The Engagement
What is a CLM discovery sprint?
A CLM discovery sprint is a fixed, 4-6 week engagement that produces the decisions and the roadmap you need before selecting a contract lifecycle management platform.
Most CLM projects fail because scope gets set by platform features and procurement deadlines rather than by the operating model the business actually needs. The sprint reverses that order. It establishes how contract work should flow across your people, processes, and existing platforms first, so that any later selection serves a decision you have already made rather than making it for you.
The sprint is run by a named senior Swiftwater practitioner, not staffed out to junior consultants after signing. It sits at the front of our wider contract management practice, part of the Swiftwater CLM program.
Deliverables
What you walk away with
By the end of the sprint, you hold a decision-ready package.
A current-state contract lifecycle map, intake through renewal, with handoffs and gaps identified
Recommended discovery workstreams for the work ahead
A stakeholder interview plan designed to minimize fatigue across legal, procurement, finance, and IT
A platform boundary model showing what contract work belongs in the systems you already run (Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, SAP, Coupa, and others) versus a dedicated CLM, and where the integrations sit
High-level CLM requirements themes, organized for a future RFP
A change management and readiness assessment
Future pilot recommendations across priority contract workflows, from intake through renewals
Implementation roadmap options
Vendor selection is deliberately excluded. You finish the sprint ready to select well, not pushed toward a product.
Each deliverable has a deeper explainer if you want the thinking behind it: how we map your current contract lifecycle, draw the Salesforce, ServiceNow, and CLM boundary model, build CLM requirements themes ahead of an RFP, assess readiness and change management, and scope a contract intake pilot. Together they prepare the decision the sprint sets you up to make well: how to choose a CLM vendor.
Who It Is For
Built for the people who own the platforms, and the stakeholders they align.
Enterprise platform and transformation leaders
This sprint is built for business technology and transformation leaders who own enterprise platforms and are planning legal-technology modernization. If you run an enterprise platform estate, whether that is Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, SAP, Coupa, or others, and you are trying to decide what contract work belongs in the platforms you already operate versus a dedicated CLM, this is the engagement that settles it.
Legal Ops & General Counsel
It is equally built for the legal operations and general counsel stakeholders you need to bring along. The sprint produces the shared current-state picture and the aligned operating model that make those conversations productive instead of circular.
The Timeline
How the 4-6 weeks run
Weeks 1-2
Discover
Stakeholder interviews across legal, procurement, finance, and IT. Current-state contract lifecycle mapping. Inventory of the platforms already in play.
Weeks 2-4
Analyze
Boundary modeling across the systems you already run (Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, SAP, Coupa) and a dedicated CLM. Requirements themes. Readiness and change assessment.
Weeks 4-6
Recommend
Pilot recommendations across priority contract workflows. Implementation roadmap options. Executive readout and decision-ready package.
Timing flexes within the 4-6 week window based on stakeholder availability and organization size.
Who Runs It
Named senior practitioners, on the work and on the call
You work with the people who deliver, not a sales team that hands you off after signing.
Gary Wheeler
CLM & AI Lead Consultant
Gary has built CLM programs and stood up legal operations teams for multiple Fortune 500 companies. His focus is designing contract operating models that commercial teams actually adopt, with equal depth in platform implementation and commercial contracting program design.
Danish Butt
Managing Director
Danish is a transformation leader with more than 20 years rebuilding how global enterprises run their legal functions. He advises chief legal officers and business technology leaders on where contract work belongs across the platforms they already operate. He also advises business leaders in sales, procurement, real estate, and IT on managing a contract lifecycle that spans multiple systems of record, helping businesses contract with speed, quality, and compliance. Earlier roles at Huron Consulting and Morae Global span the full range of legal operations and outside counsel transformation.
Why Discovery First
Why discovery before selection
Organizations lose an average of 8.6% of contract value to poor contract management practices, and the majority of CLM implementations underperform within the first 18 months of go-live. The cause is rarely the platform. It is scope set by features instead of outcomes, change management treated as training, and integration with adjacent systems underestimated.
A discovery sprint is the inexpensive insurance against an expensive implementation that does not get adopted.
You spend four to six weeks deciding correctly so you do not spend the next two years recovering from a decision made in a demo.
of contract value lost on average to poor contract management practices
the window in which most CLM implementations underperform after go-live
Questions