The most basic element of virtually all Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) solutions is a centralized repository that provides easy and fast access to contracts and associated documents. But, as companies become more and more dependent on contracts for defining complex relationships, the potential benefits of extending the information locked in this repository to other business processes are becoming increasingly apparent.

The driver behind this growing awareness is the recognition that as boiler plate clauses make way for the highly granular and customer-specific information required in complex contracts, the overlap between this information and the types of data stored in other business applications increases. And, in cases where overlapping information resources do occur, it is the data associated with the contract that is the most reliable because it is immutable and companies are legally bound by it.

This whitepaper introduces the concept of a “contract master,” a dynamic centralized database of legally defined information that can be easily leveraged across standardized business critical applications such as ERP, CRM, or SFA.