As ALSPs climb up the value chain in the legal industry, CLM providers have an opportunity to build meaningful relationships with them. Thereby, unlocking a competitive edge wherein they gain access to top clients, notable banks, and Fortune 500 companies. Through these partnerships, CLM providers can generate a significant “multiplier effect” in terms of product exposure and adoption, for themselves and their clients.

It is no surprise that COVID has accelerated tech adoption across a majority of industries around the world. And the legal industry has not remained impervious to its impact. One of the areas most affected is contract lifecycle management (CLM). With remote work and distributed workforce models, the onus lies squarely on companies to manage ongoing risks, such as adoption, communication, and change management a few of the biggest killers of CLM implementation. And to alleviate this challenging scenario, which has become quite common amongst businesses during and the post-COVID era, the leading CLM companies have intensified their focus and efforts to ease the end-to-end process.

With the best practices in place to accelerate CLM implementation and adoption, businesses now opt to choose their best-fitting option from the range of solutions available. Today, DocuSign CLM, Evisort, SAP Ariba Contracts, JAGGER, Agiloft, Conga CLM, Pandadoc, CobbleStone Contract Insight, Malbek, Concordnow, Coupa CLM, Parleypro, and every CLM company is enabling their clients to maximize the value of their contract with effective CLM implementation, and ALSPs indeed have a solid role play here.

Let’s discuss how CLM providers can work with ALSPs to unlock long-term success, for their clients and themselves.

Reimagining the future: Partnering with ALSPs

While using a CLM platform, companies need to invest heavily in resources to extract contract metadata and migrate legacy contracts into database systems. All the while ensuring a smooth transition and adoption of their platform.

And this is where alternative legal services providers (ALSP) come into play. ALSPs offer both legal and commercial expertise, combined with operational experience in the legal landscape. A strategic partnership with ALSPs could assist in technology adoption and even smoothen implementation woes.

Top three reasons for CLM providers to work with ALSPs

  1. Alleviating cost pressures There is a rising need to “do more with less” law firms are looking to reduce legal function costs, coupled with the concern that resources are being wasted on low-value tasks. ALSPs offer specialized services and expertise, ensuring that resources are used strategically and efficiently.
  2. Scalability of solutions Legal departments are looking for end-to-end processes that can deliver on their strategic objectives. For CLM providers it involves building support and excitement for your CLM solution and soliciting participation to ensure adoption and success. Getting bogged down by contracting requirements and losing sight of the bigger picture helps no one. ALSPs offer a consultative approach that can optimize the business operations side of things, enabling CLM providers to focus on strategic value creation while clients transition to their platform. Additionally, ALSPs offer flexibility for resource allocation and project management on a project-by-project basis.
  3. Future-proofing your business and services There is a major shift towards the use of ALSPs with clear drivers such as access to specialized expertise, cost savings, and talent deployment. In a few cases, ALSPs also undertake marketing efforts on behalf of their CLM partners, resulting in product exposure and adoption. By partnering with agile ALSPs you can unlock strategic growth for your business. There is a case to be made that CLM providers with established ALSP relationships are in a favorable position to overcome current challenges. It is becoming increasingly clear that ALSPs are working their way up the value chain in the legal industry. CLM providers can gain a competitive edge by partnering with ALSPs, who already have meaningful relationships with clients, notable banks, and Fortune 500 companies.

As a reiteration of the aforementioned facts, Cenza has been progressively partnering with leading CLM providers. The journey began with Cenza forming a strategic partnership with ContractWorks— a provider known for its easy-to-use contract management software, industry-leading support team, and quick implementation process. Owing to the reliability and consistency in the quality of CLM services, Cenza has elevated as the preferred partner for Ironclad, a Contract Lifecycle Management software to help legal teams streamline contract creation processes.

What sets Cenza apart is our all-inclusive services to the end client, from CLM Consulting to Implementation. By partnering with the leading CLM providers, we deliver accelerated Cenza’s contract migration services, enabling our clients to efficiently migrate their data and unlock the full functionality of the chosen CLM tool even faster.

This justifies the writing on the wall for CLM companies: When you count on an ALSP as a client or partner, you can generate a significant “multiplier effect” in terms of product exposure and adoption.

 

 

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About the Author: Jayashree Nair

Jayashree has managed various engagements at Cenza for clients across the world. She led scoping and solution development for more than 20 client engagements, including some complex contract management-related requirements for clients and works on a daily basis with Ironclad and their clients on contract migration projects. She has successfully transitioned many complex projects for a variety of clients in the managed legal, AI and ML training, and Contract management space. She has an overall 12 years of experience, including previous stints at Accenture and R.R. Donnelly and has a strong understanding of project management and contract management projects.