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CLM Pre-Assessment

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Contract Lifecycle Management Pre-Assessment



Please answer all the questions that apply to your business. You may save your progress and resume filling out the form at a later time. When you are ready to submit, you will have a chance to review your responses. Finally, you will be asked to confirm your answers before submittal. To confirm your answers, please scroll to the end of the form and click the Confirm button. You can change or print your responses before clicking on Confirm.

Page 1: Introduction

How BIG is the problem? Where should you start first?
grid with four quadrants. Upper Left: Value, Upper Right: Volume; Lower Right: Complexity; Lower Left: Consistency
Just as with any other business decision, when you think about managing contracts, you must make decisions on how best to use your limited resources: time or money. Contracts underlie all business transactions, but some contracts represent a bigger value to your company or a bigger risk. Some contract by themselves, one by one, might not be a very big value or risk, but in the aggregate the value or risk may rise.

For example, if you have one large deal a year that represents 80% to 90% of your business, then it seems like an easy decision: focus resources on that one very important contract. You accept that your other, smaller contracts will get less attention and will face more risk. It might take you longer to find a document for one of the smaller contracts, or you might miss a deadline or put off responding to a question because the impact of missing something on your biggest contract would be much more damaging.

Your intuition gives you some idea of where to focus, but risk can come from any direction. For instance, if you miss an auto-renew cycle on a small services contract that includes an escalation or an automatic move to a much higher month-to-month charge instead of the annual charge you had been paying, that small supplier contract that you were not very worried about suddenly becomes a source of pain. We've all seen this happen in our personal lives when introductory rates run out!

Consider a commercial team that is driven to close deals regardless of unusual contract obligations or triggering thresholds. Carrying out the obligations may require significant manual effort - or it may not, but first the team has to know the obligations are coming and be able to track progress, schedule, or triggering thresholds. Inconsistent contract or deal terms means you may have to have a team dedicated to tracking each contract manually, which is costly and increases the opportunity for error. This is how many people end up with a collection tracking spreadsheets, tickler lists, calendar entries, or even handwritten notes. This type of approach works on a small scale for a time - until staff become too busy or new staff take over some tasks without fully understanding the old tracking system. In all of these scenarios, the company lacks reliable visibility and forecasting, leading to inefficiency and risk of lost revenue, increased cost, or even fines.

Page 3: What affects CLM?

In many ways, contracts are the same regardless of your industry, the size of your company, or who your counterparties are. However, as you get farther into your CLM journey, those factors may impact your decisions about CLM priorities, resources, or risk.

Let's start by defining some of these factors for your business.
Describe the outside factors affecting your business

Certain contract types are more prevalent or more complex depending on the industry. For example, infrastructure industries - those that revolve around or depend heavily on physical assets - likely have a large volume of land-based contracts (e.g., right of way agreements, land leases, or access agreements) and may have more complex financing agreements related to project development or asset operation.

For example, companies in energy; healthcare (pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical devices, hospitals, etc.); and finance typically are subject to more regulations and associated reporting requirements than retail or professional services.
Describe your business


If you operate - or interact with suppliers, manufacturers, customers, or other partners - in multiple locations, especially if those jurisdictions cross state and country lines, your contracts will be subject to different laws and regulations.

Older businesses tend to have more contracts, and those contracts have probably changed over time. Contracts change as laws and regulations change and as technology changes or other factors in the world impact business. For example, cybersecurity and data privacy are critical to business today but may not have required a separate provision in all contracts 10 or 15 years ago.

Growing through acquisition heightens the risk and requirements related to CLM in two ways. First, the number of contracts will grow in a big leap with each acquisition. Second, the contracts from each company will have different obligations, different clauses, different exposures that are hard to see at first glance. CLM solutions can help gather and analyze these variables, but even without a CLM, depending on how many acquisitions your company has made, this may be a big risk area an a good place to focus.

Page 4: Types and numbers of contracts in your organization

What kind of contracts do you have?

Although all contracts share some characteristics, they carry different risks and may require different CLM policies, processes, or technology solutions. It is useful, therefore, to identify your contracts and separate them, at least for planning purposes, into groups. Understanding the major categories will help you focus resources to address the biggest risks and protect the biggest value contracts first as you build your CLM program.

See TrailBlazer Academy Contract Lifecycle Management Basics Module for more information. 
Describe your contracts
Four rectangles next to each other horizontally, with images and text. First rectangle from the left reads: Sales/Revenue: Contracts between you and your customers. Second, Purchase/Lease: Contracts securing the space you need to operate including offices, warehouse, facilities, right-of-way, and land leases. Third, Goods/Services: Contracts to secure the supplies, materials, and support you need to run your business. Fourth, Legal/Other: Legal and corporate agreements including Joint Venture, Merger & Acquisition, and settlements
How big a headache does each type of contract cause you. Select the phrase that best describes your level of concern.




How many contracts do you have? 

The more contracts that you have - or the more contracts that you start each year - the bigger the risk of losing track of a deadline or obligation.

Similarly, keeping inactive contracts mixed with active contracts - or treating all contracts as 'active' because you don't have a formal process to close them out and ensure nothing has been missed - increases your costs. Costs related to improper contract closeout can include straightforward costs like needing more paper or electronic storage; indirect costs like the time it takes to search through a lot of inactive contracts to find the one contract you need to review now; and, even, potential costs like the risk of having to produce a closed contract that could have been destroyed in accordance with an approved records retention schedule and having that contract provide some evidence against you in a legal case.

Answer the questions below by filling in the number of total contracts, active contracts, and annual new contracts for each contract type.
















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Page 5: Tell us about your contracts

Consistency and value are major contributors to the risk you face from contracts.








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