For legal departments, implementing and operating a contract management platform in-house can be a timely and expensive affair. But according to the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium's “2017 State of the Industry Survey,” contract management deployment among legal departments is fairly high, though the market and the technology are less mature than many would want.

The findings are based off a survey of 158 corporations across 34 states and 11 countries. Of those, 54 percent said their legal department used a corporate management system. Among those 84 companies, there were 33 contract management vendors used, though six technology providers accounted for over half of all deployments.

The most popular contract management vendor was Apttus, which was used by 16 companies, followed by Ariba, which was used by 12 companies. Meanwhile, 10 companies used their own custom or homegrown contract management solution, while five turned to SpringCMS, and three each used either Icertis or SalesForce.

Lisa Konie, senior director of legal operations at Adobe Systems, explained that contract management solutions are becoming more common in legal departments due to their necessity and the flexibility with which they can be implemented.

“From the maturity scale, you're going to hit a point where you can't ignore it,” she said. Konie noted that large companies often need to bring some organization and insight into the high volumes of contracts they process and manage.

But for many, this doesn't mean having to invest in a fully fledged contract life cycle management system. There are “different ways to build a solution along the [contract life cycle] path,” Konie said. “Some solutions are very simple for discreet purposes, while others are going to go into the whole life cycle.”

Connie Brenton, chief of staff and senior director of legal operations at NetApp, gave an example of a “lightweight” contract management solution as one that allows a legal department to “start an agreement in the technology then pull it out during negotiations and put it back in for signature and filing.” Brenton, who is chairwoman of the board at CLOC, said such a contract management system “takes the majority of the complexity out of the technology.”

To be sure, while many legal departments deploy contract management solutions in-house, the technology adoption rate still lags behind other platforms such as e-billing, with 83 percent of those surveyed saying they use in-house.

But Mary O'Carroll, head of legal operations at Google, noted that contract solutions are far more challenging to deploy in-house, because unlike e-billing, they “will span a lot of different departments in the company.”

The technology is “touched by the sales team and the finance team and sometimes the compliance team,” she said. “So there are multiple stakeholders that want their particular requirements met. And that is just step one of figuring out if there is a system out there that can meet all these needs.”

Finding the right contract solution, however, can be difficult in a segmented and evolving market. While currently dominated by a handful of vendors, Brenton believes the contract management space is still fluid, where many new entrants, mergers and disruptions can take place. “I'll expect this contract technology space to grow before it consolidates,” she said.

O'Carroll agreed, adding, “I do think the space for contract management systems is going to look very different even in the next two years.”

One reason behind this evolving market is that no one company or contract technology covers all of a legal department's contract management needs.

“The technologies that are out there do have different strengths and certainly different weaknesses,” Konie said, explaining that most solutions today are targeted for specific contract segments, such sales or procurement, rather than serving multiple needs.

Many also see widespread issues with most contract management solutions that need to be addressed before the market can stabilize.

“Contract management solutions are still not as user friendly as they need to be,” said Jeffrey Franke, chief of staff to the general counsel and senior director of global legal operations at Yahoo. “In particular, one of the challenges has been integrating full contract management solutions” with other software attorneys regularly use, such as Microsoft Word.

Such shortcoming have motivated some companies to rely on homegrown contract management solutions in lieu of turning to vendor technology. “We are currently using a homegrown system and we have had that in place since the dawn of Google,” O'Carroll noted. She added that the company opted to build its own solution “because nothing was out there, nothing really existed that seemed like it would fulfill all the requirements we had.”

Whether companies continue to turn to homegrown solutions in the future largely depends on how the market for contract management solutions evolves. But one thing is certain: Ready or not, contract management solutions are here to stay.

For legal departments, implementing and operating a contract management platform in-house can be a timely and expensive affair. But according to the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium's “2017 State of the Industry Survey,” contract management deployment among legal departments is fairly high, though the market and the technology are less mature than many would want.

The findings are based off a survey of 158 corporations across 34 states and 11 countries. Of those, 54 percent said their legal department used a corporate management system. Among those 84 companies, there were 33 contract management vendors used, though six technology providers accounted for over half of all deployments.

The most popular contract management vendor was Apttus, which was used by 16 companies, followed by Ariba, which was used by 12 companies. Meanwhile, 10 companies used their own custom or homegrown contract management solution, while five turned to SpringCMS, and three each used either Icertis or SalesForce.

Lisa Konie, senior director of legal operations at Adobe Systems, explained that contract management solutions are becoming more common in legal departments due to their necessity and the flexibility with which they can be implemented.

“From the maturity scale, you're going to hit a point where you can't ignore it,” she said. Konie noted that large companies often need to bring some organization and insight into the high volumes of contracts they process and manage.

But for many, this doesn't mean having to invest in a fully fledged contract life cycle management system. There are “different ways to build a solution along the [contract life cycle] path,” Konie said. “Some solutions are very simple for discreet purposes, while others are going to go into the whole life cycle.”

Connie Brenton, chief of staff and senior director of legal operations at NetApp, gave an example of a “lightweight” contract management solution as one that allows a legal department to “start an agreement in the technology then pull it out during negotiations and put it back in for signature and filing.” Brenton, who is chairwoman of the board at CLOC, said such a contract management system “takes the majority of the complexity out of the technology.”

To be sure, while many legal departments deploy contract management solutions in-house, the technology adoption rate still lags behind other platforms such as e-billing, with 83 percent of those surveyed saying they use in-house.

But Mary O'Carroll, head of legal operations at Google, noted that contract solutions are far more challenging to deploy in-house, because unlike e-billing, they “will span a lot of different departments in the company.”

The technology is “touched by the sales team and the finance team and sometimes the compliance team,” she said. “So there are multiple stakeholders that want their particular requirements met. And that is just step one of figuring out if there is a system out there that can meet all these needs.”

Finding the right contract solution, however, can be difficult in a segmented and evolving market. While currently dominated by a handful of vendors, Brenton believes the contract management space is still fluid, where many new entrants, mergers and disruptions can take place. “I'll expect this contract technology space to grow before it consolidates,” she said.

O'Carroll agreed, adding, “I do think the space for contract management systems is going to look very different even in the next two years.”

One reason behind this evolving market is that no one company or contract technology covers all of a legal department's contract management needs.

“The technologies that are out there do have different strengths and certainly different weaknesses,” Konie said, explaining that most solutions today are targeted for specific contract segments, such sales or procurement, rather than serving multiple needs.

Many also see widespread issues with most contract management solutions that need to be addressed before the market can stabilize.

“Contract management solutions are still not as user friendly as they need to be,” said Jeffrey Franke, chief of staff to the general counsel and senior director of global legal operations at Yahoo. “In particular, one of the challenges has been integrating full contract management solutions” with other software attorneys regularly use, such as Microsoft Word.

Such shortcoming have motivated some companies to rely on homegrown contract management solutions in lieu of turning to vendor technology. “We are currently using a homegrown system and we have had that in place since the dawn of Google,” O'Carroll noted. She added that the company opted to build its own solution “because nothing was out there, nothing really existed that seemed like it would fulfill all the requirements we had.”

Whether companies continue to turn to homegrown solutions in the future largely depends on how the market for contract management solutions evolves. But one thing is certain: Ready or not, contract management solutions are here to stay.