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A Pramata Article
7 Signs of a Dysfunctional CLM System
Your guide to knowing when it’s time to find your new contract management partner
Nobody dives into a new CLM commitment expecting things to sour. Yet, all too often, we come to a startling realization: The CLM we imagined (or were promised!) isn’t delivering results.
It might be bad communication, unrealistic expectations, or misguided assumptions (but it was in the demo?!). Whatever the reason, it’s usually better to rip off the bandaid quickly rather than spend more time, money, and effort trying to make a CLM work that just…doesn’t.
To help you determine if you’re stuck with a dysfunctional CLM that isn’t meeting your needs, we’ve collected the top seven signs from over 17 years of experience helping companies find their ideal CLM partnership.
Sign 1: When you’re spending as much time supporting the CLM as your (non-IT) day job
If you’re an in-house general counsel or other Legal team member, manage Legal Ops, work in finance, sales, or another capacity, doing IT support on a CLM isn’t the job you signed up for.
Many CLMs require so much technical expertise to make even the smallest of modifications, you might end up spending your nights and weekends learning how to code so you can get what you need from your CLM. Even if you’re not personally digging into the “technical weeds”, it’s likely that you need to outsource the job to consultants, or ask your already-strapped internal IT resources to help.
It might be time to switch CLMs, if any of the following apply:
- You’re spending time learning how to tweak code in your CLM anytime you want to make a change (and not getting any help from customer support)
- You’re hiring expensive third-party resources or temps to add functions you thought came standard with your CLM
- You’re resorting to elaborate workarounds outside the system to achieve a similar function that would take more technical work to get done in your CLM
With Pramata, you get:
- Out-of-the-box functionality that gives you what you actually need
- The ability to customize reports without any technical know-how
- A team of experts to do the heavy lifting, without additional charges
- A no-code and easy-to-use request and approval builder
- Dedicated customer success reps to help you through implementation and beyond
Sign 2: When you realize you’re paying for a bunch of features you don’t use (or you’re not getting the one you really need!)
All those bells and whistles looked good during the demo, but now that you’re in your CLM daily, you really only utilize a handful of capabilities regularly. That doesn’t make your annual price tag go down, though! On the other hand, you might find you’re missing one or two key features you really need, despite the elaborate list of other features you have.
Most CLMs bulk up their software (and their price) with features that look great in demos but are impractical in the real world. Unfortunately, this drives up the price, elongates deployments and reduces adoption.
It might be time to break up with your CLM if any of the following apply:
- Legal doesn’t use the new built-in redlining tool and prefers the familiarity of Microsoft Word
- You haven’t moved beyond “automating NDAs” in your deployment
- Legacy contracts still haven’t made their way into the system
- Clients aren’t logging into your online collaboration portal
With Pramata, you get:
- Microsoft 365 integration to seamlessly do all of your redlining directly in MS Word, no need to learn a new system
- Legacy contract migration, always included, and made radically simple
- An easy and intuitive interface, that allows you to find contracts in seconds, search for key terms across all contracts and always know which is the latest version
- Flexible subscription, only pay for what you need and nothing you don't, with unlimited users always included
Sign 3: When you spend all your time tagging data and still have a massive backlog
You’re 18 months into your new CLM relationship and you’ve still got hundreds, or even thousands, of contracts that haven’t made it into the system yet. Maybe the idea of getting all those legacy contracts organized feels impossible (it’s actually not, learn why here) – or maybe you think you’ll be OK if you just tag and organize on a go-forward basis (nope!).
Without those contracts in your CLM, including accurate metadata, you can’t possibly look at them for insights, take stock of standard or negotiated terms, search for answers when a question arises or analyze risks.
It might be time to switch CLMs, if any of the following apply:
- Your CLM uses AI, but its accuracy is so low you still have to manually review almost every contract
- You get constant complaints and questions from business teams about missing contracts
- It’s difficult to provide quick answers to executives when asked about specifics in your contracts
- You decided to skip legacy migration, or maintain your previous repository (or hard drive), because it's just to time or cost prohibitive
With Pramata, you get:
- Fast, reliable legacy contract migration, with key metadata extracted, always included!
- Deduplication and identification of non-contract documents
- A searchable, accurate repository with instant access to all your contracts as quickly as within weeks, not years
- Expert (human)-assisted AI technology to do the heavy lifting, without additional charges
Sign 4: When you still get renewals wrong
One of the biggest reasons you want a CLM is to wrangle renewals, right? So what’s the point when you keep missing them? Whether you’re missing vendors on auto-renew or missing revenue opportunities within your commercial contracts, not having reliable visibility into contract renewals costs you money.
It might be time to break up with your CLM if any of the following apply:
- You keep auto-renewing software or services you don’t want
- Your sales team complains about wrong or missing renewal dates and terms
- You’re missing the chance to have valuable conversations with your customer prior to their contract renewal
- You’re missing out on contractually appropriate price increases before customer renewals
With Pramata, you get:
- The only solution that calculates contract renewal dates (AND keeps them updated) to put accurate dates & terms right at your fingertips
- The ability to report on upcoming renewals, filterable by fixed term, auto-renewal and other key provisions
- Accurate-to-the-day renewal dates accounting for amendments, newly signed contracts and auto renewals
- Email alerts for your sales, finance, legal and procurement teams, based on the notice period date, not the renewal date
Sign 5: When your sales team refuses to use it
Sales needs access to good, clean contract data. But they’re living in CRM and don’t have the time or desire to visit (and learn) a new system. This often means they’re shooting off “quick questions” about their customers’ contracts via email and keeping the legal team stuck in the role of “Corporate Librarian.”
It might be time to switch CLMs, if any of the following apply:
- You want to give sales access, but it's too costly to add more users
- Sales has access to your CLM, but your inbox is still overflowing with contract questions
- You haven't integrated your CLM into your sales team’s CRM
- It’s impossible for sales people to find the right contract in your CLM without calling legal
With Pramata, you get:
- Unlimited users and out-of-the-box CRM integrations
- Sales can see key contract information for their accounts and request contracts without ever leaving CRM
- Intuitive document families and customer summaries make it easy for sales to adopt
- Self-service access lets Sales manage renewals, find and search contracts, request a new contract and track the status
Sign 6: When you’re still playing “Corporate Librarian” because the CLM is too complicated
If your CRM isn’t radically simple, chances are the people you’d hoped would use it just… won’t.
If, months or years into a CLM implementation, the legal team is just as wrapped up in “busy work” as ever before, something’s got to change.
It might be time to switch CLMs, if any of the following apply:
- You’re coming up on six months into implementation and are still doing “workflow design” or haven’t moved beyond automating NDAs
- You’ve got a new CLM but the barrage of contract questions from others across the company hasn’t stopped (hint: no one but legal is using it!)
- You find the AI extraction, reporting and alerts useless because the data just isn’t right
- Your in-house attorneys are working extended hours and still not making it through everything on their to-do list
With Pramata, you get:
- A radically simple platform, that’s intuitive and easy to use, with the features you really need and none of the ones you don’t
- Role-based, self-service access to an intuitive system that your business will actually use
- The ability to manage renewals, locate and search through contracts, request a new contract and track the status of their deals without asking Legal
- Access to contract information in a matter of seconds, so your legal team can clear their queue of questions at lightning speed
- Hours of time back in your day to focus on the high-impact work you enjoy
Sign 7: When you realize your old mess has followed you to your new system
Are your old problems now your new problems? This happens all too often when businesses invest in the fanciest, newest and most high-tech CLM in the world but then dump years’ worth of junk files into it.
It might be time to switch CLMs, if any of the following apply:
- Your CLM is filled with duplicate documents, unsigned contracts and random files
- You have to look across multiple folders to find all the contracts for counterparty
- Your CLM requires you to manually check each file before you can migrate it
- You have to hire third-party contractors to wrangle your contracts into shape before you begin setting up your new system
With Pramata, you get:
- A team of contract specialists who do the heavy lifting for you
- Done-for-you file deduplication and junk removal before anything gets into your repository
- A searchable contract repository that’s ready to use from the day you go live, including contract key terms and metadata (and you didn’t have to do it!)
- You have full transparency across the entire contracting process
If any of these signs are showing up in your current CLM relationship, we’d love to show you a better way. You can “Keep It Super Simple” and KISS your CLM goodbye with less effort than you think possible.
Learn how Pramata can help, and even start your no-cost proof of concept to see how your own contracts look in Pramata.