A contract is a legally binding arrangement between two or more entities. Contract Management (CM) or Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) is the process of managing contract creation, analysis, execution, and maintenance. Conga Contract Lifecycle Management (Conga CLM) is a cloud-based solution that standardizes, streamlines, and automates the contract lifecycle management process—from the initial request through drafting, redlining, sending for signatures, securing documents, managing obligations, and renewing contracts.
The following flowchart depicts the Contract Management process:
![](/clm/files/202407.2.0/conga-platform/239543752/239543750/1/1706872769941/image2022-3-16_20-59-1.png)
As a user, you can create a contract from pre-loaded templates or import a third-party document as an offline contract document. Contract Management works with optical character recognition software to scan imported third-party papers and convert them to a searchable PDF. You can send your contract documents for eSignatures if Contract Management is integrated with eSignature solutions—Conga Sign, Adobe Sign, and DocuSign. Contract Management is able to provide a set of standard or customized, reports to track activity status, expirations, non-standard terms, etc. You can also use contract Explorer to configure and reuse searches and reports.
A contract goes through the contract management lifecycle according to the workflow defined by the application administrator. Your access to all the features of CLM depends on the roles and permissions assigned to you by the application administrator.
The following table lists the tasks that administrators and users can perform using CLM.
- Work with contracts
- Create
- Send for review
- Negotiate
- Finalize
- Sign/Execute
- Activate
- Execute REST APIs
Key Terminology
It is important to understand how terms are used when working with Conga CLM.
For more information about terms used with Conga CLM, see Glossary.