In this interview with Corporate Counsel Business Journal, Karen Meyer, CEO of Contract Logix, a longstanding contract management software company, discusses the “hidden risks in contracts,” which can be miniscule or massive.

“Those risks include everything from overlooked penalties, to missed delivery obligations, to lost revenue, to unexpected renewals,” she says. “Our specialty is helping organizations illuminate and articulate, a lot of times for the first time, what their current processes for managing contracts and vendors are and making measurable and meaningful improvements.” Meyer goes on to discuss the ROI of contract lifecycle management. “One of our oil and gas customers is now able to execute contracts 90% faster using our platform, and another healthcare customer reduced the time spent tracking and managing agreements by 40% in two years,” she says. “A great basic example, but one that is super powerful because it quantitatively shows CLM’s impact, is looking at the numbers when an organization just puts all their agreements in one place. In a large organization, when people can’t find contracts, they go to the paralegal, they don’t go to the highest paid attorney. But even the paralegal could be making $100 an hour. If they spend four hours instead of five minutes looking for a contract, in just this example, that’s $400 and can be between $8,000 to $400,000 a year just looking for information. It’s a great example to justify the cost of putting the right technology and processes in place.” Read more from Meyer at CCBJ.