Forrester Survey: Only 43% of Firms Are Satisfied With Their CLM Platform

Contracts seen as strategic, but tools fall short

Ironclad commissioned the study to examine how contracts are shifting into strategic assets for modern enterprises. Forrester surveyed more than 500 CLM decision-makers across procurement, IT, legal and finance in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

According to the results, 60% of respondents see contracts as having an enterprise-wide impact through strategy, risk management and competitive advantage. Ironclad notes that responsibility for contracting success has in many cases expanded beyond legal to include procurement, operations and business stakeholders.

Adoption is fairly broad. The survey found that 62% of respondents use a CLM, 74% use eSignature tools and 68% use document authoring tools. Satisfaction with CLM platforms, however, stands at 43%.

Fragmentation and weak integration

Ironclad links the low satisfaction to how the tools are set up. Only 40% of respondents operate on a single CLM platform, while 36% use multiple CLM solutions, which Ironclad says creates a fragmented, disconnected experience across the business.

Integration is another gap. According to the study, 76% of respondents said their contract data is only somewhat integrated with other operational systems such as CRMs. Only 23% run a fully integrated CLM.

Ironclad argues that many CLM programs remain optimized for contract creation rather than execution and performance management. It points to post-signature workflows as the area where value is won or lost:

• Obligation tracking: knowing whether you and your suppliers are meeting commitments.
• Renewal management: avoiding a missed auto-renewal that could lock in high spend for years.
• Milestone monitoring: measuring how quickly contracts are turned around.
• Operational integration: giving business stakeholders, such as sales teams, visibility into contracts and signatures.

AI as a layer on connected systems

Respondents see AI as part of the answer, though barriers remain. The main obstacles named were integrating with existing systems (40%), low data quality (39%) and high implementation costs (39%).

Among AI use cases, respondents were most interested in obligation tracking (55%), surfacing relevant information about their contracts (52%) and risk detection (50%). In the survey, 74% said continuous alignment between contract and operational performance data would create significant business value.

Instead of a standalone AI tool, respondents preferred platform-native AI with embedded productivity experiences and API-driven integrations. Nearly 50% favored prebuilt integrations that let systems communicate with each other, with AI making the data useful.

Ironclad says AI needs three elements to succeed: a strong workflow design, high data quality and system context, meaning inputs about an organization's own protocols, stances and negotiation history. It gives the example of a pipeline between sales and legal, where a CPQ tool defines the pricing schedule that determines which clauses a contract needs. Without connected systems, that means manual copying and pasting. In the company's words, AI alone cannot fix a broken workflow like this.

What it means for enterprises

The takeaway Ironclad draws from the data is that AI tools are only as successful as the system they live in. For buyers, that points to connecting CLM, CRM and CPQ workflows before expecting AI to deliver insight.

The company says more than half of the organizations in the survey have adopted AI-powered contracting capabilities. It adds that Forrester projects strong expected growth in AI-driven contract analysis, search and dynamic contract management over the next two years. As the study was commissioned by a CLM vendor, its conclusions favor connected, AI-enabled platforms.