As business technology evolves, forward-thinking organisations must keep abreast of changes and embrace technological advance accordingly.
This also applies to contract managers. Contract management professionals also require to evolve their digital transformation goals as legal tech brings more efficiency, ground-breaking innovation and significant ROI. To that end, here are six digital transformation goals for contract managers in 2025 – to improve customer experience, client relations and business outcomes on their digital transformation journey.
What should digital transformation goals involve?
While digital transformation initiatives integrate technology into a broad spectrum of business processes, digital transformation goals often include:
- operational efficiency
- human empowerment
- data-driven insights
- competitive advantage
- cost reduction
- agility and adaptability.
Let’s consider how this digital transformation strategy applies to contract managers.
- Operational efficiency
Improving efficiency is essential in contract lifecycle management because it allows contract managers to streamline the eight stages of the contract lifecycle, minimise errors, and reduce costs associated with contract management bottlenecks. It’s one of the key objectives of digital transformation.
One way to streamline operational efficiency is to maintain a secure contract repository. Efficiency is immediately evident with the ability to search for all contracts, data and related attachments within a single source of truth. Saved searches, search history, and ‘Did you mean…?’ functionality make it even easier to search for contracts, data and files down to the phrase, term,and even word level.
Another facet of contract management software that promotes operational efficiency is the ability to automatically extract key metadata from contracts. Key dates, company information, and clauses can be extracted and mapped onto a tidy contract record screen. These fields can be leveraged for workflows and easily searched. What’s more, dynamic templates can be merged with clauses and key metadata to automate the creation of a contract document.
- Human empowerment
To empower employees, contract administrators and decision-makers should give them the ability to negotiate terms better, make decisions, and take ownership of contracts.
To realise this digital transformation goal, we recommend providing the necessary training and support to effectively manage complex contracts with legal technology, fostering a sense of responsibility and ownership. Be sure to choose a provider that offers training events, optimisation resources, and keynote events so that your employees can genuinely leverage digital technology for contract management.
- Data-driven insights
Data-driven insights allow contract managers to make informed decisions based on evidence for better risk mitigation, negotiation strategies and contract performance.
We recommend a few strategies here:
- Leverage generative AI with machine learning to automatically create clear and concise clauses, analyse risk, and present positive, negative or neutral aspects of contract sentiment for both sides.
- Utilise executive graphical dashboards for visually engaging contract analytics at a glance – such as contract amounts, spending, key performance indicators (KPIs), and open tasks across the contract repository.
- Use a custom report designer to present data-driven insights in a user-friendly interface which meets your contract managerial needs.
- Competitive advantage
Competitive advantage is a key digital transformation goals because it allows contract managers to leverage contracts to steal a march on the competition – streamlining contract execution and performance, reducing risks, and optimising costs.
We recommend leveraging AI-powered contract management software for a competitive advantage. It automates repetitive tasks that will occupy competitors using manual processes. Additionally, contract managers have data-driven insight for consistent process improvements that competitors using manual processes will miss out on. Furthermore, competitors relying on manual processes overlook risk factors that contract managers using CLM software can avoid entirely.
- Cost optimisation
Cost optimisation is one of the critical digital transformation goals because it allows businesses to pinpoint and reduce unnecessary expenses by carefully reviewing and negotiating contract terms, minimising risk-associated spending, and improving resource allocation to reduce wasteful expenditure across all contracts.
Digital transformation with contract management software supports cost optimisation and revenue growth in several ways:
- Improved compliance management reduces the costs associated with non-compliance and failure to observe regulations.
- Intelligent workflow automation with task alerts, notifications, and escalation virtually ensures that deadlines are not missed, obligations are met, and savings are made.
- Data-driven insights of single contracts and the entire repository allow users to leverage historical data and identify high-spending areas while negotiating better deals with counterparties.
- Proactive renewal reminders allow users to renegotiate better terms promptly.
- Risk assessment tools allow users to avoid costly risk exposure and risk events.
- Budget and financial reporting empower users to gain holistic oversight of spending.
- Agility and adaptability
Agility and adaptability are among the most critical digital transformation goals. They enable organisations to evolve contract management without costly, time-consuming interruptions and extensive learning curves.
If you’re looking for an agile and adaptable legal technology solution, we recommend Contract Insightfrom Four. With supporting training resources, you can rest easy with an agile and seamless adoption of new features and enhancements for better contract lifecycle management.
Contact John O’Brien, CEO at Four Business Solutions – global business consultants and software integrators specialising in business process improvement.