Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) has become a top priority for C Level Executives worldwide. CLM systems are no longer a “nice to have” initiative, but rather a “need to have” business practice. The efficiencies introduced by an automated contract lifecycle solution are numerous – and, as the name suggests – it addresses the complete lifecycle of a contract.

Contract Lifecycle Management Systems and Contract Data Extraction Technologies have undergone a rapid transformation – thanks to both technological advances as well as a maturing business and legal user base. Modern CLM systems are no longer simple repositories for storing documents electronically. The best of these new systems make contract information reportable and actionable – showing contract dates, monetary values, terms, clauses, and obligations at a glance – and allowing tasks to be created and assigned to contract managers automatically based on changing information.

Contract Data Extraction Technology – software that accurately reads and extracts terms, clauses, and obligations from contracts, has also advanced substantially. Manual extraction and rudimentary extraction tools built around set phrases have given way to modern automated systems that use natural and machine language processing. These new tools allow for accurate, consistent, and complete extraction of information from contracts. They now understand languages, grammatical constructs, and sentence structures – much like your phone or GPS understands voice instructions. Advances in optical character recognition (OCR) and massive computing power, combined with the global reach of skilled people and computer connectivity further allow organizations to gain access to information in their legacy contracts.