2023 Planning Checklist: How to Stay on Track Each Quarter

It’s never too early to plan for the end-of-quarter rush. It’s crucial to start strong so you don’t get stuck playing catch-up at such a high-stakes time for the company.

If the last few years taught us anything, it’s that the landscape of business can change at any time, for any reason, without warning. But it’s not impossible to make a plan – and stick to it. The key is to make a flexible plan and to use benchmarks to measure your performance.

Define your key performance indicators (KPIs) and set reasonable metrics to measure them so that you don’t spend your year guessing or estimating how well you’re doing. Or worse, being unsure until 2024.

The best way to start off on the right foot is to know ahead of time how you want to close out the quarter. Rather than trying to do everything all at once, approach this in big chunks and use metrics to measure your performance for the previous quarter so that you can start the following quarter strong.

Here is a checklist for getting through 2023 in one piece:

Track the Right Metrics

A huge part of tracking your performance is using the right metrics to gauge your level of success against your planned goals. It’s easy to assume that there are no legal metrics to track since there isn’t a super accurate way to measure all the risk legal has saved your company from. But that’s only one aspect of the job. 

Track metrics around the movement of contracts in and out of your business. This gives a solid idea of how your company is performing in the market and helps make more accurate forecasts and informed strategies. Some contract metrics include:

• Number of contracts executed quarterly
• Length of time between contract creation and execution
• Number of “turns” redlining
• Number of in-flight contracts at the end of each quarter

By understanding your contracts in terms of these numbers, it’s easier to quantify the amount of business being done and highlight areas to introduce improvements in the contract process.

Keep Tabs on Contracts to Update

Contracts aren’t a “set it and forget it” part of the business. As a living entity that governs (and protects) your business transactions, your contracts need to be updated regularly to reflect changes to the company, your customer base, the market, and the regulations. One key example is your website's terms and conditions (T&Cs). Even though this contract technically has a low (no) dollar value, it’s one that’s often subject to the most changes because of changes to the regulatory landscape. In 2018, the GDPR required businesses to include links to their privacy policy in their online terms or on their site in general. It also changed the requirements for pushing these updates to consumers.

At the end of every quarter, double-check your live agreements to ensure that they contain the necessary information for compliance. Some regulations to consistently check for include:

• Data privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR, CPRA, etc.)
• Salary transparency laws
• Labor laws
• Remote work policies
  
  

Measure Employee Performance

While there is some overlap, each company holds its workforce to unique standards and has a different way of tracking employee performance. But regardless of the metrics you use, it’s important to keep a finger on the pulse of employee performance — a business is only as strong as its workforce.

Legal teams can keep track of employee performance with CLM data. These can be among the metrics you track regularly. Ways to track and measure employee performance include:

• Number of contracts each team member worked on
• How many of these contracts were successfully completed (and how many weren’t)
• How long each team member took to complete a specific contract
• How they performed against the goal

If an employee is found lacking based on these previously determined metrics, then you can figure out a performance plan to put them on and a way for them to improve. This is also an opportunity to praise hard-working team members and ensure that the legal team’s workload is properly distributed.

Maintain Your Budget

Last but not least, measure your performance by tracking your budget. In an economic downturn, it’s crucial that teams are fiscally responsible so that businesses can maintain their runway and decrease their burn rate. Staying on budget is a key indicator of the health of your business in general and for your legal department specifically.

Legal used to be known as a cost center, but part of their reputation rehabilitation meant demonstrating the fact that they actually do more with less. By not spending more than has been allotted, legal also showcases their commitment to the company’s bottom line.

A checklist for tracking budget can include:

• Quarterly budget compared to actual spend
• Spend on legal matters
• Spend on outside counsel
• Average contract value compared to time spent
  
  

Takeaways

Start off on the right track by planning ahead what you’ll plan. Get more tips by subscribing to the LinkSquares blog.