Market Overview: Contract Life-Cycle Management, 2014

Every business or government has contracts with customers, suppliers, or other partners. Contract life-cycle management (CLM) software helps firms create, manage, and achieve maximum value from these contracts and is a key piece of the business technology agenda, especially for sell-side contracts. While sourcing and vendor management professionals increasingly use CLM tools to optimize their buy-side contracts, CLM tools make the most sense as enterprisewide solutions for handling all of a firm's contracts. Demand for CLM software is clearly growing, with revenues of CLM vendors projected to rise by 16% in 2014 and 12% in 2015. But the choice of the right CLM tool has gotten more complicated. Many vendors have strengthened their products by building linkages to related applications such as revenue management and configuration, pricing, and quoting on the sales side or to project management, risk management, and eInvoicing on the buy side. Potential clients of CLM solutions need to look for vendors that understand their vertical industry, have focused on the types of contracts most important in an industry, and have built the connections with the related apps for the buying and/or selling activities of their industry.