How to Switch CLM Providers Without Disrupting Your Legal Team

How do you switch CLM providers without disruption? 

Migrating in stages ensures you switch CLM providers without disruption. These stages include: 

1. Exporting existing contracts and metadata 
2. Cleaning and mapping the data 
3. Importing with OCR 
4. Running both systems in parallel for a short period 
5. Verify everything 
6. Training users 
7. Making the switch 

The above ensures no operational disruptions and preserved contract history.  

According to Gartner, 83% of data migration projects fail or overrun their timeline and budget. A valid reason for teams to be skeptical, the causes of this failure are, however, consistent and in turn, predictable and preventable. 

• Uncleaned data 
• Unmapped fields 
• No owner and a lack or absence of testing 
• Committing to a switch with no fallback or safety net protocols

The staged plan below is designed to defuse the above and give teams confidence to migrate from tools they’ve outgrown.

Book a demo and experience SpotDraft’s seamless migration. 

The Migration Readiness Checklist

Do not begin exporting before entirely checking this list off:

• Existing data audit 

Gather a rough count of your contracts, scanned images and a realistic view of existing metadata. 

• Define completion 

Cement success metrics that can include: Fields to be populated and verified, instantly searchable contracts etc. 

• Cross check exit rights 

Familiarize yourself with your current vendor’s data export terms and formats that will be received. 

• Lock a time frame

Base this on your organization's bandwidth patterns. Strictly avoid quarter end and renewal heavy months.

• Assign a decisive owner 

An individual with the authority to prioritize and make decisions without requiring escalations or permissions for every step. 

For a wider pattern in legal software, read why legal tech implementations fail, and what top teams do right. 

The Migration Timeline

CLM migration is usually clubbed into a broader go-live date. The below should provide clarity: 

For the mechanics dive into legacy contract migration.

Prioritizing a migration 

Do not be tempted to migrate everything at once. Ideal prioritization looks like this:

• Active Contracts
• High Value Contracts
• Soon to Renew Contracts

This ensures the new CLM is useful and actionable from the get go, increasing adoption. Archive expired, duplicates and superseded agreements instead of cluttering your new repository.

Does AI enhance migration success? 

Pre-AI, migration came with the tedious, time intensive task of re-keying metadata. Usually incomplete and prone to human error, AI has evolved the migration system by leaps and bounds. Machine-assisted field mapping suggests how old fields map to new ones, flagging anomalies along the way. This removes a major source of errors. AI extraction re-reads every contract and repopulates metadata across parties, dates, liability caps and renewal terms. A good CLM covers over 1,000 field types. 

The presence of context rich, well equipped AI enables migrating data in a cleaner, more complete way. 

Understanding Self-Serve vs Vendor-Led Migration

An important consideration when choosing your CLM is who owns migration. Given that migrations fail most often on data cleaning, mapping and testing, owning these steps is how larger data sets successfully migrate. This handy guide helps surface what you should be looking for: 

Leaving Your Current Vendor: Commercials and Notice

While the migration seems like a mammoth effort, it is only half of the switch. Leaving your current vendor is the other half. It is extremely important to:

• Confirm your notice period 
• Confirm your renewal date 

This ensures you don’t end up paying for two CLMs for an extended period of time. It is important you confirm your data export rights to avoid anything being held back during your migration. 

SpotDraft’s lucrative contract buyout program is designed to ease this friction. It absorbs part of the commercial overlap and doesn’t leave you stranded on a tool you have outgrown. 

Why legal teams prefer SpotDraft

SpotDraft offers a dedicated in-house implementation team that handles data migration with you. It’s designed to clean and map your data, preserve your entire contract history and support parallel runs ensuring a smooth transition. Its lucrative contract buyout program eases the commercial burden of switching. SpotDraft makes migrating a planned project with a clear timeline, which is as soon as 6 weeks, compared to months taken by larger CLM vendors. 

Open, a fintech, consolidated contracts scattered across email and drive into a single source of truth with SpotDraft. One of many success stories. 

Upgrade your CLM without worrying about migration. Book a personalized demo today.