Coupa Contract Management

Unifying CLM + CLMA

Transforming two parallel systems into one scalable, intuitive contract platform

Outcome

Delivered a unified contract management experience that cut contract-creation time by 35 percent, reduced duplicate drafts by 60 percent, and increased adoption across Legal and Procurement. The new system became the foundation for future AI-driven risk and compliance features.

The problem

Coupa had two contract products: CLM (basic) and CLMA (advanced). They lived on separate architectures, separate navigation, and separate workflows.

Teams described them as:

“Powerful, but fragmented and ERP-heavy.”

Users struggled with configuration, collaboration, and findability. Scaling either product meant doubling effort. Scaling both was impossible.

Challenge

Keep the power.
Remove the friction.
Create one platform that could grow.

Who I designed for

Legal counsels: accuracy, compliance, version control.
Procurement managers: speed, visibility, fewer surprises.
Risk & finance officers: exposure insights across suppliers and spend.
Admins & engineering: stability, migration safety, predictable workflows.

My role

Sole Product/UX Designer for the CLM + CLMA unification initiative.
Partnered with PM, engineering, data science, and VP Product across 6 sprints to deliver research, IA, workflow mapping, UI design, and cross-suite integration planning.

What I did

Mapped the chaos into clarity

Conducted 25+ interviews across Legal, Procurement, and Admin teams.
Audited 6 core workflows: creation, redlining, approval, renewal, audit, archive.
Identified that 70 percent of steps overlapped, but were executed differently. This became the backbone of the unified system.

Designed a single, scalable contract experience

Created a centralized dashboard with consistent terminology and role-based visibility.
Embedded authoring and review so users no longer bounced between modules.
Introduced guided onboarding flows to support migration and reduce change friction.

Integrated contract intelligence across the Coupa suite

Brought in risk insights from Spend Guard and Supplier Risk (Coupa's Risk Assess Product).
Added smart summaries: clause deviations, renewal alerts, risk scoring.
Built on Coupa’s design system to unify visual and interaction patterns.

Impact

35 percent faster contract creation.
60 percent fewer duplicate drafts.
Increased adoption across Legal and Procurement.
Reduced support tickets due to simplified workflows.

Customer feedback included:

“An intuitive interface that makes contract management accessible and easy.”

“Within weeks, the system paid back the investment.”

What this reinforced for me

Clarity at scale requires systems thinking, not just surface simplification.
In enterprise SaaS, designing for transition is as important as designing the end state.
Cross-functional alignment is the only way to responsibly merge complex products without breaking trust.