Unleashing the Power of CLM-CRM Integration for Enhanced Customer Experience

The key objective of every business is to increase its revenue, sales numbers, sales cycle times, and profits, regardless of its size and industry. Improved sales processes will enable the sales department to focus on more potential deals, allowing the businesses to achieve revenue goals faster. The faster you sign a sales agreement is when a deal is marked as closed. The more efficient your process is, the quicker the deal can be closed.  

Generally, the sales team is required to work across different systems and collaborate with multiple stakeholders. Stakeholder collaboration turns out to be a bottleneck for the sales team. 

When agreements and sales are poorly organized, businesses can experience financial impact. There can be many hidden costs due to inefficient CLM , and some of them are as follows: 

• Inefficient contract management would lead to legal disputes, significantly impacting the company’s bottom line
• Not managing renewals and tracking contracts properly would result in missed early payment discounts
• Poor organization would result in operational inefficiencies such as processing delays 
• Locating critical documents can be difficult
• It is hard to track performance against contract milestones and identify potential problems
• Non-compliance would result in regulatory and potential penalties
• Risks that cannot be assessed can lead to unexpected delays
• Lack of transparency makes the entire process difficult for audits or investigations
• Inefficient contract management can damage a company’s reputation and hinder business opportunities
• Frequent legal and regulatory issues can hurt the business as a whole 
• Poor contract management makes it difficult to attract new clients as they show least interest working with conventional processes

Therefore, modern organizations are switching to a contract management solution to overcome multiple challenges through the contract processes and cut down sales cycle times. 

This article gives you quick information on the common factors that cause delays in deal closures. 

Reasons Why Contract Cycles Take More Time?

• The sales team shares the contact details through an email or a form.

• The legal team or contract owner takes more time to review and author the contract, as no predefined contract templates are available.

• The sales team is unable to access contracts quickly due to no proper organization.

• The manual review process requires the sales team to go back and forth, checking multiple stakeholders’ emails.

• Sales team faces longer waiting times for stakeholders’ signatures and responses.

• Lack of collaboration makes the communication difficult between the sales and legal teams

• It is difficult to track the contract status and progress due to poor visibility.

• Switching teams for collaboration and execution of the contract processes

Delayed sales cycles would lead to missed opportunities and bottlenecks that hamper growth. Potential delays increase your efforts and operational costs, making the whole process inefficient. 

Unlocking the Potential with CRM & Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Integration

The sales department leverages CRM solutions to track opportunities, contacts, and progress within the sales pipeline. Legal departments rely on CLM solutions to streamline sales-to-agreement processes while reducing cycle times and improving governance.

With the global expansion becoming more regulatory, CLM and CRM integration could streamline the sales process and adds an advantage to the entire process. Integrating CRM software with the CLM software enables the sales team to manage contracts from the CRM solution seamlessly. This would address all the concerning factors and makes sales-contract management easier, faster, and more impactful.

Transforming Contract with CRM-CLM Integration 

Integrating contract management software with CRM can help the salesperson raise a contract request to critical stakeholders. Details will be auto populated in the contract without you having to enter them manually.

• You can access the predefined templates and a clause library, making it easier to draft and authorize contracts. Custom templates can also be created from the clause of the library.

• CRM integration with CLM empowers the sales department to collaborate at every level of contract management, ensuring effective communication and increased transparency. 

• Stakeholders can track the contract status directly from CRM

• Contract review process can be automated through multi-level and customized approval workflows. 

Multiple stakeholders can review and work on sales agreements simultaneously without dealing with numerous back-and-forth emails. The CLM platform makes it easy for you to control various versions of documents, and you can quickly retrieve any document with just a few clicks.

Today, CLM system has an integrated eSignature solution that empowers the team to sign and store documents in minutes, eliminating the need to print, sign, and fax documents.

Automatic contract renewal reminders ensure you will always meet the deadlines. The sales department can initiate contract renewals, execution, and termination from CRM.

Advantages of Contract Management Software 

The major pain point for stakeholders is the inability to access critical contracts when needed. Contract management software with a centralized repository storing all the data can simplify retrieval. Advanced search options provide better accessibility to data, which can help you derive valuable insights into the data. Additionally, contract solution adds various benefits at every stage of the contract lifecycle.

Following are some of the ways contract management software can help:

• Easy contract creation with predefined contract templates and libraries 
• Standard clauses maintain contract consistency with ease-of-use libraries 
• Contract drafting system minimizes legal dependencies and associated costs

Collaboration 

Sales and legal departments can easily communicate and work together on the same platform throughout the contract cycle. Having complete visibility into contract statuses enables stakeholders to perform all actions on time without delays. 

Faster Execution

As CLM software facilitates the negotiation and signing process, all your contracts can be executed digitally. This eliminates the last-minute chaos involved in working with multiple stakeholders.

Audit Trails

Automation tracks all changes made with a timestamp, enabling administrators to stay on top of the contract processes, thus providing more visibility and control.

Audit trails can help businesses comply with industry standards and regulations while mitigating associated risks. 

Integrating contract solutions with CRM software offers all stakeholders a holistic view of the contract lifecycle. With businesses moving faster, making the most of CLM-CRM integration can save more time in administrative activities.

Transforming this time-consuming process into a seamless process empowers sales departments to focus on the business objectives, ultimately impacting the bottom line. Enterprises that invest in contract management solution can experience improved sales cycle times, significant time savings, and increased ROI.