CLM Dashboard + Reporting
How is CLM data moving your business forward?
In enterprise software, the dashboard is a major part of the value proposition. It helps justify the sale. It helps justify the renewal. And it’s often what the executives value most from the software.
Does the salesperson love Salesforce.com? Not as much as the CEO and CFO do!
At best, the dashboard gives you specific visibility and insight into some critical business function that would otherwise be a blackhole of unknowns.
On the flip side, and at worst, the dashboard (and its reporting) is just a blank sheet of possibilities that never gets realized beyond a few basic operational metrics that never make it up to the C-suite.
We’d like to hear your experience with CLM dashboards, and which data has been most meaningful to you and the business.
So here are your questions:
What are the most insightful, C-suite-worthy insights you get from your CLM dashboard?
Conversely, what are the most operational (or other) insights you get from your CLM that are useful ONLY to the legal department?
I have yet to see a CLM dashboard produce significant/meaningful insights ACTUALLY used either by the C-suite or legal department.
In large part, this is because C-suite isn't rushing to get the CLMs Dashboard up and running as they're not needed -- other enterprise softwares are already the source of truths and are reporting on data that overlaps with CLMs "contract" data.
Those other softwares are historically entrenched, are bigger/better/established softwares compared to CLMs and are well-suited point solutions. Example: IT Departments, IT Asset Management, Software Asset Management (SAM) departments, etc. have plenty of entrenched software options to use for managing software assets/licenses/seats etc. CLMs Sure CLMs COULD be the the source of that truth with dashboards to manage this, but the the other software options are specifically designed to manage the whole use-case so a CLM that merely offers a dashboard view of limited datapoints will obviously remain an afterthought even if introduced.
Enterprise Resource Planning Software (ERPs), e.g. SAP and Oracle are a different example. They manage entire supply chains, finance, accounting, production, manufacturing etc. data, big/bad software that is entrenched as the leaders/source for the same contract info that a CLM could report on. ERPs are are already integrated across the enterprise, what can a CLM be configured in short order to be the preferred source of truth over an ERP? A lot of ERPs HAVE or are STANDING up CLM modules, e.g. SAP Ariba.
As far as what data CLMs could or should report on:
1. Contract Process Data
2. Contract Substance Data (not already held within other entrenched software).
1 above is of great value and increasingly important. Most companies historically haven't examined contracting process efficiency, ie. the cost and time associated with making a contract. AI is changing this obviously. These metrics we be gathered and benchmarked and will rearrange labor forces. Some examples of this data:
- The production cost of making contracts (cost of labor (lawyer vs. contract managers vs. paralegals vs. GC/VP inputs), cost of tech stacks, software/KM/AI. These costs broken down by contract type, by good or service type, by region type, by risk type, ETC).
- In-flight times (total time, time by labor input type, time in each process segment, e.g. approvals, negotiation, etc. bottlenecks, etc.)
CLMs are specifically well positioned for the above and should be designed to produce that sea of operational efficiency data.
For 2 above, a lot of CLMs have expanded recently to additional contract data points, growing past the basic examples often shown in demos re: contract expiration date and governing law. But if CLMs are the storehouse for contracts, then a repository built to extract a host of new data points and provide the risk-based insights that these data points would produce makes sense. What to do about all that data is the real interesting question!
C-Suite worthy: information related to contracted spend, broken down by type (software, infra/product-related, marketing, etc.), number of agreements, license numbers, expirations dates, etc. Also data that supports when additional people resources will be needed, based on contract volumes/types/complexity etc. to justify hiring additional legal contracting staff.
Operational:
1. Information related to volume of contract types, negotiated clauses, third-party paper vs. first-party paper, time spent with various approvers/groups, time for legal to turn the document back to the counterparty, etc. Things that would help the team determine which templates need to be improved, where better playbooks/fallbacks might be helpful, etc. -- with the goal of improving negotiation time while managing risk appropriately. Also give legal managers better visibility into what their contracts team is working on and insights to help the team be more effective.
2. Upcoming expiration dates, renewals, termination/non-renewal notice management.