Last reviewed on October 3, 2026.
Composite scenario. This is an illustrative scenario built from common adoption patterns, not a profile of a real organisation. It contains no real names, quotes or measured results. Use it as a planning template and replace every assumption with your own data.
The starting point
Picture a global company with contracts spread across shared drives, email, an e-signature account and several business-unit systems. Sales complains that contracts slow deals; procurement cannot see renewal dates; legal cannot answer "how many contracts contain clause X?" without a manual search.
Scoping: three use cases, not thirty
- Sales paper (order forms, NDAs) generated from CRM data with approval rules.
- Supplier contracts linked to procurement, so renewal and price terms are visible.
- A searchable repository of legacy contracts with key data extracted.
Vendor selection
Large organisations typically shortlist enterprise CLM platforms such as Icertis, DocuSign CLM, Agiloft, Ironclad or ContractPodAi. The deciding factors are usually integration with CRM, ERP and procurement systems, multi-language support and the vendor's implementation capacity. See the CLM selection guide.
Where projects like this struggle
- Data migration: legacy contracts are incomplete, duplicated or scanned; AI extraction helps but needs human checking.
- Integrations: procurement and ERP connections take longer than planned.
- Adoption: business users route around the system if it is slower than email.
- Template sprawl: dozens of regional variants need rationalising before automation.
What to measure
- Median cycle time per contract type, by stage (before and after).
- Share of contracts created through the system rather than outside it.
- Renewals actioned before notice deadlines.
- Legal hours per contract for standard paper.
For turning these measures into money, see building a CLM business case.
Lessons
- Treat CLM as a process change with a technology component, not the other way round.
- Phase the rollout by contract type or region and prove value early.
- Give one named owner responsibility for templates, playbooks and data quality.