Transforming from Contract Management to Commercial Value Management (Part 1): Setting the Table for Digital Transformation (especially for procurement) [PRO]

Are you looking to find that perfect business area for digital transformation this holiday season?

Well, look no further than contract management.

We know what you’re thinking: Improve the efficiency of processing legal documents? That doesn’t sound very festive, or even high impact! However, contract lifecycle management (CLM) itself is being transformed toward a more strategic and business-focused commercial approach that puts revamped contract information (which itself is being transformed to contract intelligence/knowledge through AI) at the commercial core of nearly all business processes. And yes, blockchain is obviously very relevant here too, but that’s a story for another day.

At Spend Matters, we use the term “commercial value management (CVM)” to denote this type of “CLM on steroids.” The word “contracts” (legal documents) is purposefully replaced with the term “commercial” (commerce / business) and “lifecycle” (of the contract) is replaced with “value” to denote the maximization and protection of monetary value embedded within all process lifecycles (e.g., source-to-pay, order-to-cash/configure-price-quote, plan-to-report, forecast-to-fulfill).

So, this area has a little something for all departments across a business to see and manage: spend (procurement), financial assets/liabilities (finance), legal obligations (legal department), service/asset management (IT), revenues (sales/marketing/CEO), risk/compliance (GRC), service-levels (supply chain/ops), vendors/suppliers (procurement, VMOs, etc.), SOW-based services (including contingent workforce), and all-of-the-above (global business services).

Most importantly, it’s an area that you can actually start small and increasingly collaborate cross functionally and generate hard-dollar financial value (although there’s still plenty of organizational land mines here). It’s also an area where artificial intelligence is being developed and implemented aggressively because of the money that is at stake and because of how broken the current processes and systems are.

In this Spend Matters PRO analysis, we will discuss:

* Priorities of more than 450 CPOs where CLM/CVM has direct relevance
* Why CLM/CVM is a critical competency for procurement professionals to master within source-to-pay (S2P) for planning your work strategically, doing better deals, eliminating value leakage, managing suppliers, etc. It also works hand-in-glove with sourcing, category management, and supplier management (relationship management, performance management, risk management, and information management)!
* Why CLM/CVM is also a critical influence tool to better engage stakeholders who are both spend owners and functional partners with a vested interest here. In later posts, we will share some stakeholder/category specific playbooks that you can use.

In subsequent Spend Matters PRO articles, we also will provide a detailed capability maturity model (and supporting digital capabilities/functionality of leading solutions) that practitioners can use to help plan their capability development, and, yes, their digital transformation.

OK, let’s dive in …

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