What is contract lifecycle management?
Any legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties is a contract. There are several stages in managing an organization’s contracts, including drafting, executing, renewing, and many more. Manually managing contracts can be cumbersome and time-consuming.
Contract lifecycle management (CLM) is a set of processes businesses use to effectively manage their contracts, thereby reducing risks and manual errors to save costs and improve efficiency.
What is CLM software?
CLM software helps businesses streamline their entire contract process, from the contract’s creation to its execution, and way beyond. CLM solutions like Zoho help businesses accelerate the contract process, automate workflows, manage bulk contracts efficiently, execute them smoothly, unlock insights, and much more.
Common steps in CLM
Each company executes their contracts differently. However, the following steps are common across most organizations:
Drafting contracts
Simplify, automate, and speed up your contract initiation and drafting with Zoho Sign. Here's how our tools help you create customized and reusable contracts, import templates, and auto-populate data from your CRM apps:
- Create your contracts using Zoho Writer, our powerful word processor.
- Use our AI writing assistant, Blue Pencil, to summarize, rephrase, or generate contractual terms.
- Auto-fill fields and auto-populate data into the fields.
- Reuse your contracts by saving them as templates.
- Merge your data from Zoho CRM, Zoho Sheet, or other data sources.
How Zoho Sign can help in your CLM journey
- Automate signing workflows and set default workflows to save time.
- Create and save signable templates, auto-fill fields with text tags, auto-populate fields, merge recipient data from existing CRMs, and automate reminders and notifications to reduce contract generation time and the document turnaround time.
- Customize the contract, authentication methods, signing language, emails, and post-sign functions.
- Seamlessly sign within comprehensive CLM apps like Zoho Contracts.
CLM can become a nightmare without the right CLM software
See how Zoho solves the top five common CLM challenges:
Common CLM challenge
Solve it the Zoho way
Process delays in generating, circulating, signing, and storing contracts
Generate reusable templates.
Edit the contract with multiple stakeholders in real time.
Sign securely with military-grade encryption.
Store in the cloud or on local devices and repositories.
Maintaining legal compliances
Zoho Sign is compliant with regional and international regulations such as HIPAA, the GDPR, and the CCPA.
Lack of control and visibility
Set access roles and restrictions for contract recipients and viewers.
Enable recipients to view, approve, or sign. Set authentication codes to ensure restricted access.
Track signing status, reports, and activities without switching applications.
Lack of real-time collaborations
Facilitate real-time discussions using Zoho Workplace apps.
Edit and comment on documents with Zoho Writer.
Send private or public messages to recipients.
Tracking contract changes and renewals
Enable long-term archival for long-term validation of your contracts.
Renew contracts by sending automatic reminders to recipients.
Why choose Zoho Sign over the others
- Features Zoho Sign DocuSign Adobe Sign Dropbox Sign
- Unlimited contract signing, storage, and templates Yes No No No
- Tighter integration with Zoho apps and third-party apps Yes No No No
- Qualified electronic signatures (QES) for contract signingYes Yes Yes Yes
- Blockchain-based timestamping Yes Yes No No
- Free migration and onboarding assistance Yes No No No
- Free technical support Yes No No No
Contract management made easy with paperless signing.
Try it nowFrequently Asked Questions
What does CLM stand for?
CLM stands for contract lifecycle management. It refers to managing all the steps involved, from drafting a contract to its execution and further—even its renewal or termination.
What are the benefits of using CLM software?
What CLM solution does Zoho provide?
Are contracts executed with Zoho Sign legally compliant?
Does Zoho Sign support integrations for CLM tools?
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