Tea Whiz and Toaster Eggs – When “Innovative” Products Outlive their Usefulness

Take a tour of the New Products Works Facility in Ann Arbor, Mich., and you’ll find a variety of products that – at one time – were considered interesting or maybe even innovative. There’s a BBQ marinade with a spray pump top. An egg concoction shaped like a bagel for easy toasting. Even a carbonated Arnold Palmer with an unfortunate name.

This façade for flops displays more than 120,000 food, beverage and health and beauty products from as far back as the ‘70s. They represent ideas that, in the long term, just didn’t make the cut. And now retired or defunct they hold a spot on this museum’s shelf.

This makes me wonder – when it comes to contract review and approval, will we soon see commonly adopted tools such as Outlook and Excel take a back seat to more innovative applications? 

Think about this: A recent survey discovered that 82.7% of legal department respondents indicated that their workloads have increased compared with the previous year, with more than 50% estimating that the workloads have increased by 10-30%. This, combined with a somewhat reduction in in-house hiring, means that a premium must be placed upon achieving a greater numberof tasks while reducing or refining the process associated with accomplishing them.

Take contract review and approval.  For most legal departments, this is a time- (and sigh-) inducing task. Contracts enter the review process and fall into a process that is scattered across spreadsheets, documents and emails. It’s hard to execute them quickly through revisions and inquiries and there’s very little transparency and communal history into the overall process.

So instead of struggling through a complex process with software that is ill-suited for the task, it’s time to turn to the proper tool for contract review and approval – Smart Business Process Apps. Smart Business Process Apps centralize contract activity, maintain version control, and provide real-time insight for all stakeholders.

This eBook offers an alternative to emails, spreadsheets and documents to manage your legal department and delves into how some legal departments have turned to Smart Business Process Apps to streamline routine legal tasks and reduce processing time.

Maybe next time we take a virtual tour of the New Products Works Facility we’ll see another addition to its shelves.