As businesses grow, so does the volume and complexity of contracts they handle. What starts as a manageable process with one or two stakeholders quickly turns into a multi-team operation involving legal, finance, sales, and operations. Without a structured approach, these workflows can easily spiral into inefficiency, delays, and risk.

A contract management plan helps fast-growing companies bring structure to this process. It’s not just about compliance. It’s about helping legal teams reduce manual work, accelerate deal velocity, and ensure that everyone involved in the contract lifecycle knows exactly what to do and when.

What is a Contract Management Plan?

A Contract Management Plan (CMP) is a tool that makes sense of dense and lengthy contracts, enabling contract managers to have a clear understanding of key deliverables and core risks.

But what should a contract management plan include? When is the right time to implement one? And what does success actually look like? In this blog, we share what we’ve learned while helping scale legal operations, including how to think about approvals, collaboration, metrics, and the systems that tie it all together.

The messiness of contract workflows in growing companies

In a typical high-growth company, contracts involve several internal and external stakeholders. You might need input from the sales team, finance, procurement, and of course, legal. Each of these teams may prefer different communication channels. Some rely strictly on email, while others use Slack or ticketing systems. Without a standardized workflow, it becomes difficult to track conversations, align on next steps, and get contracts over the finish line.

One of the biggest challenges is simply knowing who to reach out to. A sales rep might need legal’s help but not know whether they should email someone directly, raise a ticket, or post in a Slack channel. And when the answer involves routing to someone else, the delay compounds. “This isn’t mine, check with finance,” or “This needs VP approval, not mine” are common blockers that add unnecessary back-and-forth.

In the absence of a contract management plan, lawyers spend more time on coordination than on actual legal work. That includes manually chasing approvals, resending drafts, or responding to questions that could have been answered by a well-documented process.

Creating a Contract Management Plan

A contract management plan should reduce friction, not add more steps. It should provide clarity, automate routine tasks, and empower business teams to take ownership where appropriate. Here are the key elements we recommend for any growing team:

1. Enable self-service where possible

Not every contract needs legal’s direct involvement. Standard templates like NDAs or low-value MSAs can often be handled by sales or procurement through a self-serve process. The legal team can still own the playbook and maintain control over templates and clause libraries, but it doesn’t need to be involved in every transaction. This dramatically reduces the volume of routine requests that come through Legal’s inbox.

2. Automate the approval workflow

Manual approvals are a drain on everyone’s time. A smart contract management plan builds in approval logic so thresholds are triggered automatically. For instance, if a deal exceeds $10,000, it should go to the VP. If it exceeds $20,000, the system should route it to the CFO. These rules shouldn’t live in a spreadsheet or an internal doc. They should be embedded in the platform itself so approvals are routed without legal or sales needing to chase them manually.

Even if your system cannot fully automate the process, it should at least provide prompts or warnings. A message that says, “Your contract exceeds the CFO threshold” can go a long way in preventing delays and ensuring compliance.

3. Centralize collaboration and comments

Conversations about contracts often happen across tools. One thread might live in email, another in Slack, and a third in a Google Meet chat. The contract management plan should include a clear policy on where collaboration happens. Ideally, all stakeholders should be able to view the latest version of the contract, add comments, and see approval statuses in one central system. This minimizes confusion and eliminates the need to forward PDFs or screenshots of redlines.

A Contract management plan tailored to the specific needs of the contract, taking into account the dense and lengthy contracts, and ensuring that all stakeholders are aware of their obligations and responsibilities.

When should you formalize your contract management plan?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer here. Some companies hit this point early due to high contract volume. Others may delay until their team grows beyond a certain size. But there are some clear signs that it’s time:

• You’re managing more than a few contracts a week across departments
  
• Approvals are getting delayed or lost in inboxes
  
• Legal is spending more time coordinating than lawyering
  
• Business teams are unsure of the correct process
  

In companies where contracting is a core operational function, like marketplaces or service platforms, a contract management plan becomes essential even in the early stages. If your team is executing contracts daily or has complex negotiation flows, it’s worth investing in structure sooner rather than later.

What does success look like for contract management plans?

Success should be measured both in terms of legal efficiency and business impact. Some of the most useful metrics include:

• Turnaround time: How long does it take to go from contract initiation to signature?
  
• Reduction in manual work: Are lawyers still chasing approvals or sending PDFs manually?
  
• Volume of self-serve contracts: Are business teams able to execute low-risk contracts without legal?
  
• Time spent on administrative queries: How often are legal teams answering questions like “Who needs to approve this?” or “Can you resend the latest draft?”
  

The goal of a contract management plan is not just to speed things up. It’s to ensure that legal is spending time on what matters, and that the broader business isn’t blocked by inefficiencies.

Choosing the right platform to support your plan

Your contract management platform should reflect the plan you’re trying to implement. Look for tools that offer:

• Customizable monthly reports and  approval workflows
  
• Clause libraries and negotiation playbooks
  
• Role-based access control
  
• Smart notifications and reminders
  
• Robust search and repository features
  

For legal teams, features like clause search, audit trails, and version control are critical. For business users, it’s more about ease of use, timely notifications, and a single source of truth.

Also, consider how well the platform integrates with your existing tools. If your sales team lives in Salesforce or your finance team tracks approvals in an ERP, your contract management system should be able to sync accordingly. 

Final thoughts

A contract management plan is more than just a legal document. It is an operational blueprint that ensures contracts move quickly, approvals are handled intelligently, and legal teams can focus on strategic work. Whether you’re just starting to build out your legal ops function or looking to scale existing processes, putting the right systems and structures in place today will pay dividends tomorrow.

The earlier you start, the easier it is to scale. And the more aligned your teams are, the faster your business can move.