Contract lifecycle management (CLM) technology has accelerated contract workflows and created new efficiencies, but it can only do so much. Many large organizations now have multiple systems of agreement, with CLM technology representing part of their legacy technology stack. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence (AI), these organizations are now able to get even more out of their original investment in CLM by layering contract-trained AI on top of existing systems of agreement to extract contract data and populate other enterprise systems with that data. 

How do you know if your business is ready to move beyond legacy CLM technology?

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Contract Data Is Difficult to Report On

CLM technology can certainly offer insight into where contracts are getting stuck in approvals and bring visibility to the contracting process as a whole, but what happens when you need to search 80,000 contracts to find any instances of a very specific clause? It’s like trying to find a needle (or two? Or ten?) in a very large stack of needles. 

Contract-specific AI can help surface precise results, saving countless hours of manual work and outsourcing spend. 

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The Effectiveness of Existing Technology Has Reached a Plateau

As with any digital transformation, there comes a point where the returns on investment begin to diminish. This plateau of effectiveness is not necessarily a bad thing, as it may highlight opportunities to focus on supplementing and strengthening existing technologies rather than pursuing a costly technology overhaul. 

By focusing on continuous improvement in this way, organizations can explore new ways to drive operational excellence without replacing existing technology.

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Stakeholders Across the Business Have Contract-Related Questions

If legal and procurement teams are frequently fielding questions related to the organization’s contractual obligations and rights, this is a sign that contract data should be democratized across the business. 

Marketing teams may need to know about logo and publicity rights; finance and accounting teams may be inquiring about data for revenue recognition reporting; and IT teams may need to run an audit on vendor contracts to ensure all IT providers are in compliance with organizational policies. Without AI that can analyze contract data at scale, legal teams would be hard-pressed to surface and serve this kind of information to the business. 

AI-powered CLM solutions can turn your documents into easily searchable, connected contract data that delivers actionable and reportable insights that you can use to optimize negotiations and drive execution for faster, less risky deals. 

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Learn More About Connecting Contract Data

Looking for other signs that it might be time to start evaluating AI to supplement existing CLM technology? Explore how Evisort’s AI analyzes and extracts data from up to 450,000 contracts per day to populate CLM, ERP, P2P, and other systems, powering connected contract data. 

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