Agiloft Appoints Contract Lifecycle Management Thought Leader Prashant Dubey as Chief Strategy Officer

• Legal industry author and widely recognized CLM visionary Dubey brings years of battle-hardened CLM process and program expertise; known for experienced-based, pragmatic strategies on how to create impact with CLM

• Dubey outlines 5 key contract management trends for 2023 as he takes on new leadership role with CLM powerhouse Agiloft

Agiloft, the global standard in no-code Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), announced the appointment of CLM visionary Prashant Dubey as its new Chief Strategy Officer and Research Chair, Agiloft Insights. Dubey brings more than two decades of experience in the legal services market, most recently with Elevate, a global provider of software and services for the legal industry, where he was VP and GM of CLM, delivering services that helped customers implement strategies to optimize their CLM programs. Before Elevate, Dubey founded and served as president and CEO of Sumati™, the industry leader in contract review and analysis and CLM Technology Managed Services, which was acquired by Elevate in 2018. Dubey is also the author of “The Generalist Counsel: How Leading General Counsel Are Shaping Tomorrow’s Companies.”

“The CLM market is white hot, given the revenue-enhancing power of CLM in challenging market and macroeconomic conditions,” said Agiloft CEO Eric Laughlin. “We sincerely could not be more excited to bring Prashant’s deep CLM, legal, business, and technology expertise onboard to help refine our strategies to capture market demand and also provide thought leadership to our customers and the industry.”

“I’ve spent decades helping customers create real business impact from their CLM and it’s an honor to join Agiloft to help bring those learnings to one of the largest and most loyal CLM customer bases in the industry,” said Dubey. “In an industry where churn is pervasive, I am excited to build upon Agiloft’s sterling reputation for successful implementation, industry-leading customer retention, and customers who come back again and again to solve additional business problems with its flexible, no-code platform.”

In his new role, Dubey will lead the advancement of the company’s three-year strategic plan, focused on continuing to capture momentum in the fast-growing CLM space. He will also serve as Research Chair of Agiloft Insights – Agiloft’s in-house data-driven market research program – to formulate actionable insights derived from customer needs and industry trends and share those insights to transform and accelerate the growth of the CLM market.

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Dubey joins Agiloft at a critical time for businesses and the legal services industry—with recent macroeconomic, regulatory, and public health events causing every GC, CFO, CRO, and procurement leader to scour their legacy contracts, automate their contracting processes, and take steps to build risk mitigation into their business relationships and the contracts that govern them. Here he outlines five key predictions for the contract management industry in 2023:

1. In 2023, the GC Rises to Chief Legal Officer: With CLM, the best General Counsel make the move from identifying risk to managing risk, enhancing the agility of their business, and driving revenue and shareholder value. This will happen in companies with a mature use of CLM—meaning they have progressed past the efficiency phase of CLM to using the risk management and business acceleration insights available from their contracts to guide strategic decision-making at the highest levels, warranting their Chief Legal Officer’s seat at the executive table.
2. Procurement Leaders Take Control of their Contracting Destiny: Traditionally, procurement teams are focused on items directly related to price, volume mix, or service levels associated with a core product or service. However, risk is the principal driver for legal departments and terms related to data privacy, cyber security, and compliance are often the focus. Those differences and associated complexity cause bottlenecks in the purchasing process and have made it difficult for procurement professionals to focus on actions that have historically measured the effectiveness of their organization. Because of the differences between what procurement and legal teams care most about, most large procurement organizations are now taking control of their contracting process and are launching major initiatives to create global contracting centres of excellence enabled by CLM. This will create more productive relationships between legal and procurement departments and accelerate contracting cycle times, enabling lawyers to practice more law and generate a more uniform application of risk thresholds.
3. Self-Serve Sales Contracts Finally Get the Green Light: The promise of CLM to help sales teams “negotiate their own contracts,” accelerate sales cycle times, and speed time to revenue has long been known. But this is the year—companies with enough experience digitizing their contracts can now see empirically which contracts are actually “bespoke” and which contain provisions they have negotiated repeatedly only to end up at the same endpoint. With these insights available through CLM, legal teams can make that endpoint the new starting point without the need for deep legal review on every agreement while also providing sales teams pre-approved fallback provisions. This will provide sales teams more negotiation flexibility and immediately accelerate contracting cycle times for the sales process.
4. “GPS-esq” Live Data Visualization of Contract Data Makes CLM 2023’s Digital Transformation Darling: Traditional contracts are like old, paper street maps. They give you a certain amount of visibility into the lay of the land and a general route to success, but they could provide only so much more information. On modern maps, digital overlays, such as topographic information and dynamic data feeds about traffic flow, are more helpful for travelers. In a similar vein, digital contracts’ extensive information provides a better understanding of individual relationships as well as the wider ecosystem of relationships with suppliers and customers—what terms led to successful outcomes, what trends point to things that typically go wrong, etc. CLM solutions turn ‘flat’ contracts into data-rich decision-making tools. Like a GPS system, real-time data feeds from contracts show decision-makers not only the direction strategies will take them, but also where reality may impact those strategies, making CLM and the visibility it provides THE enterprise digital transformation darling of the year.
5. CLM Solves the Number 1 Strategic Initiative for the next 12 Months: Maximizing Revenue*: Efficient contracting lowers cost and enables lawyers to practice more law. However, automating contracting processes, while infusing risk-adjusted and data-driven “decision points” into the contracting workflow, allows companies to protect and enhance revenue. Being able to make proactive decisions about how to balance legal and commercial terms, whether to renew a contract or knowing which contract takes precedence after an acquisition, provides the foundation for major revenue enhancement. In 2023, this will become the reality. In support of this goal, World Commerce and Contracting reports that the average company saves 9.2% of revenue loss a year with a CLM—and up to 15% a year in larger companies—ever more critical in the face of the World Bank pointing to a global recession in 2023.

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