Author: Onit

Checklist: Importance of Contract Lifecycle Management

Posted on September 8, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Sometimes, a company is so accustomed to a process that people don’t realize how manual it actually is.

This is especially the case for contract management.

Many corporations rely on manual processes to handle contracts, leaning on paper, spreadsheets and email. While it lets you work in programs you use every day, it also means you’re cutting and pasting information into templates, entering data, writing and sending emails, searching for documents and saving items to multiple drives.

The process is a nuisance, yes. But it also invites risks, such inconsistent legal language, a lack of insight into content and status and an inability to anticipate and accommodate renewal data, pricing changes and emerging legal requirements. (We break down more challenges regarding manual contract management in this blog post if you’d like to read more about them.)

What’s the new evolution of contract management?

A contract lifecycle management solution.

It allows companies to capture, automate and analyze the entire contract lifecycle from initiation through approval, compliance and renewals. It eliminates data silos, automates workflows and reduces the overall time spent. Studies have shown that businesses with a streamlined contract lifecycle management process can compress their time to revenue, mitigate risks and increase customer satisfaction. In short, a contract lifecycle management solution contributes value.

Contract Lifecycle Management Solutions Checklist: How to Vet a CLM Solution

How can you pick the best solution? Start with this checklist to ensure that the solutions you’re vetting offer you the features that work best with your corporate legal department.

  • Collaboration – A secure collaborative capability facilitates editing and communication among team members.
  • Client and partner self-service – Highly intuitive, streamlined portals give authorized individuals access to commonly used contract templates and verbiage.
  • Easy-to-access requests – These allow anyone within the corporation to initiate the contract process. They don’t have to set up an account.
  • A central repository – A single source for all contracts and associated documentation means no more searching for information.
  • E-sign capabilities – Timely signatures are vital to the contract process. Users should be able to sign contracts electronically and manage them within the contract lifecycle management software. It should integrate with tier-one e-signature solutions. Upon completion, the solution should automatically store the contract in the central repository with all of the expected notifications without any additional intervention.
  • Routing and approval – The technology should enable the easy building of configurable workflows to route contracts for review and/or approval.
  • Human-centric user interfaces – The system should be intuitive and lightweight, requiring little to no training.
  • Microsoft Word integration – Word is used extensively in creating contracts. An integration with Word captures changes and notes as they occur to contracts, speeding up the entire process.
  • Notifications – Proactive alerts such as notifications or reminders should be sent by the technology as the contract progresses through its lifecycle.
  • Enterprise contract management – The software should manage sell-side, buy-side and corporate contracts.

Are you interested in learning more? Download this white paper: “What to Expect from a Contract Lifecycle Management Solution.” You can also read more about Onit Contract Lifecycle Management or request a demo.

Heads The Lawyer Wins, Tails the Lawyer Wins

Posted on September 5, 2020 by - Legal Operations

Earlier this week Bodhala CEO, Raj Goyle, joined the “Eye on the Industry” podcast hosted by Jon Cooper, CEO of Industrial Exchange, to discuss Big Law’s Lebron James problem. Because of the opacity of the market, law firms are able to price lawyers as if everybody is LeBron, but data can change this.

“There’s an old saying in the law – if you flip a coin – heads the lawyer wins, tails the lawyer wins.” 

Take a listen to learn more!

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Get in touch with our team of legal billing and data experts to find out how Bodhala can transform your legal department.

Bodhala CEO, Raj Goyle, Discusses Legal Billing Opacity on Nasdaq Trade Talks

Posted on September 4, 2020 by - Legal Operations

This week Bodhala CEO, Raj Goyle, sat down with Nasdaq Trade Talks host, Jill Malandrino, to talk about the opacity of the legal services market. Covering everything from the role data plays in legal spend optimization to how Covid-19 is affecting the legal landscape, it’s a great listen.

“We believe in the very important relationships and collaborations between our clients and their outside law firms, but we also believe that there’s a market that must exist so therefore those services can be valued and optimized.”

– Raj Goyle, Bodhala CEO & Co-Founder

Check it out!

Filling the App Gap: How Process Builder Makes it Easier for Corporate Legal to Automate Processes

Posted on September 3, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation

According to a McKinsey survey, the use of automation has increased by roughly 10% compared to two years ago. Participants who reported high levels of success often attributed it to the fact that their companies made automation a strategic priority.

Earlier this week, Onit announced the availability of its Solutions Catalog (now available online here.) The catalog shares more than 5,500 Apps and 130 solutions, all built by Onit customers, partners and employees on the Apptitude platform. The Apps reach beyond the legal department to automate critical business processes, extending into HR, IT, accounting, sales, procurement and more. As a result, legal operations innovators have increased transparency, saved time and ensured compliance with governmental regulations and internal guidelines.

The progress made over a decade is astounding, as hundreds of thousands of users worldwide rely on Apps and solutions built on Onit Apptitude to streamline processes.

However, we wanted to make it easier to create Apps.

Introducing Onit Process Builder

The latest version of Onit Apptitude, released in August, bridges the gap between technical and business uses and simplifies the creation of new workflows. Process Builder, the new interface for Apptitude, provides a visually-oriented, drag-and-drop-friendly workflow-building interface. The new configuration tool empowers Onit Apptitude developers (our Onit Nation) to build workflows much faster. Process Builder was designed from the ground up with ease of use as its primary goal. As a result, it benefits both experienced Apptitude Developers and those who are brand new to building.

Join Us for Apptitude Training

Learn more about Process Builder by joining us for Apptitude certification classes.

Whether you’re simplifying a contract management process, building a full-featured e-billing or matter management system, or implementing a custom process, it is valuable to learn Apptitude’s many workflow tools and configuration options. The Apptitude certification track takes a vertical-agnostic approach, focusing on the key concepts required to work with Apptitude’s many automation and metadata management tools.

You can find classes and schedules here.

 

One Platform, Limitless Opportunities: How Legal Operations Pros Solve Business Process Challenges

Posted on September 1, 2020 by - Business Process Management

There are more than 1.3 million lawyers in the United States. And they’re interested in learning what other lawyers are doing – especially when it comes to technology and legal operations. Whether through networking, industry organizations like CLOC or ILTA or on-the-fly discussions in (virtual) hallways, they make connections to explore legal innovation and how it can work for them.

One of the latest areas of interest is automation. According to the CLOC 2020 State of the Industry report, a high priority for most corporate legal departments is automating legal processes. As automation continues within the department, innovators are quickly realizing that they can automate beyond legal. Each day, in-house counsel and legal operations professionals work with departments across their enterprises like sales, HR, accounting, procurement and more. The automation potential is limitless and promises substantial results in streamlining processes and increasing efficiency.

With this in mind, we are thrilled to announce the release of our Onit Solutions Catalog.

The catalog represents more than 5,500 Apps and 130 solutions built on our workflow and business process automation platform Apptitude. Developed by Onit customers, partners and employees (aka the Onit Nation), the catalog reveals innovative approaches corporate legal departments have taken to automate business processes in legal operations and across departments.

As our CEO and co-founder, Eric M. Elfman, explains it: “If there’s a use case, Apptitude can automate it.”

Apps that Reach Beyond Legal

Examples of innovative Apps built on Apptitude include:

  • TREAD Report – One of the largest automotive manufacturers uses Onit to automate reporting for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability, and Documentation (TREAD) Act, reducing manual work and ensuring the company complies with the act.
  • Trade Association Approval and Management – This App, created by a Fortune 500 company, manages memberships, renewals and spend for trade associations worldwide. By adding transparency and reporting to the process, the company drives more value from association participation and greater accountability that lowers costs.
  • Fund Management – This App helps manage all of the necessary business processes, reviews and approvals for the transfer of assets between portfolio companies and generates the legal documents needed to memorialize the transactions. Now, a company can facilitate higher volumes of these complex financial transactions with the same size staff.
  • Policy Endorsement Drafting Portal – With this App, insurance underwriters can submit policy endorsement drafts for review and approval, saving time and improving response rates with self-service and automation.
  • Marketing Challenges – A leading global consumer products company uses Onit to centralize challenge requests from emails to a single location, increasing knowledge management and enabling analytics to understand the consistency and success rates of challenges.

A Worldwide Platform

More than 400 customers, including 57 Fortune 500 corporations, use Onit’s Apptitude platform. It is highly configurable and scalable and supports hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. The recent launch of its new visually oriented, drag-and-drop-friendly, workflow-building interface Process Builder dramatically simplifies the creation of workflows and business logic for all users – regardless of technical proficiency.

This latest version of Apptitude offers features such as 200+ out-of-the-box workflow actions, unlimited end-user licensing, and an intuitive interface that creates a workflow visualization before it is even finished.

Next steps

If you’re an Onit customer interested in learning more about the Onit Solution Catalog, contact your account manager or email [email protected]. For anyone else, please request access via [email protected].

To see how one corporate legal department used Apptitude, view this webinar: TIAA: Transforming Operations and Driving Innovation with a Platform Technology Strategy.

To see Apptitude in action, you can request a demo here.

How to Calculate ROI for Contract Lifecycle Management Solutions

Posted on August 27, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

In the last two issues in this series, we explored contract lifecycle management challenges and how to choose the right solution for your organization. In this blog post, we will discuss how to calculate savings metrics for a solution and highlight a company that has won multiple awards for their contract lifecycle management transformation.

ROI for Contract Lifecycle Management Solutions

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions drive efficiencies and savings in many areas of the business – so much so that experts say the right solution will compress time to revenue, mitigate risks by having fewer contractual exceptions and increase customer satisfaction.

However, the question on everyone’s mind is this: What’s the return on investment?

To accurately assess the potential for contract lifecycle management ROI, we developed the Onit Savings Calculator. The calculator factors in time spent on contracts, missed renewals, obligation management needs, sales cycles and realization, rogue spending and expanding spend under contract.

For example, consider a company with more than $850 million a year in legal spend. The calculator determined that the company could save almost $6 million in the first year after deployment and close to $12 million by the third year of use.

Overall, we find that companies have an average cost savings of 9% and a 20% reduction in hours spent on contract review with a contract lifecycle management solution.

The numbers are generally the biggest persuader in whether or not your organization should invest in a contract lifecycle management solution. The savings calculator can help you build the business case and determine which cost-saving or revenue-generating projects to prioritize.

Our industry experts will help you pinpoint your CLM ROI. Visit here to request your evaluation.

An Award-Winning Success Story 

Pearson, a global learning company and an Onit customer, created a new way of delivering legal services. This initiative so transformed the company’s contract processes that it landed them multiple recognitions including:

Pearson, along with Onit partner Morae Global Corporation, developed, implemented and operated an innovative, highly efficient Transaction Service Center as an extension of Pearson’s legal team in support of the company’s businesses worldwide. This included the creation of playbooks, templates, workflows and standardized processes from intake on through drafting, redlining, negotiating, execution and post-execution support, as well as leading training and change management processes.

Morae partnered with Onit to deploy the Onit Apptitude platform that included a web-based “legal front door” for incoming service requests and a contract lifecycle management system for end-to-end processing of contracts. With Onit’s technology, Pearson gained a platform to drive automation, greater standardization, ease of access to information and increased process transparency.

The result: Pearson launched an innovative shared service center that supported commercial transactions worldwide for more than 10,000 users. Its ROI for contract lifecycle management included a 35% cost reduction and 30% improved contract turnaround time.

Bob Mignanelli, senior vice president, chief operating officer, legal, and associate general counsel for technology, strategy and operations for Pearson plc, discusses the project in this on-demand webinar.

Next Steps

We have information to help you through every stage of considering a contract lifecycle management solution.

To start, visit the previous two blog posts in this series on contract lifecycle management:

Next, download our white paper that outlines what to look for in a solution:

Hear what other customers have achieved with Onit contract lifecycle management solutions:

Finally, contact us to:

8 Crucial Items for Your Employment ReviewAI Checklist

Posted on August 26, 2020 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management

Starting employment with a new company is often one of the most exciting moments in one’s career, but it’s not something that should be rushed into. One of the most important parts of this process is a careful contract review of the employment agreement, so you know where you stand from a legal perspective before any employment offer is agreed to.

A well-drafted employment agreement contract will clearly spell out the expectations of the company for the employee, and what the company owes the prospective employee to minimize any future disagreements.

Here are the top 8 things to look for when redlining an employment contract, particularly for the hiring of high-level executive or specialist positions:

  1. Compensation: A base salary is one part of the total compensation package. You also need to know if and when base salary increases occur, if bonuses are available and if there is a signing bonus. You’ll also want it to be clear in your contract review if your base salary can be reduced, and under what circumstances this can happen.
  2. Scope of Employment: In addition to the employee’s title and responsibilities, a good employment contract template should cover to what extent an employee’s responsibilities will expand or contract. For example including clearly defined terms for promotion, demotion and even potential relocation. For C-level executive hires, it should also outline if a seat on the Board of Directors is guaranteed or even allowed.
  3. Benefits: The amount of the benefits programs, and to what extent an employee can participate in them, should be clearly and definitively outlined in any employment contract template. This includes health and disability benefits, life insurance, 401(k) and stock options, vision and dental. This section of the employment contract should also outline vacation and sick leave policies, including how much can be accrued in a year or carried over. Lastly, the contract template should clearly define if any benefits are taxable to the employee, and if the employee can be reimbursed for the tax.
  4. Restraints: Look out for any restraints or limitations on your ability to engage in activities outside of the job.  These can be agreements to not compete, not solicit staff and clients or engage in other commitments either during or after the employment. Particularly look out for restraints of trades that limit what work you can do after the termination of your employment.  You don’t want to unduly impact your ability to earn a living or find another job after this one.
  5. Intellectual Property: Intellectual Property (IP) such as trade secrets, marketing strategies and business systems can be extremely valuable. Standard employment contracts usually include clauses saying any IP an employee develops during their employment is owned by the company, including whether it was created on the job, in the office, or outside their normal work hours using the company’s resources or information.
  6. Confidentiality: Employees are often trusted with access to different kinds of commercially sensitive information. Under an employment relationship, there is usually an implied relationship of trust and confidence. However, it is always best practice to clarify the obligations of an employee using a confidentiality agreement, also known as an NDA agreement, in relation to accessing, using, protecting, and disclosing the commercially sensitive information of the Business.
  7. Term, Termination and Post-employment Agreements: The employment contract needs to clearly define if the employment is for a contracted term of time or if it is “at will” employment. It also needs to define the grounds on which an employee can be fired (due to job performance, for example) or terminated “for cause,” such as for a felony conviction or breach of the employee agreement. The contract should also specify any severance packages (including so-called “Golden Parachutes”) and the conditions on which they can be given following employment.
  8. Dispute Resolution: Most employee agreements have clauses to deal with disputes between the employee and company, such as if binding arbitration is the exclusive way to deal with disputes, and what the applicable laws are to oversee such disputes.

Carefully reviewing your employment agreement before sending or signing can avoid misunderstandings that can cause disagreements or even legal action between the company and employee. Oftentimes, an experienced employment law expert will be consulted on high-profile contract negotiations. However, a great way to understand your rights and obligations is to supplement a human lawyer’s expertise with legal technology.

ReviewAI automates standard contract checks with legal template reviews, including employment agreements, saving you a significant amount of time during the contract management process. Each month we release new contract template reviews and skillsets built by subject matter experts that are specific to different industries and contract types (including employment agreements), ensuring a smooth contract review process and better employer-employee relations.

To learn more about contract automation and ReviewAI, visit here.

Driving Business Value and Growth, App by App

Posted on August 25, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Mark Cuban once famously said, “We are going through the process where software will automate software, and automation will automate automation.” Apps powered by platforms are a big part of this evolution. Corporate legal departments (and most other businesses) are on a quest for technologies that help drive growth, add value and speed up processes. Many have already discovered that a platform approach helps them reach these objectives efficiently and quickly.

The Platform Advantage

The platform approach is a cloud-based service that empowers departments to build their own solutions or apps to address process and workflow problems. Saving time and money in turn allows businesses to focus on building apps that ultimately benefit their customers.

A cloud-based platform is an innovative and flexible tool that makes it easy to create, modify and deploy new software with robust workflow, transaction management and reporting capabilities. It helps solve real business problems without the need for costly support, training or IT infrastructure. This allows businesses to develop both very simple and very complex processes and workflows to drive everyday business functions and operations—in legal and other departments. These apps can be connected to other related apps to form a suite of cross-functional integrations to support complex operations. For example, this could include the creation and approval of matters, the drafting and review of non-disclosure agreements, and many other everyday activities.

Leading with Workflow

A workflow-centric approach is another important feature in a platform that seeks to transform matter management or other legal operations technologies into independent, collaborative and functional lifecycles that lawyers and operations managers use on a regular basis.  An a la carte model empowers users to add capabilities and components as needed. The ideal platform includes a modern architecture that showcases class-leading technology and a decidedly SaaS-based approach to legal business application management. Flexible and agile, these platforms are designed for rapid deployment and results.

Why You Should Consider a Platform for your Corporate Legal Department

Now that we’ve discussed the platform approach, here are reaons every legal operations professional should consider it.

  1. The Apps and Solutions are Easy to Create – Some workflows can be created in less than 30 minutes. A no-code platform is highly configurable and scalable and visual interfaces allows users to build and manage business logic and workflows using a drag-and-drop interface. This makes it easy for even non-technical professionals to create apps.
  2. You Can Reduce Costs – Solve business problems without the need for costly support, training or IT infrastructure. Software as a service (SaaS) frees up your team members to focus on meaningful contributions, not administrative tasks.
  3. Implementation Times are Lightning Fast – With a platform, most implementations take weeks – not months. A corporate legal department will spend less time waiting for an app and more time using it, meaning time to value is realized quickly.
  4. A Platform Creates Business Transparency – Business teams have real-time visibility in processes, such as sales quote approvals, NDA requests or contract negotiations.

When it comes to building apps for your business you must have the workflow, process and collaboration platform that is the best fit for the way your teams work. Equally important, balancing business needs with long-term growth has now become much easier with cutting-edge platform solutions.

Building Success, App by App

The Onit Nation, which includes customers, partners and employees who build on the Onit Apptitude Platform, have created impactful apps and solutions for legal operations. You can hear more about Apptitude successes by listening to the following webinars:

If you’re interested in driving business value with a platform approach, here’s how to learn more about Onit Apptitude:

 

How to Move from Price-Taker to Price-Maker in Law Firm Relationships

Posted on August 22, 2020 by - Legal Operations

Bombarded with law firm rate increases? Think twice before giving your law firm what they want.

The past year has brought unprecedented uncertainty to economies around the globe. Most businesses have been dramatically impacted, leaving their bottom lines in far different shape than last year. Along with financial instability comes the pressure to cut costs and evaluate each budget line item with heightened scrutiny. Your law firms’ rates should be no exception.

Historically, law firms have sheltered themselves from the crushing economic impact of past crises — even profiting in some instances — all while the companies they serve suffer. Though you might view certain firms as paramount to your business, complying with rate increases that reflect above-market fees shouldn’t be a knee-jerk reaction…especially during a global pandemic.

Regardless of how effectively your legal department has operated in the past, it’s clear we all need to rethink our strategy going forward. There’s no time like the present to determine what brings value to your business and what’s draining your bottom line. 

  • Reducing cost expenditures in the short and long-term
  • Identifying the key firms who are willing to lean-in and share in the economic burden

It’s time to move from a reactive state to a proactive state when it comes to law firm pricing.

There’s just one way to get there — data.

Shed your reputation as an idle price-taker. Sophisticated legal-tech solutions, like Bodhala, offer data-backed insights that can strengthen your negotiation power with your law firms. 

By leveraging data, legal departments can surface granular analyses of their spend and insights on how their law firms’ rates stack up against others in the market to keep their rate increases in check. 

Don’t have the data to execute this just yet? We’re here to help.

Bodhala recommends requesting a 15-20% discount from your law firms on all work executed throughout the duration of the Covid-19 crisis. 

In addition to aiding your cash conservation efforts, this request allows your legal department to identify which firms are truly critical partners for your business. Which law firms are willing to put their egos – and paychecks – aside to help their clients in an urgent time of need? 

Download our free rate negotiation letter template to kickstart the conversation with your law firm.

Get in touch with our team of legal billing and data experts to find out how Bodhala can transform your legal department.

5 Tactics for Reading Legal Contracts

Posted on August 21, 2020 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

A contract is a collection of legally enforceable promises between two or more parties. Contracts can be full of “legalese” terminology, the rough size of a short story and intimidating to review. No matter how scary reviewing a contract can be, it is important to always understand what exactly you’re agreeing to.

Here are 5 tips you can use to learn how to read a contract:

  1. Examine the Contract

Reading a legal contract is as much about learning as understanding. There will be language that you understand at a first glance, and items that you want clarified further. Use the headings in the contract to understand the theme of the section, and the rights and responsibilities that fall under it.

As you read the contract, ask yourself if you know what each sentence means, and how it might affect you. You want to consider what happens when things go wrong.

  1. Understand What to Expect

Contracts usually start by stating parties and context — the “who” and “what.” For example, employment agreements will say that the employer will pay the employee for services.

A definitions section usually follows. This section spells out the defined meanings of words for the purpose of the contract, such as what “Effective Date” means. Definitions like “Default Event” might say something like “any event set out in section X.”

Another common contract feature is cross referencing: when one section or legal clause references another (sometimes on a completely different page of the agreement). This can make contracts hard to read, going back and forth or yo-yo-ing the scroll bar to read one section in the context of another.

  1. Make Notes

Take note of anything you aren’t sure about so you can look it up later or seek legal advice. It helps to print out a contract and use a pen or highlighter on it like you are studying for an exam. It’s a good idea to write notes or jot down questions in the white space of a contract to remember where you came across that issue.

  1. Google Some Legal Terms

Legal terms and jargon can make contracts feel impossible to understand; however, these terms can be easily googled. There are plenty of legal dictionaries available online. Some words, like “default,” mean something different in a legal context. Try googling “default meaning legal” or “default meaning contract” to get the legal definition of these words. It’s important to have a concrete understanding of what you’re agreeing to.

  1. Ask Questions

Once you are comfortable with the meanings of words and clauses, read the contract again and note any further questions or concerns you have. In particular, ask the other party whether there are any implied terms, and ask for clarification on any broad or ambiguous terms. It is important that the contract clearly state the parties’ intentions.

Bonus: Use a Legal AI Tool

Use our AI-powered contract management software, ReivewAI, to boost your confidence when reviewing your contract. Click on the defined terms or cross references in your agreement to pull out their meaning in the side bar of Word — allowing you to read your contract alongside the extra details. This helps you understand the contract better and alleviates eye strain!