Introduction: Why ROI is crucial for your CLM
Contract management teams are being asked to do more with less. Budgets are tighter, headcount is limited, and expectations from the C-suite have never been higher. Legal leaders need to demonstrate that every investment they make drives measurable impact for the business. That’s why measuring ROI from your Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution isn’t just helpful -- it’s non-negotiable.
CLM platforms promise efficiency, automation, and better collaboration. But without clear ROI metrics, it’s easy to end up with shelfware or a solution that creates more administrative burden than it removes. The right CLM should do more than just house contracts; your CLM should accelerate business outcomes, reduce costs, and elevate legal's strategic influence across the organization.
According to Deloitte, 26% of the workforce (1 in 4 workers) is involved in contracting in some capacity, and 65% of organizations (2 out of every 3 companies) are investing in CLM technology to make that contracting process less cumbersome. The opportunity to unlock ROI is massive -- if you choose the right CLM solution.
In this guide, we'll show you how to evaluate a potential Contract Lifecycle Management solution to ensure it not only makes your contracting process better, but delivers a positively measurable, demonstrable, and defensible return on investment.
How do you assess CLM's value and impact to your organization?
When evaluating your CLM’s ROI, the obvious question is, "How much are we spending?" The better question is, "How much are we saving, accelerating, and strategically improving our business operations?"
Key areas of CLM assessment include:
- Efficiency gains: Are processes faster and less error-prone (do we need fewer rounds of redlines)?
- Cost reduction: Are we lowering spend on outside counsel or administrative tasks?
- Revenue acceleration: Are sales cycles moving more quickly?
- Risk mitigation: Are we reducing contract-related risks and improving compliance?
- Strategic enablement: Is Legal spending more time on high-impact work?
5 key CLM metrics to review
1. Contract completion time
The faster contracts are completed, the faster business gets done. OutSystems accelerated contract completion time by over 30% with LinkSquares, thanks to automated workflows and Salesforce integration.
2. Sales contract time to close
Sales cycles live and die by contract delays. Commvault reduced their time to signature by 50% using LinkSquares' automated processes and self-service templates.
3. Reduction in outside counsel spend
Softonic cut their outside counsel spend by 40% after implementing LinkSquares, improving collaboration and reducing dependency on expensive external legal resources.
4. Time to value from implementation
A CLM should deliver value quickly, not after months of painful onboarding. Omnitrax transitioned to LinkSquares from an expiring legacy system in under six weeks, avoiding vendor lock-in and accelerating their compliance reporting at the same time, all during the year-end reporting crunch.
5. Adoption and usage across the organization
A CLM only drives ROI if your teams -- and your most critical stakeholders -- actually use it. HotelPlanner’s legal leader now spends more time collaborating with the C-suite rather than chasing them down for contracts, thanks to LinkSquares' intuitive, integrated platform.
Competitor comparison
Not all CLM solutions are created equal. Here’s how LinkSquares stands apart:
| Capability | LinkSquares | Many Competitors |
| Time to Value | Go live in weeks, not months | Long, costly implementations |
| Ease of Use | Intuitive UI, high adoption | Complex, clunky interfaces |
| End-to-End CLM | Full contract lifecycle coverage | Often fragmented point solutions |
| AI Roadmap | Proprietary AI + Agentic AI vision | Generic ChatGPT wrappers |
| Customer Success | Best-in-class support & onboarding | Limited post-sale engagement |
| Integration | Seamless connections to Salesforce, MS Word, Slack, and more | Limited or manual integrations |
What should you ask a CLM vendor about ROI?
When evaluating a CLM solution, come armed with the right questions to get beyond the sales pitch:
- How fast will we start seeing value after I begin implementation?
- How much have your customers reduced outside counsel spend?
- What quantifiable time-savings can we expect across legal and business teams?
- How does your AI strategy drive automation today -- and what’s your roadmap for Agentic AI?
- What ongoing support will you provide after implementation?
- How do you ensure organization-wide adoption?
Hype vs. reality: How to spot AI pretenders
The CLM market is crowded with solutions that simply bolt ChatGPT onto old workflows. That’s not true AI. True CLM AI:
- Understands contracts contextually
- Powers real-time risk analysis and clause extraction
- Offers predictive insights, not just reactive summaries
- Is built on a dedicated, evolving roadmap
LinkSquares is investing in Agentic AI -- AI that doesn’t just assist but takes proactive action across your contracting workflows. This is the future of legal technology.
According to the 2024 Future of Professionals Report, AI could free up 4 hours of legal professionals' time each week. That’s time your team can spend driving strategic outcomes, not chasing paperwork. But the best way to ensure your CLM has this level of impact is to ensure the included AI can actually do real work, not just parrot the flimsy document summaries you can get for free from ChatGPT.
ROI is measured in more than dollars (and benefits more than the legal team)
Yes, a strong CLM delivers hard ROI: hours saved, dollars cut from outside counsel, and faster revenue realization. But the real return on investment is bigger, because contracting "grunt work" is minimized or eliminated and contract value is delivered faster. This opens a whole new realm of CLM KPIs:
- Legal Teams: Spend more time on high-value counsel, less on admin
- KPI: Measure where legal spends its time and how much more is spent on strategy
- Sales: Close deals faster, hit quota sooner
- KPI: Measure how long sales deals spending in "contracting" status and how much that time decreases
- Procurement: Accelerate vendor onboarding and compliance
- KPI: Measure how much time is spent is spent evaluating vendors and procurement contracts and how much that figure declines
- Finance: Gain clear, real-time visibility into contractual obligations
- KPI: Measure time spent preparing and tracking contract renewals
- CEO/COO: See measurable business impact and legal’s growing strategic value
- KPI: Track top-line revenue and gross margins both before and after CLM was adopted
Why LinkSquares? Don't ask us; ask our customers.
Don’t take our word for it. Our customers are seeing the ROI every day:
- Esusu cut contract turnaround time by 2 days, saved 5 hours per week on contract searches, and reduced reporting tasks by 10 hours per month with LinkSquares.
- Manscaped cut their contract workload in half by standardizing templates and automating approval flows with LinkSquares.
- DispatchHealth cut their employment offer cycle time by 50% using LinkSquares CLM to streamline their employee contracting process.
LinkSquares is recognized by G2, Forrester, and our customers as a leader in CLM, with best-in-class ease of use, fastest time to value, and award-winning customer success.
Next steps: Take action on ROI now
Does your current CLM fail to deliver clear ROI? Talk to the LinkSquares team to see how quickly we can help your organization drive efficiency, cost savings, and strategic impact.