Seven Tips to Get a Sales Team Using Your Contract Lifecycle Management Platform

From exploration to production to over-field planning, oil and gas companies need a lot of subsurface data for decision-making if they want to succeed. There is a lot of complexity involved in doing this – as well as financial risk, liability concerns, and more – so keeping your contracts in order is essential. 

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) software is needed for this. These solutions streamline the contract lifecycle end-to-end – simplifying processes, boosting workflows, and harvesting critical contract data. These digital platforms have become vital for effectively and efficiently controlling contracts and mitigating business risk. 

Still, while you can deploy the most powerful CLM solutions, if nobody can (or wants) to use it, then you’ve got a problem. And when it comes to sales, you’re dealing with a group that isn’t an easy sell. So, when we were planning the implementation of a new CLM solution, we also developed an adoption strategy that yielded great success. Following are seven tips that could help you achieve the same. 

Leverage Influencers

An integral part of our strategy was to engage sales influencers during the implementation process. Some salespeople can have a large influence on the mindset of others. Bring them into the process early, incorporate their insight, and let them know they’re a key part of this journey. You don’t want to make decisions in a silo that excludes the user. What’s more, educate them on the solution – placing emphasis on ease of use. Their buy-in and influence will send adoption rippling across your organization.

Easy Does It

The more clicks required, the less they’ll be inspired. Let that be your mantra, because ensuring the CLM solution was simple and easy to use won the adoption battle for us. We chose Summize because it was particularly user friendly. It integrates nicely with Microsoft products – including Word, Outlook, and Teams – and plays well with key customer relationship software like Salesforce. We’ve even been able to finally move documents off SharePoint to create a true one-stop shop for everything related to contracts.

Don’t Force It

You never want to push the adoption of a new process without buy-in. It’s the surest way to bring any usage to a grinding halt. Avoid a rigid “This is how is how it’s going to be, and these are the only processes we’re using” approach. Again, it’s all about cultivating personal ownership and gaining buy-in. To that end, nothing spurs user acceptance – and builds their confidence – more than being able to use the solution and experience the benefits firsthand. 

Small Steps to Start

You want to start small when using new CLM software. Apply it first to enhance the things you already do well. We first focused on master licensing agreements, moved on to non-disclosures, then began layering in agreements of all types. But doing it one step at a time and enhancing as we went maintained the focus of users, which is a much better approach to adoption than overwhelming and discouraging your sales team. 

Develop a Power User

Identify someone who immediately sees the value of CLM and the solution you’re deploying. Look for a person who cannot wait to get their hands on the tech, see what it looks like, and find out what it can do. A good example is just learning how templates are done. Be sure your CLM vendor has strong support that your power user has access to, especially in those early days. For instance, once a user has created a template a few times, they should be able to turn around new ones without any further assistance. Your power user should be both an internal resource and teacher, facilitating adoption by facilitating their peers’ success using it. 

Build a Bridge

The start of our CLM journey had a pre-implementation phase. Key to this was process mapping and identifying inefficiencies. Top of the list were manual spreadsheets and workflows that just didn’t connect any more. Build a bridge between sales and legal, sync processes, and verify workflows are flattering and not at odds.

Set Standards

A beauty of CLM solutions is that they standardize contract management throughout an entire organization. Standard templates mean salespeople are using the most current and approved contract versions. This means time isn’t lost on contracts that turn out to be outdated or unapproved. Reviews also become focused on new, relevant amendments rather than requiring users to pore through an entire document again. You can also get alerts when someone creates a new document based on the template – and not have to worry about reviewing it, because you know it’s already been approved. Standards make a user’s life easier, and that boosts adoption. 

Adoption and Returns

Our team was able to get up and running on our CLM system in just a couple of half-hour training sessions from Summize. Adoption quickly flowed out of that, immediately delivering greater efficiencies and capabilities. 

This is driving our return on investment in the technology, and the results continue to grow. As you deploy a CLM solution, be sure you also have an adoption strategy in play, and you’re bound to reap much greater returns.

Leah Samia is vice president of sales operations for Ikon Science, a global provider of geoprediction and knowledge management solutions enabling customers to make the best business decisions and moves.