Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) systems have been used by in-house legal teams to manage contract workflows, automate approvals, and delegate tasks to business development units. CLM systems were introduced with the promise of streamlining contract management, but many organizations have faced significant implementation challenges. One of the most notable issues is that CLMs are often siloed in the legal department, which limits their broader business value. The reality is that contract management is a business-wide need, not just a legal function—and the real value lies in data, not just text-based documents.
Avokaado has introduced the Operational Intelligence Platform (OIP) to tackle these CLM adoption issues, offering a more holistic, data-driven solution. OIP expands beyond legal departments, replacing legacy systems like document centric CLMs, file-based document management systems like Sharepoint, and compliance tracking tools, creating a unified environment for data, document management, and business intelligence.
What is Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)?
Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) is a software tool used to automate and streamline the contract process, from initiation through negotiation, execution, renewal, and compliance. It was originally designed to help legal departments manage contracts more efficiently, but it has since evolved to serve various business units such as sales, procurement, and HR.
CLM typically handles:
- Contract creation and negotiation
- Approval workflows
- Execution and signatures
- Contract tracking for renewals and compliance
While CLM has brought about many improvements in managing contracts, it often remains a tool solely used by the legal department rather than being widely adopted across the organization.
Why Have CLMs Struggled with Adoption?
Despite their promise, CLMs have faced several adoption challenges that limit their effectiveness:
- Long Onboarding Times:
CLMs often come with lengthy onboarding and implementation processes. They require custom configurations, making it difficult for businesses to see immediate benefits. The result? Low adoption rates and frustration across departments. - Siloed in Legal Departments:
Most CLM systems are viewed as legal tools rather than organization-wide solutions. As a result, they don’t gain traction outside the legal team. Contract management is business-critical, but when only one department uses the tool, its potential is stifled. - Not Data-First:
Traditional CLMs are built around text-based contracts, with a focus on document management. They don’t prioritize the underlying data—such as contract terms, dates, parties, and obligations—that’s crucial for broader business processes and decision-making. - Need for Separate Document Management Systems:
With most CLM solutions, businesses often need to invest in separate document management systems like SharePoint to manage document storage, collaboration, and organization. This creates silos between contract management and document handling, making it harder to streamline workflows and ensure data consistency.
What is Avokaado’s Operational Intelligence Platform (OIP)?
Avokaado’s Operational Intelligence Platform (OIP) is a data-first, enterprise-wide solution designed to overcome the limitations of traditional CLM and legacy systems. It shifts the focus from managing contracts as static documents to treating them as dynamic, data-driven assets.OIP addresses the challenges faced by CLM tools by:
- Centralizing Data and Documents: OIP is built around structured, real-time data. Contracts, parties, clauses, and terms are all connected and stored as data rather than static text, making the information accessible, searchable, and actionable across the organization.
- Integrating with Business Systems: OIP integrates with existing CRM, ERP, and HRIS systems, making it easier to track relationships, manage compliance, and optimize workflows across departments—not just in the legal team.
- Full Automation of Processes: OIP automates not only contract drafting but also compliance checks, approvals, and renewals. This makes it a truly business-wide platform that enhances efficiency across the entire organization.
- Ensuring Compliance on Autopilot: With integrated compliance tracking, OIP ensures that organizations meet regulatory requirements (like GDPR or NIS2) without manual intervention.
In short, Avokaado’s OIP is not just a tool for contract management; it is a comprehensive platform for operational intelligence, helping organizations move from a document-first mindset to a data-first approach and stands on 3 important pillars: transparency, automation and compliance.
Why You Don’t Need Separate Document Management Systems with OIP
One of the most significant advantages of OIP over traditional CLM systems is that you don’t need a separate document management system like SharePoint with OIP. With CLM systems, businesses often have to juggle multiple platforms to handle contract management, document storage, and compliance tracking. This can lead to fragmented workflows, siloed data, and higher costs for maintaining multiple platforms.
With OIP, all your outgoing processes are built on a data-driven automated document format (aDoc), while incoming documents are processed using AI-driven automation. Both outgoing and incoming documents are then organized into smart data registries, where:
- All data fields are smart, connected, and reusable.
- Documents are automatically integrated with other systems, providing full visibility across the organization.
- Compliance and audit trails are maintained on autopilot, without manual intervention.
This eliminates the need for additional document management systems, consolidating all your contract and document workflows into a single, unified platform, replacing legacy document management systems like PDFs and SharePoint.
Conclusion
As businesses evolve, so do their needs for contract management and operational intelligence. While CLM tools have played an important role in streamlining contracts, they’ve often fallen short of delivering enterprise-wide value due to their focus on legal processes.
With Avokaado’s Operational Intelligence Platform, companies can move beyond traditional CLM tools and embrace a data-first approach that integrates contracts, compliance, and business operations into a single, unified platform. If you’re still relying on CLM or legacy systems, now is the time to consider making the switch to Operational Intelligence and AI instead.
Interested to learn more and see Avokaado in action? Book a demo with us and discuss your use case or request access to a free trial workspace to see how Avokaado can help you manage data, workflows, and documents on a single platform.
