Enterprise legal management (ELM) has become essential to both legal departments and the company as a whole. From contract lifecycle management (CLM) to task management, many legal to-dos have become easier to execute thanks to digital transformation in legal departments.
Thanks to advancements in legal tech, legal teams have more than a Rolodex and a fax machine to carry out their mountains of work. Digital transformation has introduced AI, eSignature, and cloud-based software into legal’s tech stack, allowing them to collaborate with other business functions more seamlessly, get more done in less time, and generate revenue for the business.
ELM gives legal control over all their responsibilities while allowing them to work with other departments. Here are ways ELM enables smoother collaboration between legal, sales, HR, finance, and marketing.
Contract Management with Sales
For in-house lawyers, executing sales contracts quickly is a big part of the job. But staying on top of those contracts — and knowing which ones to prioritize and when — is nearly impossible without enterprise legal management and CLM technology.
The sales team has nothing to lose and everything to gain from CLM — specifically, from integrating their CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.) with legal’s CLM. This gives them much-needed visibility into the status of their contracts at any given time, as well as insight into upcoming renewals and potentials for upselling. With all the data in one place, legal and sales can make smarter decisions that benefit the entire business.
Workforce compliance with HR
HR’s responsibilities range from recruiting and onboarding new employees to creating company policies and staying up to date on laws that would affect the company’s workforce. So whether it’s employment contracts or managing compliance, HR needs to work with legal to cover all their bases.
In a time of increased hybrid work, CLM enables remote collaboration between HR and legal. Legal can draft the language for employment contracts and code of conduct policies, ensuring that the agreements contain terms that will protect the business, and HR can use CLM to execute these agreements with consistency.
Spend management with finance
As the department that holds the purse strings, finance is mainly concerned with making sure that the company doesn’t spend more than it earns. Given legal’s reputation as a cost center, spend management is a crucial overlap between finance and legal.
The finance team can generate spending reports or customize CLM dashboards to get a high-level overview of the money coming into the business. CLM data is also a powerful tool for budgeting and tracking projected vs actual spending, especially when you run procurement deals through the software.
Data privacy compliance with marketing
Marketing is the functional owner of the company’s website and has a vested interest in ensuring that the site follows data privacy regulations like GDPR and CPRA. Non-compliance can mean not only millions in fines but also loss of business from lack of trust.
Rather than giving marketing control over something that’s not within their core competency, legal can keep track of the different regulations and use CLM and other enterprise legal management tools to help the marketing team implement the necessary changes on the website.
Takeaways
Enterprise legal management allows legal to take control of the tasks within their wheelhouse without stepping on anyone else’s toes. It enables collaboration and fosters goodwill between departments. Contact us to learn more about how enterprise legal management can transform your organization.
