In under two months of 2025, organizations face a battery of changing regulations, new tariffs, and economic uncertainty … all while trying to stay competitive, remain resilient, and execute on their AI strategy. Here’s the good news: How well your organization deals with risk, crisis, and operations opportunity will largely depend on … you guessed it … contracts!

The reason is simple and also complex. Your business depends on a vast ecosystem of suppliers, providers, and customers, and the only leverage, accountability, and recourse that you have is dictated in the contract. AI creates even more urgency, because an AI strategy relies on the purchase of foundation models, pretrained data, open-source large language models, and new generative AI capabilities of existing third parties. To thrive in this new environment, organizations must adapt contract language and the contracting process, and to help sort out the best of the best, I’ve just completed The Forrester Wave™: Contract Lifecycle Management Platforms, Q1 2025.

Three Contract Lifecycle Management Capabilities To Look For Beyond Contract Creation

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) has existed for decades as a digital contract repository with basic workflow for contract creation and execution. Today, these capabilities are table stakes. With uncertainty the new status quo, business leaders and especially contract management professionals need to level up with CLM that:

  • Offers robust contract governance features. The post-signature process is as important as the pre-signature process. A key function of a contract is to assign accountability and define recourse. What’s the purpose of going through the lengthy and painstaking negotiation process if you don’t plan to ensure that the terms are being followed? For example, did you receive what you paid for? Provide what you promised? Are there no surprises as to each counterparty’s responsibility when (not if) a disruption or crisis occurs? To be successful at assigning accountability and defining recourse, you’ll need AI obligations extraction, automated scheduling, event-triggered notifications, and features to track milestones and deliverables.
  • Supports emerging or edge use cases. Whether you’re buying, selling, or partnering, changes in risk and/or regulation require adjustments and amendments to your playbook, templates, and workflow. As new operational resilience requirements lean into contractual provisions, CLM becomes a secret weapon to identify risk exposure and enforce ongoing compliance. M&A activity requires contract harmonization across the new entity. The frequency and scale of technology disruption calls for an update to clauses that assign accountability during disruptive events and clearly outline timeframes for vendors to patch and remediate. Keep an eye out for CLM providers that create solutions today to address tomorrow’s challenges.
  • Provides default product security settings and configurations. CLM is a technology containing highly sensitive, confidential, and proprietary information, which makes it a lucrative target for cyberattacks. Although different companies have their own security requirements and will customize product security settings, vendors that support default settings/configurations and provide guidance on security best practices enable customers to mitigate the risk of a cyber incident or breach.

Use The Graphic, But Dig Into The Details

It’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words, but to sum up nearly five months of research, including product demos, executive briefings, written responses, and customer reference feedback, in a single graphic would be an oversimplification of how far this market has come and where it is today. Every one of the 12 vendors in this evaluation is a leading product in the CLM space and deserves contextual consideration. Read the full report for more details on selecting a CLM vendor. Also, schedule a guidance session with me for deeper insights into this market, to discuss your CLM program, or to get additional details about the process or findings from this research.