Category: Company News and Events

Pearson PLC, Onit and Morae Shortlisted for the 2020 Legal Innovation Awards

Posted on July 21, 2020 by - Company News and Events, Contract Lifecycle Management

Congratulations are in order for Pearson PLC, who has won recognition for its innovative work in legal operations. The company has landed on the shortlist of the Legal Innovation Awards 2020 in the category of “Future of Legal Services Innovation – In-House Legal Operations.”

Pearson PLC, a global learning company, created a transformational shared service center to support commercial transactions worldwide for more than 10,000 users. Powered by an integrated solution from Onit and its partner Morae, Pearson achieved a 30 percent improved contract turnaround time.

The nomination, which also names Onit and Morae, illustrates the unlimited potential for innovation when corporate legal departments team with trusted technology partners. Pearson selected Morae to assist in developing, implementing and operating an innovative, highly-efficient Transaction Service Center as an extension of Pearson’s legal team in support of the company’s businesses worldwide. Onit provided the contract lifecycle management technology and Apptitude platform to drive automation, greater standardization, ease of access to information, and increased process transparency.

 This is the second time the company has been recognized for its transformative initiative. The Association of Corporate Counsel named Pearson a 2020 ACC Value Champion earlier this year. The prestigious prize showcases innovative law departments that embrace creative, data-driven solutions to streamline operations.

About the 2020 Legal Innovation Awards

The 2020 Legal Innovation Awards, hosted by Law.com International UK, Legal Week, celebrates the outstanding achievements of law firms, chambers, in-house legal departments and alternative business structures. The winners will be announced in a virtual awards ceremony on Oct. 2 at 5 p.m. BST. You can register for virtual attendance here and tweeting is encouraged during the proceedings with the hashtag #legalinnovationawards.

Hear about the Innovative Project from Pearson, Morae and Onit  

Robert Mignanelli, SVP, Associate General Counsel, Global Product/Technology at Pearson plc, sat down to discuss this award-winning initiative in this on-demand webinar. Mignanelli is joined by Joy Saphla, President, Morae Legal of Morae Global Corporation and Matt DenOuden, VP, Global Sales of Onit to share details about the journey to move from a highly bespoke legal services model into a more standardized and streamlined way of delivering support to the business.

Once more, congratulations to Pearson!

New for Onit Clients: Enhanced Global Scalability with Amazon Web Services  

Posted on July 14, 2020 by - Company News and Events

New for Onit clients: Enhanced Global Scalability with Amazon Web Services  

Onit is pleased to announce that we’ve added Amazon Web Services (AWS) to our infrastructure. The new architecture will easily align with our clients’ business needs worldwide, regardless of size or capacity. Clients will have the industry’s best reliability, with AWS designed with fault tolerance and high availability as the core objectives.

Chris Fields, chief technology officer at Onit, talked more in-depth about the project on a recent podcast. He explained that 100% of the company’s clients are now on AWS and shared an example of how this positively impacts them:

“One of the most common aspects of the enterprise legal management space is that corporate legal departments need more capacity at their quarters’ ends. When those times come, we can quickly spin up capacity within minutes to support their needs and then back it off automatically.”  

 Amazon Web Services provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of businesses in 190 countries around the world. Among its many features are agility, flexibility and security. The elastic computing AWS architecture allows Onit and its clients to scale effortlessly, globally and on-demand.

“A large number of our clients are familiar with Amazon Web Services themselves and they’re reaching out to explore how we can leverage the technology together. Many clients also have seen our fast growth and appreciate that we are investing in infrastructure,” he said.

The transition resulted in zero downtime, thanks to a sizeable Onit team devoted to the project. As Chris joked, “We go ‘all hands on deck’ for big projects here at Onit. There were so many people to thank I had to make a video with Star Wars credits.”

Listen to Chris’s interview below to hear more about Onit, Amazon Web Services and other technology projects in progress. You can also learn more by reading the company’s press release covering this news.

 

Onit Contributes to Crisis Effort by Powering the Evergreen Donation Emergency Network

Posted on July 8, 2020 by - Company News and Events

What do you get when uniting innovative legal professionals, software developers, designers, and business people? Meaningful solutions during a challenging time.

FT Innovative Lawyers, supported by Global Legal Hackathon, Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), and the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), launched an initiative earlier this year to solve complex COVID-19 problems. Within less than a month, legal innovators had to identify challenges, build teams, and launch solutions to support communities, governments, and organizations.

Thousands around the world responded to the call to action, including Onit.

Together with Consilio and Adobe, Onit technologists tackled the task of quickly rerouting excess food supply to food banks. COVID-19 has exacerbated the complications of food logistics, hindering markets and food banks from supporting those suffering from hunger insecurity – especially during a surge in demand.

The result: EDEN.

The Evergreen Donation Emergency Network, built on the Onit platform Apptitude, connects donors with excess supplies to organizations in need. Although created with the idea of tackling food supply challenges, the team expanded its capabilities to include all types of potential donations including medical supplies, clothing, and even volunteers. Using EDEN, event coordinators, suppliers, and transporters connect to plan and execute donations. This project also highlights how Onit’s Apptitude platform can create real change in the world, even in the worst of times. You can view the EDEN demo here.

Congratulations to the Onit, Consilio, and Adobe teams!

How the Cloud Impacts Corporate Legal Operations

Posted on July 2, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events, Enterprise Legal Management

When it comes to the cloud, efficiency, and automation, companies may not have to look far for corporate legal operations inspiration. According to Jed Cawthorne, director of security and governance solutions at NetDocuments, legal knowledge management teams and IT offer examples that corporate legal can reference.

As he explained in this recorded Onit webinar presentation, legal knowledge management has over a decade of experience with leveraging collaboration technology, electronic form libraries, intranets, and search applications. IT has made great strides in operations as well. Many IT departments have adopted cloud-based workflow management platforms for submitting requests, assigning jobs, and tracking progress – all to automate tasks and create efficient working environments.

Jed draws from a wealth of experience when it comes to the cloud and legal operations. He has 20 years of experience in information and knowledge management, including document management systems, intranets, and collaboration. He also spent almost five years as director of knowledge management in the legal, corporate, and compliance group at the Bank of Montreal. NetDocuments, an Onit Strategic Alliances Partner, has more than 2,750 enterprise customers worldwide and offers a cloud-based content services and productivity platform that includes document management, email management, and collaboration technology.

In the recording of the webinar, titled “The Impact of Cloud on Legal Operations,” Jed discussed:

  • Questions concerning high-quality service delivery at lower costs using the cloud
  • How efficiency impacts a corporate legal department, including individual attorneys and the department on a whole
  • Examples of how the cloud drives ROI in a corporate legal department

The webinar is part of Onit’s Lean into LegalOps, an online learning initiative that connects legal operations innovators and industry thought leaders. The program recently featured a virtual discussion with BT and Buying Legal Council on optimizing resources inside and outside the legal department and a discussion lead by Pearson, Onit, and Morae on transforming legal services delivery and enabling self-service.

We hope you’ll take some time to view the NetDocuments webinar and discover more about Onit by clicking on the resources below.

Introducing a New Resource for the Europe In-House Legal Community

Posted on June 30, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

Onit is excited to announce that it has extended its Lean into LegalOps virtual learning program to the Europe in-house legal community. Members of Lean into LegalOps Europe will have access to exclusive Europe-focused educational materials. They will also receive invitations to virtual legal operations discussions featuring Onit customers and partners and be included in a bi-weekly, peer-to-peer discussion group for European members only.

We sat down with Robert Johnson, managing director of Onit’s London office, to talk to him about the program and the state of legal operations in Europe.

Q:  What are some of the challenges that the Europe in-house legal community face?

A: In-house counsel in Europe encounter legal operations challenges that drastically differ from their U.S. colleagues. First, compliance with data and privacy laws is exceptionally complicated and varies by country. You also have EU-wide laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that corporations must address. If a corporation does not meet these compliance levels, they may face steep fines or government investigations.

Second, in the last five to 10 years, large organisations in Europe have been growing rapidly and often by acquisition. As a result, they may have multiple duplicative systems in legal as well as other departments like accounting or HR. They’re shifting their focus from “how to get by” to best practices and overcoming the challenges of, for example, 10 different systems that come with worries about integrations, silos, and more.

Q: What’s important when it comes to EU legal operations management?

A: Since Europe is not as litigious as the U.S., European companies generally don’t place a high priority on cost savings for legal operations as the U.S. does. Instead, the focus is on leveraging and understanding data and creating efficiencies to reduce the time spent on lower-value work. Legal departments are also bringing in new types of job roles, such as analytic specialists who can code and work with large data sets.

Q: How does Lean into LegalOps support the Europe in-house legal community?

A: Lean into LegalOps taps into the ingenuity shown by legal professionals in Europe. People are always intrigued by what other people are accomplishing. The program allows them to connect, share stories and best practices, and demonstrate how they’ve used Onit technology to address formidable challenges. The educational resources will vary from informal Q&As, customer demos of how they’ve used Onit technology like Apptitude or contract lifecycle management, and examples of working across departments such as HR, marketing, and more to efficiently address business functions and build transparency.

About Lean into LegalOps Europe

Onit began the virtual learning and networking program in response to the global pandemic.

This online learning initiative highlights programming from the Onit and SimpleLegal customer base, industry thought leaders, and innovators in the space. The masterclasses cover topics such as how to use workflow tools to manage a distributed workforce, how to implement technology strategies that deliver immediate cost savings and ROI, and how to quantify and defend the value in the legal department. There is no cost to join. If interested, please sign up here.

BT Implements Onit Workflow Platform Apptitude

Posted on June 23, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

We’re excited to announce that BT plc has gone live with Onit matter management. The rollout represents the first in a series of planned implementations that include Onit legal spend management and legal service request, all built on the company’s business process automation platform Apptitude.

Using Apptitude, BT’s legal department will link all its best-of-breed applications such as document and vendor management, enabling comprehensive reporting and visibility across the department. The platform will enable BT to define, build and deploy new custom solutions to automate processes related to legal operations and compliance and better collaborate with business users outside of legal.

As a bonus, BT will share its vision for creating the ultimate lean legal department in a virtual discussion on June 25, 2020, at 9 a.m. ET/2 p.m. BST. In the webinar, European managing director Robert Johnson will discuss with David Griffin from BT and Silvia Hodges-Silverstein of Buying Legal Council how to use automated legal service requests and reporting tools to optimize resources inside and outside the legal department. Members of corporate legal departments are welcome to register here.

Read the press release.

Register for the webinar.

Learn more about Onit Apptitude.

 

Webinar Alert: Maximizing the Value of Preferred Law Firm Panels with Corteva

Posted on June 18, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

As a publicly-traded, global pure-play agriculture company, Corteva, Inc. provides farmers around the world with a diverse mix of seed, crop protection and digital solutions focused on maximizing productivity to enhance yield and profitability. It hit $13.8 billion in global net sales in 2019 and has more than 10 million customers across 140+ countries.

Its corporate legal department – which includes more than 250 Onit Enterprise Legal Management technology users – stretches across multiple continents with thousands of invoices and hundreds of matters arriving each month.

To drive even more value through sourcing decisions, Gregg McConnell, Legal Operations Leader at Corteva, leveraged his 25+ years of experience in finance, procurement and technology to build a global panel of law firms. Using technology provided by Onit and our partner PERSUIT to support the initiative, he helped the company significantly reduce average prices across vendors – by up to 60% in some cases – and increase outside counsel engagement.

In this new Onit on-demand webinar, Gregg details how he built a global panel of preferred law firms and how technology like ELM from Onit and an outside counsel engagement platform from PERSUIT ensures maximum sustained value.

Joined by Matt DenOuden of Onit and David Falstein of PERSUIT, the presentation covers:

  • Putting rigor behind how to allocate work to your panel firms
  • Creating the right programs for different types of work (for example, IP vs. litigation)
  • Automating enforcement of panel guidelines and fee agreements
  • Evaluating panel firm effectiveness and compliance
  • Reporting on the value obtained from preferred firms

View the webinar and access the presentation slides here.

Lean into LegalOps

The webinar is part of Onit Lean into LegalOps. The online learning initiative offers legal and business professionals educational resources fueled by innovators and industry thought leaders eager to share their knowledge and ideas. Other on-demand webinars available through the program include “Building and Executing a Legal Technology Roadmap” featuring Curtis Batterton, MBA, CCMP, Legal Operations & Global Technology Manager of McDonald’s Corporation and “Quantifying Value in the Legal Department & Why the Stakes are High” featuring Kevin Clem, Chief Commercial Officer of HBR Consulting and Matt Burdman, GLO Finance Manager of Colgate-Palmolive Company.

Helpful links 

Financial Times Ranks Onit as One of the Fastest-Growing Companies in the Americas

Posted on June 12, 2020 by - Company News and Events

Financial Times released its inaugural list of the 500 fastest-growing companies in the Americas, ranking Onit in the top-third based on its revenue growth rate. The rankings highlight businesses across the continent that successfully leverage innovation and creativity to navigate these uncertain times.

Onit earned #153 on the list, based on its revenue growth from 2015-2018. Financial Times partnered with research company Statista to gather and compile the list, analyzing the financial performance of tens of thousands of companies in the Americas as potential candidates.

The company is committed to continual innovation. During 2020, it has:

Onit announced significant milestones in 2019 that include a $200 million strategic investment from K1 Management, the acquisition of SimpleLegal, 100% customer retention, an 80% increase in new hires, and other rankings such as top 20% of the Inc. 5000 and listing in the top half of Deloitte’s 2019 North America Technology Fast 500.

Congratulations to all the Onit employees and leadership that helped make this happen!

Join Onit and Pearson for a Webinar: Transforming Legal Service Delivery and Enabling Self-Service

Posted on June 5, 2020 by - Company News and Events

Join us for our upcoming webinar with Pearson, Transforming Legal Service Delivery and Enabling Self-Service. This webinar will detail how the Pearson legal department made the strategic move to a more standardized and streamlined way of delivering support to the business, in order to serve its business clients faster and more efficiently while reducing costs. The results have been the same quality of work at significantly lower cost and higher velocity.

This webinar will showcase why and how the Pearson legal department redefined itself and how it now supports and executes contract work. You will also learn about:

  • The critical role of executive sponsorship and change management
  • Performance management dashboards and SLAs
  • Hybrid resourcing and service delivery operating model
  • How Onit’s technology platform supports end-to-end process automation and web-based self-service portals
  • The resulting benefits which include cost savings, efficiency, reduced risk, use of data for better decision-making and improved business customer support

The webinar will be held June 18 at 10:00 a.m. CDT.

Click here to register for the webinar.

Onit Launches New Contract Lifecycle Management Quick Start Implementation Package

Posted on June 2, 2020 by - Company News and Events, Enterprise Legal Management

Onit today announced a new contract lifecycle management (CLM) Quick Start implementation package that allows companies of all sizes to streamline the entire contract process, reduce processing time and achieve higher contract compliance rates in less than 30 days. The new implementation package offers standard out-of-the-box functionality, quick time to value and a clear return on investment. The simplified implementation package gives legal and business teams immediate access to its award-winning contract lifecycle management technology, exposure to a robust workflow and automation platform and an upgrade path that can grow as they expand.

With this new Onit CLM Quick Start implementation package, companies can take advantage of the enterprise-grade contract lifecycle management software now with the industry’s fastest time to value. The CLM Quick Start implementation package includes one non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and one master services agreement (MSA) record type, limited custom fields, DocuSign or Adobe eSignature capabilities and an external contract request link.

Read the entire press release.