When rolling out a contract repository, it feels logical to involve every stakeholder and team from the outset.

Contracts touch nearly every part of the business: legal, procurement, sales, finance, operations. If the goal is to have a single source of truth for all your contracts, shouldn’t all of those departments be a part of the process from day one?

In practice, trying to do it all at once slows things down. Multi-team rollouts don’t need to start big.

Why involving everyone upfront can slow things down

Getting every team aligned is rarely straightforward.

Each department has its own tools, timelines, and priorities. Some are ready to move. Others need more time, or are still committed to existing systems.

With so many moving parts, progress stalls and the focus drifts. Instead of solving the issues that prompted the project — messy documents, missing information, and a lack of contract visibility — the effort gets redirected towards wrangling with internal coordination.

Coordination and implementation don’t need to happen in sequence. You can start solving your contract management problem now and bring in other teams later.

Different teams see contracts differently

Part of what makes contracts hard to coordinate is that every team comes at them from a different angle.

• Legal is focused on risk, liability, and obligations.
• Procurement is concerned with pricing structures, renewal provisions, and termination rights.
• Finance is looking at payment terms, billing schedules, and indexation mechanisms.

These aren’t conflicting priorities, but they do pull in different directions when it comes to implementation. Each team wants different data captured. They care about different agreement types and expect different outcomes.

These differences don’t need to be resolved all at once. In fact, they’re exactly why a phased approach works. Starting with one team allows you to focus the setup, deliver something useful, and build internal momentum.

You don’t need to start big to see a return

It’s reasonable to assume that a contract repository only becomes valuable once the whole business is using it. That’s how most software works: you spend time setting it up, and the return only comes at the end — after full rollout, company-wide adoption, and a lot of internal effort.

The difference with Nomio is that we handle every single aspect of building and maintaining your contract repository.

That means the return doesn’t depend on how many teams are involved. It comes from two things:

1. Your team doesn’t spend time on tedious implementation.
   • The work in setting up and configuring the repository is taken entirely off your plate.
   • You don’t need to handle migration of your documents.
   • Documents are organised and structured for you.
   • There’s no need to manually input any data.
2. Once the repository is live, you immediately benefit from huge time-savings.
   • Contracts are organised and searchable.
   • Key information is verified instead of guessed.
   • Manual admin work disappears overnight.

Even an initially narrow deployment has clear, immediate impact. Time usually spent tracking down documents, double-checking terms, or updating spreadsheets is removed. When things that previously took hours now take minutes, you free up time to focus on more high-value, strategic work.

If one part of the business is ready, delaying rollout doesn’t increase the return. It just extends the time your team spends working around a problem that could already be solved.

Nomio is built to scale over time

Start with the teams that are ready, or wherever the need is clearest. That team gets value quickly and becomes the internal proof point.

When other departments are ready to join, we make that process seamless. Nomio is designed for phased adoption and progressive enhancement:

• We expand your database without rebuilding it.
• We introduce new data points and contract types without disrupting existing ones.
• We handle onboarding directly, including understanding each team’s specific needs and running workshops to familiarise them with Nomio.

This approach often works better than trying to solve everything at once. Each team gets a setup that reflects how they actually work. We adjust each round of onboarding to that department’s priorities and use case, instead of forcing everyone into a shared model from the start.

Multi-team rollouts are possible — just not required

Some organisations are in a position to roll out across multiple departments from day one. They’ve aligned internally, their requirements are consistent, and everyone’s ready to move.

When that’s the case, we’re fully prepared to support it. But that scenario is the exception, not the required threshold to get started.

Starting with a smaller scope isn’t a limitation. It’s often the most efficient, effective way to build momentum, and it avoids months of planning that never turn into action.

The simplest path forward

If you’re trying to make the case for a contract repository internally, the most practical approach is to start where there’s already willingness to move.

Here’s what that typically looks like:

• Identify the teams where there’s a clear need, and willingness to get started — that’s all you need to get something tangible in place.
• Let us handle the implementation — we’ll build the contract repository, capture the right data, and tailor the database for that team.
• Use the live repository to show value — others can see the benefits directly, without you needing to come up with a detailed business case or internal campaign to get buy-in.
• Expand gradually, without creating more work — we manage onboarding for each new team, adapt the setup, and continually maintain the whole repository for you throughout.

This approach makes it much easier to get multi-team rollouts off the ground. You solve real problems early, make visible progress, and avoid getting stuck in an endless coordination cycle.

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