How to build a business case for contract lifecycle management

Contracting workflows have transformed radically over the past three years. Legal teams are no longer simply “requesting a tool”; they’re responding to broader organisational demands:

• Revenue teams expect contracts to move at the speed of their deals.
• Finance expects accurate, real-time contract data for forecasting and spend control.
• HR expects offer letters and onboarding docs to turn around in minutes, not days.
• Security and compliance expect audit-ready, structured data—not PDFs scattered across systems.

But CLM is still a cross-functional investment, and most organisations struggle to tell a story that resonates with executives. This guide brings together modern CLM buying patterns, clear frameworks, revenue-aligned metrics, and actionable templates to help you build a business case that wins.

How to build a compelling business case for CLM software in 2026

1. Identify your key stakeholders and tailor your narrative to each

Before you begin to build your business case for contract lifecycle management software, you first need to establish who you’re trying to persuade. It’s critical to establish this early on, as who you’re seeking to get buy-in from will usually shape your case. 

CLM affects every team that touches contract data. But stakeholders vary in what they value. A GC cares about risk; a CFO cares about ROI; a CRO cares about cycle time; HR cares about candidate experience. When your narrative speaks directly to each stakeholder’s goals, you reduce friction and accelerate approval.

2. Start with the problem, not the solution

It’s no secret that starting a discussion about adopting contract lifecycle management software with ‘I want’ is unlikely to get you buy-in.

While you might be all too familiar with the growing pains you’re experiencing with a manual contract workflow, external stakeholders won’t be. Before you dive straight in with a solution, it’s important to introduce them to the problem first. 

To illustrate the problem, you want to narrate it. Explain clearly why the current situation is bad, and what its tangible downsides are. 

The four universal symptoms of manual contract lifecycle management are as follows:

• Friction: Deals slow down. Hiring slows down. Vendor onboarding slows down.
• Invisibility: No one knows what’s signed, where it is, or what the obligations are.
• Leakage: Discounts creep up; renewals slip; outdated terms keep being reused.
• Risk: Compliance gaps expand; data gets siloed; access isn’t controlled.

You should also draw upon real examples and figures when describing the problem, as this helps stakeholders understand the severity of your problem and how urgently it needs their attention. One of the best methods of persuasion is to build trust and credibility, and numbers help you do that.

Some contract management KPIs we often see include:

• Average cycle time from draft to signature
• Number of manual edits per contract
• Time legal spends on low-value work
• Contracts stored across X systems
• Percentage of contracts without complete data
• Contract value leakage due to slow cycles
• Revenue at risk from missed renewals

Translating this into a compelling problem statement leaves you with something like this:

“Our sales cycle currently averages 21 days, and 8–10 of those are contract-related. Each day of delay risks £20–40k of revenue in quarter-end cycles. Contracting is now the single largest operational bottleneck in our quote-to-cash flow.”

4. Dig deeper into the problem

If you really want to go into detail about the problems posed by a manual contract workflow, you could even take a more granular approach. This can help to illustrate exactly how not implementing contract lifecycle management software can affect growth in all areas, including critical company-wide objectives. 

Try describing the problem at different levels within the company:

Top-level: how will inaction affect the company strategy?

• Is increasing contract risk damaging the chances of you merging with another company or raising funding?
• Are slow contract turnaround times blocking sales teams and making it difficult, if not impossible, to meet aggressive revenue targets?
• Will ineffective contract processes hinder HR teams in their pursuit of top talent and rapid headcount growth? 

Mid-level: what are the financial consequences of inaction?

• How much are the costs of managing legal documents inflated at present? When will this exceed the budget?
• How much are you already overpaying for multiple licenses on existing tools that haven’t been adopted properly or don’t solve the fundamental problem?
• Are you experiencing contract value leakage as a result of slow turnaround and contract review times? How much?

On the ground: what does the current process look like in practice?

• What does the existing process for contract lifecycle management look like? Does it create unnecessary risk? How much time does it waste?
• Are existing contract processes resulting in poor job satisfaction or high turnover rates?
• How much time is being spent responding to repetitive queries from other departments about contracts?

5. Look beyond legal - who else is suffering?

For the best chance of convincing your stakeholders to buy contract lifecycle management software, relate it back to them. Who else is suffering, aside from the legal team?

Are sales teams waiting too long for legal review, causing contracts to lose momentum? Are finance departments having to foot the bill for missed contract renewals? Are HR teams falling behind the hiring curve due to inefficient contract processes for HR contracts and employment offer letters?

Interview each affected function and capture:

• The manual steps they perform
• Time wasted
• Errors they commonly encounter
• Risks they’ve logged
• Metrics they’re accountable for

Then convert these insights into statements like:

• “HR misses offer turnaround SLAs 38% of the time due to slow contracting.”
• “Procurement can’t track vendor renewal dates, leading to surprise spend.”
• “Sales works from five different templates, creating inconsistency and risk.”

An investment for the business is often far more compelling than an investment for a department working in silos, so focus on who else is losing out. 

6. Explain why now and not later 

Lack of urgency remains one of the most common reasons for pushback when signing off new software. Contract lifecycle management software proposals are no exception.

Convincing stakeholders that you need to implement CLM software is half the battle. The other half is convincing them that you need it now, not three years down the line. 

The best way to establish this sense of urgency is to make it clear what will happen if you don’t implement something within the desired timeframe.

For some businesses, this might be that they’re fast approaching their next funding round and without a robust system of record in place for contracts, passing due diligence is unlikely.

Perhaps it’s because you have recently suffered from a huge compliance issue as a result of ineffective contracting processes, and this has proven costly for the company. Maybe you’re in a critical stage in your growth where inefficiencies that slow down sales cycles put aggressive revenue targets at risk. 

Whatever your why is, use compelling events to demonstrate the need and the risks of not implementing contract lifecycle management software soon. 

7. Sell them on the potential

Don’t stop at sharing the problems the legal function is encountering. You also want to sell stakeholders a dream of what the function could be like, and achieving, if CLM software is introduced. 

How would implementing contract lifecycle management software transform your existing contract workflow? How can it enable other teams to perform more efficiently? What would it allow you to do that you can’t currently? Why is that important?

Let the stakeholders know what you could achieve from adopting CLM software and set out metrics that make these aspirations measurable.

The best business cases are concrete. Not “We’ll be more efficient,” but:

• “Cycle time reduced from 21 days to 7 days.”
• “Offer letters generated in under 60 seconds via HRIS workflows.”
• “Template variance reduced by 90 per cent.”
• “Renewal leakage eliminated through automated alerts.”
• “Sales self-serve 80 per cent of contracts without legal involvement.”

And yes, all of this is possible with a contracting solution like Juro:

8. Explain how you’ll combat risk on your end

The first reaction of any decision-maker will be to greet your numbers with a healthy pinch of suspicion. And they’re right to do so; software implementations fall down for any number of reasons, and a failure to deliver on the ROI that you promised will only hurt your reputation internally, making it harder to push through a successful business case next time. 

It’s important to call out the key risks that could threaten these financial benefits, and explain how you’ll meet them. It’s worth putting these concerns to your proposed vendor on any demonstrations or calls you have with them. Examples might be:

• Low adoption: will people actually use the tool? If only two of your proposed ten users actually migrate to the new solution, the cost savings and boosts to revenue will be smaller in scale and harder to justify. Look for a solution like Juro that prioritizes ease of use and has a strong evidence base in terms of adoption.

• Long, tricky implementation: how easy is it to set up and get to value with the new tool? If it takes your IT team six months to configure, this cuts your year one ROI in half. Look for a solution with fast onboarding and demonstrably quick time-to-value.

• Hard to integrate: does your proposed solution talk to, and work with, all the other tools you use? For example, if the entire sales team uses Salesforce every day, it’s unrealistic to expect them to use a tool that doesn’t integrate well with their CRM. Avoid this risk with a solution that fits easily into your current tech stack.

By addressing these concerns proactively, you’ll be able to build trust faster and put these nagging concerns to rest. 

9. Propose your plan of action 

To recap: by now, you’ve identified the precise problem that’s causing pain to the business. You’ve made clear that it’s not just you who suffers – individuals in teams in various functions feel the pain too, and it’s affecting the business in measurable ways right from the bottom to the top. You’ve painted a picture of a world without this problem; and finally you’ve identified the allies you need to pull the trigger on this decision. 

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Now it’s time to state your plan clearly. Set out what you intend to buy, when, on what basis, for which teams, and the length of any trial periods. At this point you’ll want to compare different contract lifecycle management platforms and assess these against your core business requirements.

This can be a lengthy process. But if you truly want to nail adoption and reap the rewards of implementing a CLM system, it’s well worth the time invested. 

Looking for a CLM that supports this business case end-to-end?

Juro is the all-in-one contract automation platform that enables legal and business teams to collaboratively create, agree, and manage contracts in one unified workspace.

Juro offers:

• A structured data model that powers accurate reporting and advanced automation
• AI tools for extraction, summarization, clause drafting, and querying
• Deep CRM and HRIS integrations
• Intuitive UX that drives adoption across sales, people, finance and operations
• Fast implementation and immediate time-to-value
• A single source of truth for your entire contract portfolio

Book a demo to build a compelling business case backed by real numbers and tailored workflows.