What’s the best lightweight contract management setup for a 150-person company?

First clarify whether you mainly need a secure document repository with reminders, or a full workflow for drafting, negotiation, approvals, and renewals. Those are very different requirements. Contracts can contain sensitive intellectual property, so access controls and the location of the system matter more than simply having a convenient shared folder.

I’d be cautious about building a complete CLM internally. It can quietly consume a lot of engineering time once you add role-based access, audit logs, permissions, versioning, renewal rules, and reporting. A small custom tracker on a managed platform may be reasonable if your approval stages are very specific, but keep the scope limited and avoid turning it into a second major product.

For a company your size, SharePoint can work as an initial system of record if it’s designed carefully. Use a required contract register with fields such as owner, legal entity, counterparty, effective date, renewal date, notice deadline, status, and document link. Add least-privilege permissions, version history, retention rules, and one accountable owner per contract.

Keep the first automations narrow: intake, approval routing, renewal reminders, and an exception queue. Avoid building flows that automatically decide whether a contract should be renewed or modified. Before committing to a platform, test the process with about 30 existing contracts and measure metadata completeness, reminder accuracy, and how quickly people can locate the controlling signed copy. That should show whether you need a dedicated lightweight CLM product or simply a more disciplined process.