Author: Onit

Onit Kicks Off its New Podcast Series

Posted on August 22, 2017 by - Company News and Events

Onit is pleased to announce the premiere episode of our informational podcast series! These podcasts were designed with you in mind, to show you how you can empower and simplify your business processes.

In our first episode, sales engineer Ryan Kinsey discusses the world of business process automation and walks us through Onit’s unique approach to process automation. He explains how our clients are making the best of their Onit solutions, and also reveals the key differentiating factors between Onit and its competitors.

We have more podcasts coming your way soon, and we look forward to your joining us!

Click here to download The Onit Podcast Episode 1 transcript

Click here to preview episode 1 on iTunes.

Five Must-Have Features of an “Evolving” Business Process Platform

Posted on August 17, 2017 by - Business Process Management

Every organization needs a business process platform that can grow beyond the legal department and automate all of your enterprise process needs. While it’s okay to acquire traditional, individual enterprise process solutions as you need them, there is much to be said for platforms that are built with change in mind and designed to evolve your processes.

We call these “evolving” platforms because they allow you to easily develop and deploy your own enterprise process solutions as you need them – the sky’s the limit. The solutions developed on the best platforms can be configured, in some cases, in less than 30 minutes. They require no coding, which contributes to this lightning-fast time. They are also a fraction of the cost of traditional, dedicated process solutions. Some examples of solutions that can be easily built on these platforms include:

  • Sales contract tracking
  • SOW approval
  • Legal service requests
  • Legal e-billing
  • Matter management
  • NDA creation and review
  • Power of attorney
  • Matter intake
  • RFP response management
  • Legal hold management
  • Legal process outsourcing
  • Partnership agreements

These cutting-edge platforms combine business process management, collaboration and transaction management functionality into one innovative tool. It is easy to develop and deploy enterprise solutions that streamline business processes and solve real world problems which directly impact customer satisfaction, employee productivity and profitability. So, which features should you be looking for in an evolving process platform?

Five must-have features of gold-standard evolving business process platforms:

1. Unmatched Time to Value

The best platforms dramatically reduce time to pilot and time to value. Simple process pilots can be ready for implementation in hours and in production within days, so you can see ROI much faster.

2. Increased Flexibility


The best in breed of these platforms provide business users with the flexibility to route, comment, revise and track progress of the project to accommodate the variability and unpredictability inherent in knowledge work.

3. Standardized Intuitive Interface


Solutions developed with evolving business process platforms provide simple intuitive interfaces with standard features allowing the user to focus on the “process” instead of how the application works. This means that little or no training is required, radically reducing the time and cost of deployment.

4. A Hands-On Approach


The focus should be on learning the optimal process through feedback from rapid deployment rather than a customized and expensive development of complex process maps and workflow design that anticipate every possible contingency that may or may not occur.

5. Collaboration

Collaboration is vital for managing processes in any department. Team members need an easy way to communicate in a shared workspace, so everyone knows exactly what is going on without having to search in Outlook for status updates.

It’s time to fuel your company’s success and raise the bar in your process automation. Your organization needs to be able to streamline internal processes, gain greater visibility into transactions and improve operational efficiency. A state-of-the-art evolving process platform lets you easily bridge the organizational and geographic boundaries critical to your business, allowing you to see ROI much faster than with traditional systems.

Onit is Honored to be an Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Company

Posted on August 16, 2017 by - Company News and Events

Onit is excited to announce that we made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in America for 2017 for the second consecutive year. Always a thrilling achievement for us, we ranked 949 this year with an astounding three-year growth of 462%. The list recognizes success big and small, and is the most prestigious honor a growing private company can receive. Onit joins the likes of Chobani, Microsoft, Under Armour, GoPro, Lifelock, Method, Zappos and more—each of whom benefitted greatly from the exposure and experience of being listed on the Inc. 5000. To qualify for the Inc. 5000 list, a company must:

  • Had revenue no less than $100,000 in 2013
  • Had revenue no less than $2,000,000 in 2016
  • Revenue in 2016 exceeds revenue in 2013

Not known for resting on our laurels, we at Onit will continue our hard work and dedication, trying our best to surpass this achievement in years to come.

Onit to Participate in ILTACON 2017

Posted on August 9, 2017 by - Company News and Events

Onit is delighted to be participating in ILTACON 2017 at the Mandalay Bay Resort, Las Vegas on Tuesday, August 15. Onit will be at table 24 at the Corporate Corner, in the Shoreline Exhibit Hall on level 2 of the South Convention Center.

ILTACON is the premier educational and networking event for the legal sector. Drawing on the personal and collective strengths of law firm and law department professionals, ILTACON is the best place to learn what works, what doesn’t and what’s next in legal technology. Through a variety of session formats, topic experts deliver examples, inspiration and takeaways that can be applied to the challenges and opportunities you face within your team, your organization and the industry.

This four-day event features extensive networking opportunities and educational content inspired by and developed by peers, with a volunteer planning committee that works collaboratively with peers, vendors and experts to ensure each session provides value to a variety of professional roles. To see a detailed agenda, visit https://www.iltacon.org/agenda/summary

We hope you’ll find time to join Onit at this signature event, and we look forward to seeing you there!

Six Features of Focused Contract Management Solutions

Posted on August 2, 2017 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Traditional “all-in-one” contract management software solutions can be astonishingly expensive, cumbersome, and don’t always work well in legal departments. User experience can be sub-par, and such a system is hard to change when it needs to support a new business initiative. Contract management should be visible to many areas of an organization, and that data should be both easy to find and logically stored. Legal needs to be able to work together with procurement, sales and others to function at full capacity. Additionally, the contract review process needs structure to avoid miscommunication and missed opportunities. Is your organization lacking in one of these areas?

What is needed are contract management solutions that are logically focused on particular aspects of contract management, such as contract lifecycle management, contract administration, or contract review and approval. In other words, you need a solution that is focused on yourparticular contract management needs. The best in breed of these solutions also allow you to expand the system as needed.

So what are six premium features that you should look for in a state-of-the-art, focused contract management solution? We’ve put together a quick-start list to help you move forward:

1. Quick Development Time

The best solutions are built to fill specific needs with great efficiency. It is easy to create, modify and deploy focused solutions with robust workflow, transaction management and reporting capabilities. These tools can be developed in as little as 30 minutes. They can be built as a business needs them, preventing costly delays. By building a new solution only when there is a need for it, the company saves money that would otherwise be wasted on solutions that just don’t work.

2. Rapid Deployment

While traditional contract management software has a lengthy deployment process that may take many months to complete, look for solutions that can be built and deployed in a few short weeks. The time to value provided by these solutions is unmatched, allowing greater agility by providing more immediate feedback.

3. Central repository

The ability to establish a searchable repository of all contracts, clauses and associated business information is critical. A single source for all sales collateral and other customer-facing content will make it easier for team members to find documents.

4. Usability

A simple, lightweight tool that only gives you the information you need and requires almost no training. It is intuitive and easy for anybody to use. Everyone will know exactly where contracts are in the process, who completed the last revision, what the next step is, etc. An iterative review process lets team members collaborate in a shared workspace.

5. Notifications

Notices can be easily configured to ensure compliance with notice provisions. The tool alerts the right people when required notices (e.g. price changes, renewal, or termination notices) are due, and ensures the highest level of visibility so you can manage to the most favorable terms.

6. Configurability

Modifications to the system can be made quickly without assistance from IT. By assessing the problem and building outward, organizations will not have to compromise existing initiatives to find value-building opportunities.

No matter the nature of your contract management problem, now is the time to be innovative. By assessing the problem and building outward, you won’t have to compromise existing initiatives to rescue your bottom line. If you already have a traditional contract management system in place, you can deploy focused solutions to fill the process and collaboration gaps. By implementing such cutting-edge solutions, an organization will free procurement, legal and sales to focus on adding value to the organization, as opposed to administrative tasks.

The New Generation of Process Automation: Collaborative Capability Fuels Success

Posted on July 26, 2017 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation

Business process automation has been around for decades and is now considered old news. Someone pushes a button and the automated “system of record” process starts. But nowadays more is needed than simply tracking the data. Daily interactions that occur between groups and departments require tools that clearly define, track, and report on who is responsible at each step and who is taking over. In short, built-in, collaborative processes are desperately needed.

The layer of engagement that comes with collaborative capability is sadly missing in the older systems of records. What is needed is a business activity-supporting software solution that is people intensive, highly variable, loosely structured and subject to frequent change.

These solutions are essentially systems of engagement, which incorporate not only management of tasks or processes but also the communication and collaboration preferences of its users on a whole. These systems serve customers, partners and employees equally, removing the obstacles that prevent out-of-department stakeholders from taking part in crucial processes that impact their goals and productivity. A system of engagement is focused on spur of the moment tasks and decisions, leverages social and cloud technologies and includes short, rapid, iterative release cycles.

Rather than trying to compete with existing enterprise software installations, the leading systems of engagement are embracing this logical approach that enables them to fill in the gaps of existing software infrastructure. The primary function of any solution that adds a layer of engagement onto a system of record is to make the processes happening around the data clear. To sum up: the simple accessibility of the old systems is now made obsolete by state-of-the-art solutions that allow users to collaborate simply, easily and as part of their normal work streams.

If your business doesn’t have the latest generation of collaborative process solutions, it’s time to seriously consider them. These solutions take process automation to the next level of cutting-edge software. Don’t be caught behind the eight ball on this one – get on board and you’ll not only gain a strong competitive advantage, but your teams will thank you for it.

Game Changing Features of Leading Enterprise Legal Management Solutions

Posted on July 19, 2017 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

There have been some pretty momentous game changers in the world of enterprise legal management (ELM) solutions in recent years. I’ll take it a step further and tell you there has also been an evolutionary paradigm shift in ELM (but we’ll save that for another story).

When considering and comparing different ELM solutions, there are some basic things to look for. The solution should, at a minimum: 1) empower a better way to work, 2) offer an environment where the user experience is key, and 3) be focused on process.

Those were the basic things to look for; now come the game changers that take ELM to an entirely different level. Before you invest in a major project like an ELM solution for your business, you should also be aware of four game changing features that are instrumental in the best ELM packages:

1. Compatibility

The finest ELM solutions are designed to be able to work alongside and together with systems that are already in place, allowing legal departments to supplement both the capabilities of what they have and to ease their transition to a more modern system.

2. Minimal IT Involvement

While traditional ELM systems require constant IT maintenance and attention, modern ELM solutions are lean and nimble and tend to work in a more straightforward manner. In many cases, users can configure, deploy, and support their new solutions with no corporate IT involvement. This is because they are designed and built in an intuitive, “no code” environment that can be learned without even the need for a training session.

3. A Solution for Every Work Flow

Solutions for standard processes like contract review and approval, NDAs, alternative fee arrangements, and matter or legal spend management are configurable to your needs. For more esoteric needs particular to a business, solutions can be created from scratch with minimal delay in deployment.

4. Drive Operational Improvements Easily

Unlike the development and implementation process for a large enterprise legal management system, which can take several months or years, the average time it takes to implement the best solution is less than 30 days. While the most complex implementations can take up to 90 days, this still beats the average for ELM systems by months.

Just thinking about implementing an ELM solution can be daunting to many. Modern ELM is no longer only matter and spend management, but includes contract management, legal holds, NDAs, SOX compliance, legal service requests, etc. It takes some research and diligent investigation to find the just the right solution, but you’ll find it time well spent, and one of your best investments.

If you haven’t already, isn’t it time to make the move to a cutting edge ELM system? Your team (and your bottom line) will thank you.

Top 10 Benefits of Using Premier NDA Management Tools

Posted on July 17, 2017 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Unfortunately, many businesses have a never-ending struggle with managing NDAs. Collecting NDAs from all areas of business is just one example. Another is the challenge of following a single process for requesting NDAs – regardless of signer role. The list goes on endlessly, but you get the point.

Businesses need a tool that provides the ability to build custom components and execute NDAs tailored to different business needs for employees, vendors, contractors, and clients. The tool should also be human-centric and easy to use, allowing users to manage all NDAs in one secure place.

We’ve assembled a quick-start list of the top 10 benefits you should look for when in the market for a NDA management tool:

1. Self-Service

The best NDA management tools can generate an NDA for the requester using your standard terms. Where conditions warrant, the NDA will be escalated for legal review prior to delivery to the requester.

2. Policy Compliance

An NDA tool will make sure that your NDAs are being handled properly. When they need legal review, they will get reviewed. If they need executive approval, they will be approved. And most importantly the process is self-documenting and always auditable.

3. Variable Workflow

The workflow process can be altered, reviewed and approved by all the participants. New approvers can be quickly added without slowing down the process.

4. NDA Lifecycle

NDAs can be managed throughout their entire lifecycle, including renewal dates, termination notice periods and non-standard terms.

5. Electronic Signatures

The tool should support electronic signatures and integrations with all vendors such as EchoSign and DocuSign.

6. Faster Execution

Your NDA will be approved faster and you’ll have more visibility into the process. Cutting-edge NDA tools support the entire process – creation, approval, negotiation and final execution.

7. Warnings Notification

Clauses that need special attention in the NDA can be flagged in the tool. Users will see a warning when they open it for review.

8. Document Retention

All of your documents are stored in a central location so you can access any document at any time. The tool will notify all of the participants when a NDA is signed and automatically close the request.

9. Dashboard Views

Quickly see a snapshot view of the status of all NDA requests. Reporting and metrics gathering is easy within a special dashboard view.

10. Simple, Intuitive, Affordable

The finest NDA tools are also surprisingly affordable, intuitive, easy to use, and learn. There is virtually no training to get started.

True, NDAs used to be a major headache, but with the technology available now they no longer have to be. Stop wasting valuable time with manual processes and don’t be caught on the sidelines when it comes to properly managing your NDAs. Take the leap and look into streamlining your NDA management process once and for all – your team will thank you for it.

Onit to Host Webinar on Enterprise Legal Management for ILTA Members

Posted on June 22, 2017 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

Onit is excited to be hosting a webinar on Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) for ILTA members. The webinar, “A Better Way to Run Legal Operations: The Enterprise Legal Management Paradigm Shift is Now,” will highlight how innovative legal departments have acknowledged the evolutionary ELM paradigm shift and have implemented solutions to get ahead of the curve.

For nearly two decades, ELM has focused on matter management and spend management. It’s fair to say that effective ELM platforms were, and still are, good at what they do best – only matter and spend management.

There has been a distinct paradigm shift and evolutionary branching off from those older ELM systems. Today, the most effective ELM platforms facilitate engagement, are focused on “process,” offer an environment where the user experience is crucial and can be augmented to manage other legal processes. Today’s definition of ELM includes all of the following tasks — contract management, legal service requests, NDAs, and legal holds (to name a few).

This session will be at 12:00 ET (11:00 CST) on Monday July, 17 and you can register online.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Onit Client Archer Daniels Midland a Two-Time Winner of Prestigious Awards This Year

Posted on June 12, 2017 by - Company News and Events

Transatlantic Legal Department of the Year, 2017

Onit is elated to announce that one of our major clients, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), is a winner in the prestigious Transatlantic Legal Awards 2017. With assistance from Onit, ADM designed and implemented sustainable processes and systems to “make the complex simple.” ADM’s global rollout allowed real-time access to legal spend and offered predictive metrics and reporting dashboards. Overall, the company reduced its outside legal spend by more than one-third and reduced volatility by using fixed fees and other alternative fee arrangements.

The Transatlantic Legal awards recognize excellence in handling transatlantic matters across the key areas of corporate, finance and disputes, as well as highlighting law firm and legal department innovation, commitment to pro bono, outstanding transatlantic strategy, and in-house leaders. The judging panel is made up of senior ALM journalists, Chris Johnson, chief global correspondent, business of law at The American Lawyer and Law.com; and including Georgina Stanley and Gina Passarella, editors of Legal Week and The American Lawyer respectively. The awards gala took place on June 8, 2017 at One Whitehall Place, London SW1, United Kingdom.

2017 ACC Value Champion

As if the Transatlantic Award wasn’t enough, ADM was also selected as a 2017 Association of  Corporate Counsel (ACC) Value Champion. They are being honored for making a difference, not only in their organization through creativity and value-based legal management skills, but also for affecting change within the legal industry.

Archer Daniels Midland is an American global food processing and commodities trading corporation, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. ADM’s legal department shared some problems that are all too common among legal departments across the country.

For example:

  • They were using an existing “traditional system” for e-billing/ matter management.
  • Implementation was limited to the U.S. and parts of Europe.
  • Data entry was fragmented and was inconstant across business units (South America and most of EMEA did not open matters).
  • They had no automated and auditable process to ensure settlements were strategically evaluated and properly authorized.

Typically, these issues leave other processes in the legal department fractured, work migrates to email and spreadsheets, processes are encapsulated in “forms” and flowcharts, and Excel is used for tracking and reporting. And to make matters worse, these tools were simply breaking down at scale. ADM is a global, complex organization and it needed a platform that is flexible enough to “make the complex simple.”

ADM partnered with Onit, a leading provider of enterprise spend management software, to design and implement a solution. Both companies have an impressive pedigree of experience and together they collaborated innovatively to find the best technology solutions to optimize these processes:

  • A multi-lingual Conflict of Interest Disclosure
  • 10Q – 302/404 questionnaires and certification
  • Data Privacy review process for new vendor selection
  • Government Hosting & Gifting Request and Approval
  • Tariff Classification Intake Form
  • Service of Process integration
  • A significant matter update process
  • Reserve Review and Approval
  • Claims management integration with an external system
  • Confidentiality Agreements

ADM leveraged technology and their new platform solution to reach all corners of the law department beyond legal and spend management. The astounding results that ADM achieved from this major makeover speak for themselves. Their reduction of legal costs alone is enough to make one catch their breath.

As if remarkable reduction of legal spend weren’t enough, ADM also implemented an extraordinary series of predictive metrics and reporting to give better insight and guidance to lawyers and business folks who manage risk for the company.

Everything ADM did on this project served as a foundation to drive and optimize the law department function. The project was focused enterprise-wide, creating consistent and repeatable tools for improving and managing the law department. Insight and analytics worked in tandem to create not only sound and repeatable processes, but also highly sustainable results.

ADM achieved these enviable results through a combination of innovation, process re-engineering and a robust and nimble technology platform to aggressively meet their challenges head-on, and come out on top.

The ACC Value Champions, a component of the ACC Value Challenge, is a unique recognition program that identifies, celebrates and publicizes successful law department value initiatives and collaborations between clients and their legal service providers. Each year ACC identifies and highlights individuals who have utilized value-focused management practices to cut spending, improve predictability and achieve better outcomes. The Champions come from varied industries and departments/firms of many sizes, and have utilized an array of value levers.