As business technology evolves, organizations must take inventory of how they will most fully embrace said technology. This fact applies to contract managers as well. Contract management professionals need to evolve their digital transformation goals as time passes, and legal technology grants them more efficiency, incredible innovation, and significant ROI. To that end, here are six digital transformation goals for contract managers in 2025 to improve customer experience, client relations, business outcomes, and more on their digital transformation journey.
What Are Digital Transformation Goals?
While digital transformation initiatives integrate technology into a broad spectrum of business processes, digital transformation goals are an organization's long-term, specific objectives in this pursuit. Cross-functional digital transformation goals often include:
- operational efficiency.
- human empowerment.
- data-driven insights.
- competitive advantage.
- cost reduction.
- agility and adaptability.
Let's look at how this digital transformation strategy applies to contract managers.
#1 - Operational Efficiency
Improving efficiency is essential in contract lifecycle management because it allows contract managers to streamline the eight stages of the contract lifecycle, minimize errors, and reduce costs associated with contract management bottlenecks. It is one of the key objectives of digital transformation.
One way to streamline operational efficiency is to maintain a secure contract repository. Efficiency is shown immediately with the ability to search for all contracts, data, and related attachments within a single source of truth. Saved searches, search history, and "Did you mean...?" functionality make it even easier to search for contracts, data, and files down to the phrase, term, and even word level.
Another facet of contract management software that promotes operational efficiency is the ability to extract key metadata from contracts in an automated fashion. Key dates, company information, and clauses can be extracted from contracts and mapped onto a tidy contract record screen. These fields can be leveraged for workflows and easily searched. What's more, dynamic templates can be merged with clauses and key metadata to automate the creation of a contract document.
Operational efficiency is one of the most critical digital transformation goals, and these are just some of the many ways you can achieve this objective in the pursuit of the success of digital transformation.
#2 - Human Empowerment
To empower employees, contract administrators and decision-makers should give them the power to negotiate terms better, make decisions, and take ownership of contracts.
For this digital transformation goal, we recommend providing the necessary training and support to effectively manage complex and voluminous contracts with legal technology, fostering a sense of responsibility and ownership. Be sure to choose a provider that offers training events, optimization resources, conferences, a wiki, and more so that employees can genuinely master taking the reigns at leveraging digital technology for contract management.
Human empowerment is among the digital transformation goals because the human experience is part of the reason we implement digital technologies, after all.
#3 - Data-Driven Insights
Data-driven insights allow contract managers to make informed decisions based on evidence for better risk mitigation, negotiation strategies, and contract performance.
We recommend a few strategies here for data analytics:
- Leverage generative AI with machine learning to automatically create clear and concise clauses, analyze risk, and present positive, negative, or neutral aspects of contract sentiment for both sides.
- Utilize executive graphical dashboards for visually engaging contract analytics at a glance - such as contract amounts, spending, key performance indicators (KPIs), and open tasks across the contract repository.
- Use a custom report designer to present data-driven insights designed in the way contract managers prefer.
With data-driven insights, another of the critical digital transformation goals, your team can make decisions based on what's actually happening within your contract database.
#4 - Competitive Advantage
Competitive advantage is one of the key digital transformation goals because it allows contract managers to leverage contracts to gain a leg up over competitors by streamlining contract execution and performance, reducing risks, and optimizing costs.
We recommend leveraging AI-powered contract management software for a competitive advantage. It automates repetitive tasks that competitors using manual processes will be hung up on. Additionally, contract managers have data-driven insight for consistent process improvements that competitors using manual processes will miss out on. Furthermore, competitors relying on manual processes overlook risk factors that contract managers using CLM software can nip in the bud.
#5 - Cost Optimization
Cost optimization is one of the critical digital transformation goals because it allows businesses to pinpoint and reduce unnecessary expenses by carefully reviewing and negotiating contract terms, minimizing risk-associated spending, and improving resource allocation to reduce wasteful expenditure across all contracts.
Digital transformation with contract management software helps with cost optimization and revenue growth in several ways.
- Improved compliance management reduces the costs associated with non-compliance and failure to observe regulations.
- Intelligent workflow automation with task alerts, notifications, and escalation virtually ensures that deadlines are not missed, obligations are met, and money is saved.
- Data-driven insights of single contracts and the entire repository allow users to leverage historical data and identify high-spending areas while negotiating better deals with counterparties.
- Proactive renewal reminders allow users to renegotiate better terms promptly.
- Risk assessment tools allow users to avoid costly risk exposure and risk events.
- Budget and financial reporting empower users to gain holistic oversight of spending.
We recommend optimizing costs with contract management software.
#6 - Agility & Adaptability
Agility and adaptability are among the most critical digital transformation goals. They allow organizations to evolve contract management without costly and time-consuming interruptions and learning curves.
If you are looking for an agile and adaptable legal technology solution, we recommend CobbleStone Contract Insight®. CobbleStone® shows its adaptability to industry demands often - including with its future-minded generative AI and regular release of new features and enhancements throughout the year. CobbleStone adapts its solutions incrementally and provides ample resources to prevent you from getting overwhelmed. Additionally - with various trainings, resources, and conferences - you can rest easy with an agile and seamless adoption of new features and enhancements for better contract lifecycle management.
To learn more about meeting and exceeding digital transformation efforts with CobbleStone, book a free demo today!
*Legal Disclaimer: This article is not legal advice. The content of this article is for general informational and educational purposes only. The information on this website may not present the most up-to-date legal information. Readers should contact their attorney for legal advice regarding any particular legal matter.
