Frequently Asked Questions

The acronym CLM stands for contract lifecycle management. Contract lifecycle management is more than just having a searchable contract repository.  It refers to the function of managing contracts from start to finish: From contract requests, routing and assignment, to document authoring, automating approval workflows, redlining, negotiating, signing, and beyond that includes renewals, amendments, and fulfilling contracts obligations with their milestones. It’s a lot to handle without the right people, processes, and tools in place. 

CLM software is technology that automates the process of managing contract lifecycle. CLM software may contain a range of capabilities to support a contract lifecycle plus innovative functionality such as advanced reporting, metrics, and artificial intelligence. Many CLM software solutions contain a clause library, pre-configured templates, search capabilities so that users can easily find their contracts, workflow capabilities to correctly flow the contract through its process, a secured repository for storing contracts, and various integrations with other key business applications, such as Salesforce and Coupa. 

Contract management software can help an organization automate and streamline many of the tasks and processes that create friction in contracting. Contract management software can help reduce cycle times by up to 75%, eliminating the bottlenecks that cause delays. It can also make it easier to scale contract volume growth without needing to add head count. In addition, effective contract management software makes it possible to reduce the amount of involvement Legal has in agreements by as much 80-90%, allowing them to focus on more value-added activities. Many users have also found that they can eliminate potential revenue loss by 20% in the first quarter of use. By integrating CLM with other enterprise solutions, you can avoid data entry, redundancy, and improve accuracy and visibility while meeting the expectations of business users for their contract requests. 

Contract lifecycle management, or CLM, sits at the heart of a business and touches every department from Finance and Sales to Legal and Procurement. Contracts memorialize the legal and financial relationships that exist between parties and contain some of the most mission-critical information for an organization. And that means they can tell us a ton about the health and success of your business. When CLM is poorly managed, it can result in an average annual revenue loss of 9%, and that number goes up to 15% for larger companies. These negative impacts can be felt across the entire organization, not just by Legal. 

Microsoft Word is among the most common tools to draft contracts. Contracts are then edited and discussed via long email threads, making it nearly impossible to tell which version is truly the latest one. When the contract is finally put into a contract repository, the discontinuity only continues because now not everyone can see the contract and who has made further edits to it. Version control, auditability, and effective and transparent tracking are all missed when contracts are created and stored this way. CLM tools include functionality to append supporting documents to the contract so that all relevant materials are conveniently housed in a single location with a full audit history of changes. If you are using a CRM or CPQ solution, approved terms in your sales quotes can automatically be put into a draft agreement. 

If you’re wondering why our name sounds like a variety of wine, that’s not a coincidence. As we were contemplating a unique name for our company, we didn’t want something that sounded like every other contract management software solution, such “CONTRACTS-R-US” or “LEGALWITHEASE.” While formalizing our organization setup, our co-founders were sitting around a table enjoying some Argentinian Malbec and raised their glasses, spontaneously toasting “To Malbec.” After all, who doesn’t like a glass of Argentinian Malbec? So, the name stuck, but with a K!

 Click here to read the whole Malbek name story. 

Malbek is for anyone who is struggling with a growing volume of contracts to manage. We help eliminate manual and redundant processes, slow approvals, and the inability to search or report on contracts. We make tracking renewals and key events easy and do all of this without the need for IT or technical resources. With a self-service, AI-fueled fully configurable solution that puts you in the driver’s seat, Malbek relieves your contracting pain without dependency on IT or vendor services. That’s what modern and intuitive contract management software is all about. Check out our eBook Why You Need a New CLM Solution Now. 

Malbek offers a set of robust and customizable functions to help streamline contracting from intake, authoring, negotiating, review, storing and tracking. Below are just a few of the many features Malbek offers:  

• Searchable, centralized repository 
• Contract creation, requests, and intakes 
• Clause library 
• Approval workflows 
• Negotiation, redlining, and review
• Execution
• Renewals, Amendments & commitment tracking
• AI insights & recommendations including Generative AI capabilities 

For more information on features, request a demo here or check out this CLM datasheet. 

Yes! Malbek offers you the ability to configure parallel, serial, or multi-node approvals. You can easily build simple or complex workflows and ensure the right people are approving at the right time. 

Yes! Malbek offers the ability to manage and track all contracts and related documents in one centralized repository. Seamlessly classify, categorize, report, search, and dashboard to locate key contract details in a snap. 

Innovative companies select Malbek for enterprise-wide digital transformation to simplify contracting. This is because we are devoted to our users and ensuring they get the most out of our solution. After all, we are only successful when you are! Check out our customer page and read the latest stories here. 

Malbek is forging a new path — from products that delight to exceptional employees who make everything run smoothly, we differentiate ourselves with an outstanding product portfolio and our customer-centric approach. We believe customers should love their contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution, not loathe it.  Malbek is a very feature-rich application that can handle the most complex use cases, with an intuitive self-service user interface with out-of-box configurations and no-code customizations.  Easily integrate with your other enterprise systems with dozens of productized integration connectors. 

There's a reason we have a 120% customer retention rate! Malbek is making waves and disrupting the traditional CLM players with its ease of use, robust workflows, and AI-packed features. 

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Yes, and no! Yes, we have AI, but, no, it will not take over your job or make you breakfast. What makes us different is our approach to artificial intelligence. We believe that AI shouldn’t be just a portion of your legal technology. Rather, it should be interwoven throughout the entire CLM platform. It should guide you during the contracting process and reduce the mundane tasks on your plate so that you can focus on the more important and value-added tasks. If you’d like more info on our approach to AI, check out this blog post on it. 

Malbek is architected and designed by our well-experienced technologists that not only have built multiple cloud applications but also previous CLM solutions.  The performance of the system is blazing fast, whether you have 1000 contracts or a million.  The functionality and scalability are designed to grow with your needs, allowing you to start with a defined scope and continue to add more configurations and contracting use cases in an agile manner as your needs grow. 

Absolutely!  Many of our customers have contracts in a variety of places unattended and left to security and data vulnerabilities. Our experienced team will guide you as you prepare your contracts for import into Malbek. Our application lets you get your data and your documents into the system without any technical resources to begin enjoying what contract management software is. 

No, you don’t need any technical resources to implement or manage Malbek. It is zero-code and intuitive. In fact, our customers tell us that 99% is managed by a user or admin, including integrations. The other 1% required some additional low-key and focused training which Malbek offers and focused on understanding your specific contracting processes and current challenges. We then get the solution implemented based on best practices and learnings from you so you can achieve efficiency right out of the gate. You can live on Malbek within a fraction of the time you would expect. To learn more about our philosophy on customer support, check out this blog post on The 6 Secrets to Outstanding Customer Support. 

Our system is designed for the business user, not a rocket scientist meaning you won’t find any programming or jargon anywhere.  A legal admin on your team can easily make the necessary configurations, such as contracting workflows, business terms, template language, event reminders, reporting, integrations, and more. Our self-help video tutorials and online guides walk you through all configurations. And to make your internal business partners happy, this incurs no additional charges since you don’t need Malbek or IT resources for every little change. You can read more about it here. 

Malbek believes in the power of integration. In fact, our customers tell us they are typically integrating with 5+ partners to ensure their teams and data are connected. With Malbek Konnect, businesses have the flexibility to ensure all data exchanged is secure and immediate. The best part? We are always adding new integrations! 

Malbek offers integrations to: 

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 
• Procure-to-Pay and Procurement Solutions (P2P) 
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)  
• Business Spend Management (BSM)
• Electronic Signature
• Online Collaboration 
• Cloud Storage
• Single Sign On (SSO)
• Database/Data Table/Flat files 

To learn more about our Konnectors, check out the Malbek Konnect datasheet. 

Your needs are bound to evolve and it’s crucial to utilize a provider that can adapt alongside you. If we don’t offer a productized connector, we do offer a REST API so you can maintain your own custom integrations.  

The Malbek platform supports authentication integration via industry standard SAML 2.0. This allows you to manage your own user access, integrating with your corporate authentication as a single sign-on (SSO). This method ensures that you can access connected systems using the same username and password, adhering to your corporate password policy. 

We believe industry-leading eSignature providers are best of breed with additional security standards focused on electronic signature, compliance, and years of best practices in that field. Why build when you can partner? Malbek’s approach is a seamless integration with well-known eSignature tools, like DocuSign and Adobe Sign. 

We like to think of integrations like a jigsaw puzzle. We believe you should be able to connect your enterprise systems to one another as easily as putting two perfectly fitting puzzle pieces together. With our productized connectors, you’ll be connected faster, decrease your dependency on your busy IT colleagues, and lower your overall cost of ownership. If you want to know more, you can read all about it in this blog post on integrations. 

You will be surprised how affordable Malbek is compared to other options. We can provide flexible pricing based on the number of individuals who will use the system and other factors. Automatic system updates and support are included in our pricing. Our one-time implementation is also incredibly cost-effective due to the simplicity and configurability of our application. We recognize all organizations are different, so contact us to discuss an affordable model that’s right for you. 

The security of your contract documents and data is of paramount importance to us at Malbek. From the very beginning our platform was built on a highly secured, cloud-based technology which is in our DNA based on years of experience. Contract documents generated by the Malbek platform are protected when they are at rest or in transit. In addition, Malbek provides configurability to our customers to be able to mark certain portions of data as sensitive to handle it with an additional layer of security. We provide data separation and encryption, with full authentication integration and single sign-on (SSO) support. The Malbek platform uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) and we conduct regularly scheduled best-in-class network penetration and vulnerability testing. Our application security is highly configurable for end-user access to contracts, and our authorization framework makes it easy to provision. 

Malbek is a multi-tenant cloud solution, architected on a highly scalable SaaS platform that is purpose-built for contract management and hosted on AWS. You will be amazed at the speed and performance of the system. Rest assured, your contracts and associated data are protected to the highest security standards thanks to annual, independent penetration testing and other security measures. To find out more about our “Cloud DNA” and security protocols, check out this cloud security white paper. vice for creating a website design, illustration, icon set, website development, animation and digital marketing.

The Malbek processes and systems are designed to keep our customers’ sensitive data secure. Malbek is SOC 2 Type II and SOC I Type II certified. GDPR compliance requires a partnership between Malbek and you, our customer, in the use of our products and services. Malbek provides configurability to add additional layers of security for portions of data that is considered PII sensitive. Malbek complies with GDPR in the delivery of our service to you by revising policies and processes related to the treatment of EU Personal Data for our customers, partners, contractors, and employees. 

Malbek’s robust security models make it easy to configure user access, provide actions, and orchestrate processes to fit specific needs. Access controls can be division or role-based as well as instanced-based for even deeper granularity and protection of contracts, contract templates, and master data. 

Yes, audit trails and activity logs are available to help track contract-related activities and keep you compliant.