve ROI. Do this by communicating with relevant department team leaders on how their teams should use the CLM, provide training or information in your organization to do this and ensure people know the solution exists.
- Reevaluate CLM use each year to ensure you are getting what you need out of it. Provide feedback to the CLM solution on additional features or functionality you would find useful.
The third roundtable (date TBD) will focus on the execution phase, technology implementation and evaluation.
