Chetan Agarwal outlines 10 steps for successful contract lifecycle management including template authoring, contract creation and execution, change requests, and completion. He discusses the challenges of multiple parties, stakeholders, and information scattered across emails. A good contract lifecycle management platform can help with risk reduction, speed, efficiency and collaboration through features like integrated emails and documents, approval workflows, and distributable ownership. Doctiger is highlighted as one platform that supports these capabilities.

1. 10 steps for successful contract life cycle
management
Technology Processes and best Practices
By: Chetan Agarwal, CTO

2. About the Author
Chetan Agarwal https://www.linkedin.com/in/chetan-agarwal-
65a1956/, has a technology leader with 30+ years of
experience of which more than 15 years has been as a CIO of
large global corporations. He is a mentor and CTO for Doctiger

3. Executive Summary
Managing contract lifecycle is a complex but essential process process. In the
digital economy there are online platforms which can make this process managed
easily, Doctiger being one of the advanced contract lifecycle management(CLM)
platform. The challenges arise from template authoring, large number of
stakeholders, long contract lifecycle and multiple changes in the scope and
budget. Chetan Agarwal who has been the CIO of global organisations for around
two decades, highlights the essential components of contract lifecycle
management platforms, which should radically transform the contract lifecycle
make it easy to manage: from template authoring. to contract creation, execution
change request, completion and Audit

4. Introduction
● Contract Management is a complex process and depending on the contract could
involve multiple stakeholders such as negotiation team, sales team, accounts,
finance besides legal.
● Contracts is usually not a single transaction type and could be executed over
years, may involve multiple changes in scope and if it runs into a litigation, dozens
or hundred of documents are involved.
● In commercial contracts or SoW, ERP systems control the budget and delegation
of financial powers.
● Mails are the most frequent form of communication. Contracts can run into
unintended risks if there is a slight mistake in authoring or some of emails or
documents are not immediately available.
● Contract Lifecycle management provides the tools, technology and the
processes for streamlining the contract life cycle for the digital economy.

5. Contract LifeCycle Management (CLM)-Explained
“Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) is the proactive, methodical management of a contract from initiation through award, compliance
and renewal. Implementing CLM can lead to significant improvements in cost savings and efficiency.[1] Understanding and automating CLM
can also limit organizational liability and increase compliance with legal requirements”.. Wikipedia
● Request: It all starts with the need of a deliverable, by a department.
● Template authoring: The reusable part “template” and “clauses”or sub parts, parts of which will be reused in
multiple contracts
● Contract creation: This happens by merging “data” with the template
● Contract review: Since at least two parties are involved and multiple stakeholders, goes through a cycle of review,
comments and changes.
● Contract approval: The final version of the contract that is agreed by all stakeholders and parties involved. Goes
through a process of digital or manual signatures
● Contract execution: Delivery of products and services as specified in the contract
● Contract performance: Monitoring, changes in scope, prices etc.
● Contract Closure: Contract end, renewal and analysis

6. CLM: Challenges
● Multiple Parties: If they are getting into a contract for the first time, both need
to agree on scope, prices, liabilities, payments, guarantees and terms.
● Multiple stakeholders within a party: Legal, sales, negotiation, engineering,
purchase, finance, accounts, projects etc.
● Information Scattered all over: Critical information resides in mails of
multiple people. Can spring up as a surprize later.
● ERP and actual contract are two different islands
● Approvals: Time consuming
● Change Requests: Change in specs, pricing, quality put the contract
management under pressure, though change is the DNA of contracting.
● Improvement through experience: Remains with few people directly
involved. Difficult to Institutionalise without proper systems and processes

7. CLM: Benefits & Value Prop
● Risk Reduction: Due to reusability of pre authored and reviewed building
block of templates or templates. Learning incorporated in new versions.
● Speed of execution: All processes integrated and one seamless workflow.
Same version of truth access.
● Effort reduction: Major effort reduction due to standardisation and reuse.
● Skill reduction: Chances of effort are minimal due to pre authoring of
templates and clauses as well as due to rule based smart contracting, that
brings in an enormous automation and best practices.
● Collaboration and search: All documents including mails at one place,
searchable along with secured collaboration
● Mail templates: Standardise response, use of pre approved language

8. 10 features of good contract life management (CLM)..
1. Top end template, clause authoring: Should be user friendly, manage
versions, be able to convert existing contracts to reusable templates, able to
create data fields at a click.
2. Integrate Mails & Documents and Mail templates: Mails are the necessary evil
Most of the communication happens on the mails and these should not reside
as a separate Island but it should be stored at the correct places along with
the documents. Also, having mail templates to respond brings a lot of
standardization to the process, and minimizes unintended errors and
improper language

9. 10 features of good contract life management (CLM).
3. Top end Content Management System (CMS): Good content management
where all the mails documents change request approvals are security stored
and easily searchable is necessary for a good contract life cycle management
system
4. Approval workflows: Changes is templates or clauses must go through
approval and only approved version included.
5. Digital Signatures: Depending on the risk level, eIDAS compliant level 1 or 2
digital signature must be used.
6. E-delivery & Document Tracking: Always a good practice to send documents
electronically and tracks receipt, opens and locations. Good to close the loop
on delivery and read.

10. 10 features of good contract life management (CLM)
3. Secure Team space with configurable Permissions: Everyone should not be
able to read everything and certainly no edit everything. Permissions should
be configurable.
4. Integration: Integrate ERP and other systems to CLM to avoid information
black spots
5. Handle Multiple Data Sources: Excel, manual forms and ERP systems. This
brings in the much needed flexibility
6. Distributable and trackable Ownership: Multiple teams author and edit parts of
contract. The CLM must provide of approvals of authoring within sections as
well as a whole.

11. Platforms
● Doctiger.com is one of the most feature rich CLM platform.
● One of the only platforms that integrates mails to documents and provides
mail templates. Mails are automatically extracted and stored and can be
responded to by using mail templates.
● Multilingual contracts can be easily authored and generated
● Supports smart contracting with rule-based template and clause selection.
The system is fed with knowledge and it can decide, which template, and
what clauses, with what data, to use in what situation. Reduces errors as well
as skill requirement