Organizations across the world are embracing change management strategies to introduce legal technology or to level up their existing legal tech. Change management includes using legal tech and updating the roles and responsibilities of attorneys and legal operations professionals. Change management is an organization-wide strategy that ensures the legal department and affiliated departments are on board to fulfil business goals together.
7 Benefits of Change Management with CLM
Moving from manual contracting processes to CLM was a big leap for legal. Now, with improved CLM technology, legacy data can be migrated to tools that offer an even wider plethora of benefits.
CLM:
- Drives change management and helps make contracting processes more efficient
- Helps legal departments remove manual contract reviews from their plates with automation
- Gives visibility and access to meaningful insights and metrics, improving workflows across the organization
- Provides a way to manage workloads more effectively
- Offers streamlined and faster legal service delivery
- Allows teams to help the organization stay on target with their business goals
- Drives revenue processes
Change Management Starts With Collaboration
At the center of change management, with contract lifecycle management (CLM), are the legal department and legal operations teams. They need to collaborate and work hand-in-hand to manage, organize, and renew contracts for their business. Too often, legal and legal ops teams do not have the necessary resources for efficient and consistent contract requirements. In addition, these teams may not have access to contract data they require. With the right contract data, the collaboration between legal and legal ops allows them to help their organization make better business decisions.
Communication is Key
Change management starts with collaboration and revolves around communication. Successful communication involves a strategy that originates from the legal department and consists of ongoing communication across the organization. By keeping communication consistent, the legal department makes sure that everyone’s goals are aligned with the company’s and that no one is left behind.
Communication strategies need to highlight why a change management plan is crucial to the success of the company, and how CLM plays a crucial role in it. Next, this plan should showcase the change management adoption strategy and what value it will bring to the company.
Make Plans Keeping in Mind Contingencies
CLM is infallible, but the change management strategy may encounter a few human-made errors or oversights along the way. When it comes to CLM-centric change management, legal departments have to have a backup plan if a certain leg of the plan doesn’t go according to plan, if employees need additional training, or if there are delays in deployment.
Incorporating CLM isn’t the goal of change management, however. Change management is adhered to on the principle of continuous improvement and updating to stay ahead of the game. Legal technology is constantly being improved and newer features are added to current CLM solutions. Your current change management strategy should be a long-term plan that can be used for several iterations of CLM.
Monitoring and Reviewing CLM in Change Management
Only if CLM in change management strategies are continually monitored, reviewed, and assessed against industry standards and benchmarks can it provide value to the company. Data points and metrics allow legal departments to ensure that their CLM change management is offering the benefits and return on investment that is expected out of it.
The Future of CLM and Change Management
Legal departments can demonstrate value to their organizations with change management strategies that incorporate CLM. The transformation of legal is an ongoing process and will enable legal departments to offer maximum value to their companies while driving business decisions.
