In our first post, we introduced you to CLM, short for Contract Lifecycle Management, which is arguably one of the most uninspiring acronyms in the Supply Management space, but also one of the most important as it overlaps S2C, P2P, and, as a result, S2S/S2P as well as intersecting with risk management, performance management, change management, and supplier (relationship) management. In other words, as succinctly stated in our last post, CLM touches almost every aspect of Supply Management and is taking a central place in your Supply Management organization.

And, in our last post, we tried to define where CLM starts and ends, but, as per our first post, the key questions are: what exactly is CLM, why do you need it, and, most importantly, what defines the core CM (Contract Management) platform that powers CLM? And why?

As per our first post, to answer these questions in a standard, and open, manner that will allow for common, comparable, measurements across the vendor-base that will not change from quadrant to quadrant or wave to wave, Spend Matters and Sourcing Innovation have come together to create common definitions for critical Supply Management technologies, starting with CLM. This effort, led by the prophet, the maverick, and the doctor, has resulted in an initial, landmark, ten-part series on CLM over on Spend Matters Pro [membership required] that begins in “Contract Lifecycle Management Part I: An introduction” and that will continue until CLM is made clear.

In the first part of our ten-part series we defined what CLM is, discussed some critical requirements, and indicated future posts would detail what technological capabilities were required to support them. But before we can get to that, we have to understand where the solution space is today and why existing platforms, on their own, don’t meet all of an organization’s needs, and how what’s out there currently fits together. That’s why “Contract Lifecycle Management Part III: The Solution Space” examines the space and helps you understand where CLM fits.

While Contract Management solutions have been around for a while, they weren’t the first set of solutions in the Supply Management space, with e-Sourcing (and e-Auction) and e-Procurement (and e-Invoicing) solutions taking they lead. Early Contract Management solutions materialized in the Supply Management space as a result of gaps in process support left by the other solutions. But as Supply Management matured, many of these first generation systems showed gaps themselves, and Contract Management is now much more than just a contract authoring, signing, archiving, indexing, and searching platform that first generation vendors will make it out to be. And this starts to become clear when you examine the solution space as a whole and see where all the pieces fit, or don’t fit, together.

The reality is that the Supply Management space is big, the full CLM process is involved, and CLM knowledge gaps are very common — but they don’t have to be! Head on over to Spend Matters Pro [membership required], check out the latest piece by the prophet, the maverick, and the doctor, and understand how the The (Supply Management) Solution Space currently fits together. You won’t regret it.

In our last post, we introduced you to CLM, short for Contract Lifecycle Management, which is arguably one of the most uninspiring acronyms in the Supply Management space, but also one of the most important as it overlaps S2C (Source-to-Contract), P2P (Procure-to-Pay), and, as a result, S2S/S2P (Source-to-Settle/Source-to-Pay) as well as intersecting with risk management, performance management, change management, and supplier (relationship) management. In other words, CLM touches almost every aspect of Supply Management and is taking a central place in your Supply Management organization. But where exactly does it start and where exactly does it end?

The short answer is that it starts with data and ends with data. For example, in order to identify contract opportunities, spend, product, and service data is needed. To create good specifications, good data is needed. Authoring requires contract clauses in a clause data library. Contract Management requires term and obligation data. Performance management requires performance data. Risk Management requires event data. And so on.

However, in between, it includes the usage of that data in various obligatory, performance, organizational, and strategic processes designed to extract value from the contract. These processes make use of an extensive data repository and support organizational commercial performance management (that takes CLM to the next level).

The repository will contain clauses, templates, contracts, supporting documents, amendments, and metadata. This will support the authoring, negotiation, signing, and implementation of the contract, where the implementation will require monitoring, management, and corrective action. It will also track, and support expiry, closure, review, and, where appropriate, renewal. And, collectively, each of these activities will be seamlessly blended together to support Commercial Performance Management.

How? That’s what the first-of-its-kind co-authored CLM series by the doctor, the prophet, and the maverick will answer over on Spend Matters Pro [membership required], after it presents “The CLM Wheel”, which is the first accurate graphical representation of the continuous CLM process at a high level. Go check it out and then we can begin to address the question, which will involve first going back to the beginning in our next post.