Category: Contract Lifecycle Management

Elevate Compliance and Clarity: The Game-Changing Benefits of Legal Entity and Party Hierarchies in Contract Management

Posted on November 20, 2024 by - Contract Lifecycle Management

Navigating legal complexities can now be visualized with OnitX’s new Hierarchy enhancement for Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM). This feature empowers users to map out the relationships between legal entities and parties directly within the platform. For organizations, this means a clearer path to compliance, streamlined contract negotiations, and better-informed decision-making.

Easily identify which entities are responsible for each contract—be it subsidiaries, subcontractors, or third-party providers. With structured legal and party hierarchies, OnitX ensures smoother operations, accountability, and a holistic view of all contracting relationships. 

Here’s what’s new.

  1. Legal Entity Hierarchies: Manage complex entity structures and simplify compliance for global or domestic operations.
  1. Party Hierarchies: Understand who’s involved in each contract, improving transparency and accountability.

Key Benefits

  • Greater Transparency: These hierarchies enhance visibility into contract relationships, legal entity structures, and party interactions, reducing the chance of errors or overlooked obligations
  • Improved Compliance and Risk Management: Understanding how contracts, entities, and parties relate helps organizations remain compliant with regulations and identify risks early in the process
  • Operational Efficiency: Hierarchical structuring of contracts, entities, and parties reduces time spent tracking obligations, allows for better decision-making, and simplifies the negotiation and renewal process

OnitX CLM customers will have access to this feature enhancement on November 19, 2024. If you are interested in learning how OnitX CLM could transform your workflow, schedule a demo here.

Onit Recognized as Major Player in IDC MarketScape 2024 CLM Software Vendor Report

Posted on October 15, 2024 by - Contract Lifecycle Management

Houston, October 15, 2024 – Onit, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise workflow and artificial intelligence platforms, has been named a Major Player in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Contract Life-Cycle Management Software for Corporate Legal 2024 Vendor Assessment. This prestigious recognition reflects Onit’s continued dedication to innovation and excellence in the contract lifecycle management (CLM) space.

A Testament to Innovation and Excellence

The IDC MarketScape report is a comprehensive evaluation of the capabilities and business strategies of CLM software vendors, with a specific focus on how these platforms support corporate legal departments. Onit’s inclusion as a Major Player underscores the strength of its product offerings, innovation in CLM, and long-term strategic vision in this competitive market.

“As we continue to evolve and expand our products powered by AI, being recognized as a Major Player in the IDC MarketScape report is a significant milestone,” said Michael Farlekas, CEO of Onit. “This recognition reaffirms our commitment to delivering transformative solutions that empower legal teams to manage contracts efficiently and strategically.”

Onit’s CLM software combines advanced workflow automation, artificial intelligence, and data-driven insights to optimize contract management, reduce risk, and improve compliance. By streamlining contract lifecycle processes, Onit helps legal departments drive value and efficiency across their organizations.

About ONIT

Onit is a global leader in AI-enabled workflow automation solutions for legal, compliance, sales, IT, HR, and finance departments. With Onit, companies can transform best practices into smarter workflows, better processes, and operational efficiencies. With a focus on enterprise legal management, matter management, spend management, contract lifecycle management and legal holds, the company operates globally. It helps transform how Fortune 500 companies and billion-dollar corporate legal departments bridge the gap between systems of record and systems of engagement.Onit helps customers find gains in efficiency, reduce costs, and automate transactions faster. For more information, visit onitprostg.wpengine.com.

Empowering Your Employees: 7 Reasons Why Importing Legacy Contracts is Essential 

Posted on July 28, 2023 by - Contract Lifecycle Management

In the dynamic world of business, legacy contracts are like hidden treasures that hold immense potential for any organization. These vital documents, scattered across different online repositories, hard drives, or even in their physical form in drawers or folders – contain a wealth of information waiting to be unlocked. By properly migrating, organizing, and analyzing these legacy contracts through a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) system, businesses can empower their employees to work smarter, better, and faster than ever before.

Here’s why importing your legacy contracts into a CLM system is crucial for empowering your workforce:

1. Unlocking insights for smart decisions

There’s gold in your legacy data. Legacy contracts hold a treasure trove of data that can provide invaluable insights to propel your business forward. With enhanced visibility into legacy data, your company gains a deeper understanding of what strategies are effective and what needs improvement. From understanding business relationships with suppliers, customers, and partners to deciphering financial terms, legal obligations, service level agreements, intellectual property rights, and termination clauses, your team can make timely and informed decisions with newfound clarity.

2. Eliminating “contract leakage.”

Imagine your organization invested in a piece of software a few years ago – a sales database or a procurement tool, for example – that you’re no longer using and are now ready to eliminate. It happens all the time! But, because the signed legacy contract is buried on a hard drive somewhere, no one was alerted that the renewal date has passed, and the company is now stuck with a significant and unnecessary expense. By importing legacy contracts into a CLM system, you can appreciably reduce harmful “contract leakage,” optimize resource allocation, and positively impact your bottom line.

3. Reducing risk exposure and ensuring contract compliance.

Organizations that fail to successfully import their legacy contracts face tremendous risk. Vital clauses, payment escalations, or other critical language hidden within these contracts can negatively impact your finances and reputation. By successfully importing legacy contracts, your team can proactively mitigate risks and ensure strict compliance with contractual obligations.

4. Adapting to changing regulations.

In the fast-moving, rapidly changing worlds of business and politics, seismic regulatory changes across countries and governments are constantly happening. These shifts can have a profound impact on legacy contracts. By migrating your contracts to a CLM system, you can stay updated on regulatory changes and make necessary adjustments to safeguard your interests.

5. Enhancing customer experience.

Efficiently managing legacy contracts results in better customer service. A streamlined contract process with users having instant access to key information ensures smoother customer interactions at every touchpoint. A centralized repository — delivering on-the-spot insights — empowers your team to cater to customer needs promptly, boosting customer satisfaction and relationships.

6. Strengthening security.

Ensuring the security of sensitive contracts is paramount. The scattered distribution of sensitive contracts across multiple platforms — a SharePoint or Google Drive here, a personal hard drive there — significantly increases the risk of nefarious actors gaining access to crucial data. Consolidating these documents within a secure CLM system provides an added layer of protection, shielding your data from unauthorized access and reassuring your employees, customers, and business partners about data security.

7. Creating streamlined workflows.

Importing your legacy contracts to your CLM system fosters and cements efficient workflows. With all historic and future contract information centralized in a CLM system, empowered employees benefit from increased efficiencies, reduced frustrations, and the ability to focus on core tasks, enabling them to work smarter and faster.

So, what holds organizations back from successfully importing these contracts — and how can you find that perfect fit for your organization?

Learn more in our new eBook, Buried Treasure: Why Legacy Contract Migration is Essential for Your Business — and How the Right CLM System Unlocks its Potential.

Generative AI in Legal: What Are the Opportunities?

Posted on June 9, 2023 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Note: originally published on the CLOC.org blog. 

The rapid growth of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to fuel seismic changes throughout every aspect of the business world. A quick glance at recent headlines gives a good sense of just how the expanding power of AI-spawned text, images, and media is reverberating:

  • Google added the power of Generative AI to its search engine, allowing users to receive AI-generated summaries to select queries.
  • IBM is launching a new “WatsonX” studio for organizations to create their own generative AI workflows.
  • A Goldman Sachs survey forecast “significant disruption” to labor worldwide from Generative AI — potentially affecting up to 300 million jobs.

The legal industry will be in the middle of the Generative AI revolution. But what will that transformation look like for the legal world — and how can the industry best take advantage of its promises and potential?

Three areas of transformation

These three legal areas will see meaningful opportunities for value from generative AI:

  • SPEND MANAGEMENT. Generated AI can also boost departments’ ability to make sense of their tens of thousands of lines of invoice data by delivering insights into value, helping departments understand exactly what they are paying for. These quick, accessible insights are a powerful way to stop the attorney habit of “rubber-stamping” invoices and address capacity concerns for busy departments. It also increases the quality and speed of invoice review, flagging patterns that can violate billing guidelines (especially for lengthy, complex invoices).

Additionally, generative AI can assist with vendor management — particularly tough conversations around rate, value and performance. When backed by detailed, insightful data, it is easier to have productive, emotion-free, and surprise-free conversations.

EXAMPLE: Invoice summarization. Onit integration with ChatGPT provides a quick, insightful summary of a contract’s tasks to analyze overall value – allowing users to glimpse into the hours spent per task, the work done by specific timekeepers, and much more.

  • CONTRACTING. With Generative AI’s ability to generate content such as summaries and redlines, Contracting is a natural place where the technology will have significant impact. In fact, contracting is one area where we see more mainstream adoption of AI — for example, most of Onit’s CLM customers use AI in contracting. Fueling this growth? The improvement in legal comprehension by Generative AI; for example, GPT4 passed the bar exam, scoring in the top 90th percentile on one 2023 tryout. These advancements mean the industry can use AI as a co-pilot to run contract playbooks. AI serves as a powerful tool to help reduce some of the repetitive manual work plaguing this part of the process and improve consistency.

What about post-signature? In an era of constant mergers and acquisitions, regulation and compliance demands, companies often find themselves with questions about the contracts in their repository. AI-driven analysis gives a valuable look into these contracts and their clause libraries, allowing the new company to quickly identify risks and remediate them.

EXAMPLE: Contract analysis. Onit’s AI Co-Pilot sits alongside you as you review your contract. You can ask it to spot issues, suggest redlining, compare against your template language and flag deviations from your standards.

  • LEGAL REQUESTS. This impact is one our CLOC panel and audience were extremely excited about; sometimes, the most beneficial use of AI is to remove manual work (like form filling), remove friction and encourage the adoption of our tools and processes. AI technology can help to kick off the workflow with minimal user intervention, automating legal request creation, determining routing priorities, and establishing tracking — removing significant administrative tasks for attorneys. It can also assist as the “first response,” automating common business requests before they go to Legal.

EXAMPLE: Creating a legal request. Onit’s AI integration can read an email chain and automatically generate a legal request.

This is what our audience at CLOC 2023 said when we asked them about the impact of Generative AI. Do you agree with their thoughts?

Word cloud of Generative AI's impact on Legal
CLOC Session word cloud

As Legal takes its next steps into the AI world, it’s a good idea to have these general principles in mind:

  • Be future-minded. Seek out vendors with a clear, future-proofed vision and plan for generative AI in their product. Additionally, look to partner with organizations prioritizing privacy and security with AI; they should offer commercial licenses that protect privacy. Once partnerships and processes are in place, layer the technology on top of that solid foundation to ensure successful rollout and implementation.
  • Keep on top of technology. Designate some time for yourself or ask a team to keep up with the possibilities and enhancements of Generative AI. In a world where rapid advancements happen weekly (if not daily), education and knowledge are king.
  • Address the fear of the unknown. The disruptive effects of new technology can be intimidating for many. Don’t rush or push anyone into this new world; encourage them to learn and engage with the space, focus on opportunities and use carefully tested and validated tools.

Learn more about how Onit’s AI-enabled products digitally transform the contract lifecycle.

How AI Enables Legal Teams to Adapt in a Rapidly Changing World 

Posted on April 5, 2023 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Between global economic, political, and social unrest, data privacy concerns, regulatory changes, and even the effects of climate change, the world is moving at a dizzying pace — and legal departments are hard-pressed to keep up. The secret to continued success? The rapid insights provided by AI-powered solutions.

Shepherding a legal department has always been challenging; the current business world presents more headaches for Legal than ever. Here are just a few of the things that can keep Legal practitioners up at night:

  • The continuing effects of the global pandemic forcing constant contractual monitoring, revisions, and examination to stay in compliance.
  • A new global focus on privacy concerns, bringing in a host of new rules and guidelines — differing across countries and regions.
  • Continued social and political unrest (along with the effects of climate change), causing disruptions to overseas vendors, supply chains, and more.
  • Ever-changing, constantly updated regulatory revisions at a wide variety of levels, requiring consistent, sharp vigilance.

Any one of these elements would be cause for massive concern. When combined, they create a perfect storm of factors that could easily overwhelm a legal department — a storm that does not look like it will subside anytime soon.

Another complicating factor? The sheer volume of contracts and data can also be overwhelming. For example, the average Fortune 1000 company has anywhere from 20,000-40,000 active contracts at any one time (per the US National Association of Purchasing Managers). For large national banks dealing with the effects of the Libor transition, a calculation of 20,000 negotiation processes at a conservative six hours apiece equals around 17,000 days (about 46 and a half years) of project time and a staggering £15-20 million in costs.

The Power of AI in Contract Management

How can Legal keep up with this rapid change that the fast-moving modern world demands? A Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) system backed with the power of AI is the key to keeping up with the necessities of today’s speed-of-light business environment. CLM augmented by AI delivers the accessibility, flexibility, adaptability, and accessibility organizations need to thrive.

This combination enables users to:

  • Quickly track down those critical documents that have risk for the organization and require urgent attention, allowing for timely response.
  • Reduce overall risk by improving the accuracy of contract review and cutting down on the chance of human reviewers overlooking critical information.
  • Provide automated redlining, commenting, and critical guidance to reviewers on where to redraft, repaper, and/or renegotiate, speeding up overall work.
  • Make large volumes of documents much less intimidating with AI’s immense scalability features, allowing for the review of thousands of pages of dense contracts in minutes.

Without this edge delivered by a combination of AI and CLM, it is easy for an organization to fall behind in a world where dramatic shifts can happen so suddenly. CLM augmented by AI helps keep up with rapid change for a rapidly changing world.

Onit Catalyst Contract Extraction helps find, organize, and action critical information in large volumes of contracts. Click here to learn more.

Experts Evaluate the Potential of Legal Contract Management Software and AI  

Posted on March 23, 2023 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Legal contract management software also referred to as contract lifecycle management, has made significant headway in the world of in-house counsel, racking up impressive stats such as reducing the average sales cycle by 24% and saving 9% on annual average costs. But what happens when you combine legal contract management software with AI?

A panel of legal and AI experts from organizations including Adobe and Onit, presented at Legalweek on just this topic, examining the potential impact of AI on managing contracts and how to start implementing AI into your contract management workflows. The conversation touched on the business value of using AI in legal ops, the efficiencies AI can bring to your business and future trends in AI, among other things.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways for AI and legal contract management software.

How to get started with AI

One of the easiest places for legal departments to start using contract AI and automation is in common use cases like reviewing NDAs and other routine contracts because these are high-value but time-consuming activities. The need to increase speed is high, but the risk is relatively low.

On the applicability of AI to law

AI has strong applications to both the business side of law and the practice of law. From a business perspective, contract AI can help with important, routine tasks like invoice review and billing. As for the practice of law, AI is ideal for tasks like tracking 20 different clauses in the 56,000 NDAs you handle each year, significantly boosting productivity and efficiency.

Do your research

To get the most out of your AI tools, you want your relationship with your technology vendor to be a true partnership, and you want to apply your own judgment to why your solutions are doing what they’re doing. With both your vendor and your solution, you want to retain a certain level of control to ensure you’re getting the results you want.

Have a strategy

When you start implementing AI with your legal contract management software, you don’t want to be thinking just six or twelve months down the road but further down the horizon. When you create a longer-term vision, you’ll be better able to take into account the needs of your various stakeholders and secure their buy-in for your chosen AI solutions.

Laying the groundwork for adoption

Many companies find it easiest to start with a single use case or data set and train their AI models from there. Once you have your first success, it will be easier to roll out your new technology across other business units and the organization as a whole.

AI and compliance

When you use AI for contract lifecycle management, your tools can help you stay on top of the constantly changing federal and state regulatory landscape. AI can assess your legacy contracts against new regulatory changes and ensure that any necessary updates are made.

Contract AI and CLM

AI helps in the pre-signature phase of contracts by creating centralized workflows for contract management and templates that allow your team to draft, review and redline contracts with just a click. AI also assists in the post-signature phase by extracting actionable intelligence from your contracts that can serve as the basis for informed decision-making.

On justifying spending money on AI to the C-suite

According to a recent study, users saw on average a 51.5% gain in productivity after using AI for contract review. That’s an almost immediate gain in productivity, and some use cases saw even better results. Moreover, the efficiency continued to increase over time as users became more familiar with the tools and the tools got smarter. The data extraction capabilities of AI contract tools also help to reduce risk and stop revenue leakage, which has a positive financial impact on the business as a whole.

Future trends in AI

While AI was originally targeted more toward law firms, the focus has shifted to in-house teams. We’re likely to see an even greater emphasis on using AI in contract drafting and CLM this year.

If you’d like to learn more about AI and contract lifecycle management, here are two helpful webinar replays:

  • The Future of Contracting: CLM + AI Transformation at Lenovo – Every company needs a faster and more efficient contracting process that enhances risk and spend management, improves revenue and profit margins, and increases visibility into counterparty relationships. The Lenovo Legal Department’s transformation journey is delivering value to the business by centralizing the global legal transactional support resources, standardizing the contract process across the company and optimizing the process with technology.
  • AI Mythbusters: Deprogramming Misconceptions – Confusion and misinformation around what Artificial Intelligence is and how it works is widespread, particularly in the legal technology space. Watch this webinar to debunk ten common misconceptions and learn how to decipher marketing-speak to separate true AI from just software.

From Manual to Magical: The Power of AI in Contract Management

Posted on March 20, 2023 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

World Commerce & Contracting states, “Smarter contracting is a new vision for how modern enterprises should experience contracting. A vision that elevates the role of contracts as a source of the real-time data needed to manage the complexity of today’s business environment.”

Contract management is a vital process in any business, and it can be complex and time-consuming. However, contracts are the backbone of any business relationship and must be well-managed to satisfy all parties involved. Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software has been around for some time, but the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) re-introduced innovation to this field. Whether you are part of corporate legal, procurement, or sales operations, you need reliable tools to streamline workflows, reduce manual workloads, and increase productivity. So, what’s required to make this vision a reality?

By 2024, Gartner predicts a 50% reduction in manual effort for contract review % due to the adoption of AI-based contract analytics solutions. While technology is a vital part of this puzzle, it needs to be approached differently. AI-powered CLM is the way businesses go from manual to magical. AI is infinitely more effective when closely interwoven into enterprise functions connecting people, integrating systems and data, and facilitating the flow of intelligence.

Introducing Onit’s Smart CLM Solution

This is why Onit developed Smart CLM. Onit’s Smart CLM solution streamlines the contract management process pre- and post-signature, reducing the time and resources required to manage contracts. The solution uses AI to automate the review of contracts and extract essential data from them, such as key terms and obligations, dates, and other relevant information. As a result, businesses can quickly and easily identify potential risks and opportunities in their contracts, which can help them make informed decisions and negotiate better terms.

Key to Onit’s Smart CLM is the tight integration of OnitX CLM with two new products, Onit Catalyst ReviewAI and Contract Extraction. Catalyst ReviewAI utilizes advanced AI algorithms to analyze and extract key contract data points, such as dates, clauses, and obligations. As a result, you can quickly identify potential risks and issues and prioritize your work accordingly. By using ReviewAI, you can locate misaligned contract terms and missed renewal dates, reducing the risk of errors or misinterpretation. In addition, with powerful analytics and reporting capabilities enhanced by the Risk Analysis Dashboard, you can make informed decisions, negotiate better contract terms, and reduce your organization’s legal risk.

Contracts are only sometimes in a centralized repository, obligations are ambiguous, rules and regulations constantly change, and market trends and business decisions can send you in different directions. The newest addition to Onit’s Smart CLM solution, Catalyst Contract Extraction, solves this challenge and creates structure from unstructured contracts by automating and augmenting contract data extraction to report and act on previously hidden information. Catalyst Contract Extraction uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze the text in contracts and identify key phrases and clauses. It also uses advanced machine learning algorithms to automate bulk contract migration and accelerate the repapering process; Contract Extraction also locates poor data and contract clauses that may impact your contract’s compliance.

With Contract Extraction, you can reduce the time and resources required for legacy contract migration, manual document review, and management, ultimately minimizing the risk of errors or misinterpretation.

The Benefits of Onit’s Smart CLM Solution

One of the most significant benefits of using AI in contract management is that it can save time and reduce errors. Manual contract review is a time-consuming, error-prone process, especially when dealing with large volumes of contracts. With Onit Smart CLM, businesses can automate much of the review process, significantly reducing the time and resources required. As a result, companies can focus on more strategic activities, such as negotiating better terms and managing relationships with their partners.

Another benefit of using Smart CLM is that it can help businesses identify potential risks and opportunities in their contracts. By extracting essential data from contracts, companies can quickly identify areas of risk exposure, such as non-compliance with regulations or breaches of confidentiality. As a result, you can now proactively mitigate these risks and protect their business interests. Similarly, by identifying contract opportunities, businesses can negotiate better terms and improve their bottom line.

Onit’s Smart CLM, comprised of OnitX, Catalyst ReviewAI, and Catalyst Contract Extraction, is designed to help enterprise business professionals work more efficiently, make informed decisions, increase compliance, and reduce the legal risk for their organizations. By automating much of the contract review process, businesses can save time and resources, reduce errors, and identify potential risks and opportunities in their contracts. In addition, with the help of AI, companies can manage their contracts more efficiently and effectively, ultimately leading to better business outcomes. So why wait? Try Onit’s Smart CLM today and see the difference they can make for your enterprise.

Schedule a call with us today to see how Onit’s Smart CLM can help your organization.

Introducing OnitX – A Modern Platform for Transforming Legal-Related Workflows

Posted on March 20, 2023 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events, Contract Lifecycle Management, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Legal Management, Legal Operations

We previously shared how 2023 is the year for every legal department to optimize their operations to deliver critical business outcomes with fewer resources and budget. It is our opinion that Legal needs to adopt a platform model approach to serve the internal demand for legal-related services more efficiently, so the legal team can spend more substantial time on initiatives impacting the entire enterprise.

To usher in the era of optimized legal operations, Onit is proud to announce OnitX, the smart workflow platform for sophisticated legal matters and contract solutions that speeds the business. The “X” represents the innovative nature of Onit and signifies how the platform is highly configurable to customers’ unique needs, provides integrations with a broad range of technologies and business applications, and ensures a path to the future with extensibility to support new features and capabilities.

OnitX delivers several key customer benefits. First, it provides better visibility to legal services demand, which can feed an internal quarterly “report card” and give the data needed to forecast future needs. It supports greater operational efficiency for the legal department through user self-service, more seamless collaboration, and intelligent automation of legal workflows. Finally, OnitX enables better management of all legal resources, such as a deeper awareness of the “what and who” of legal operation, an improved ability to balance work done internally versus by outside counsel, and a greater understanding of outside counsel activity and spending so you can proactively manage outside law firm work.

OnitX is the evolution of the Onit Apptitude workflow platform that forms the foundation to many of Onit’s products. It includes the critical layers of a modern SaaS platform and adds several innovations:

  • Smart new rate approval through embedded visibility to rate benchmarking data that includes $47.6B+ in legal billings, 200,000+ timekeepers, and 8,900 law firms.
  • An integrated ELM solution tailored for European legal departments
  • Actionable contract insights provided by risk dashboards and mining contract language
  • An easy-to-use Legal Holds Management capability that streamlines compliance and reduces risk
  • A visual forms builder for the workflow engine that makes it easier to build applications.
  • A new, scalable capability to build third-party application integrations powered by Workato, an industry-leading iPaaS technology provider, as well as better and scalable data integration capabilities with Data-as-a-Service

OnitX also seamlessly integrates with the Onit Catalyst family of AI-enabled products to provide smart solutions for ELM and CLM.

The following products are available within the OnitX platform:

Contact us today to learn how OnitX can be your modern matter and contract solutions platform.

How Corporate Legal Teams Benefit from RFPs

Posted on March 13, 2023 by - Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a powerful tool for legal departments to streamline their work and to meet the growing corporate demand to “do more with less.” In our blog “What is a Request for Proposal,” we have introduced some key functions of an RFP tool and summarized the information typically included. If the term RFP is new to you, feel free to read this blog first. Let’s start by exploring the advantages smart RFP tools offer in-house legal teams (and their law firms).

THE BENEFITS FORMAL RFP FUNCTIONS OFFER CLIENTS

Traditionally, law firms would respond to a request for a quotation for legal work in various formats – e-mail, a written document, or even a phone call. Obviously, from a client’s perspective, this has several drawbacks. At the top of the list is that the client has difficulty reviewing the different proposals and identifying the best provider for this legal work. Having an RFP procedure in place, as offered with our legal spend management solution BusyLamp, allows the client to see all the law firms’ proposals together – meaning there is a consistent and single source of truth. Further, the in-house team can have a visual representation of the different quotes – showing things like the resources proposed, the split of partner and associate involvement, the rates and hours for these timekeepers, the average hourly rate, total estimated costs/expenses, and an overall time frame for the matter thus allowing easy comparison and review of the quotes. It will also allow the law firm to propose an alternative charging arrangement if required, including doing the work for a fixed or capped fee.

Crucially from a risk perspective, using a purpose-built RFP application also allows the client to see an audit trail of the process. This point is essential, as using software to support the procurement process enables the client to demonstrate that an “even-handed” decision has been made. This evidence can be used to justify the final decision, offering important safeguards for everyone involved in the proposal/procurement process.

Finally, we should look at some unexpected benefits after seeing law firms use this technology. RFPs allow legal departments to quantify the results of their negotiations with law firms and thus make them visible. For example, they can reduce the time spent by their timekeepers during the RFP process and show the savings later in their reports. One key area is that the client can monitor those firms who are consistently under or over-bidding in their proposals – for whatever reason – and perhaps review why; for example, is the client allowing enough time for the response to be prepared appropriately, or does the law firm lack the necessary resources to present a convincing and detailed proposal? The client can also collect valuable data for each law firm. This will be invaluable in relationship negotiations and allow a sensible conversation with law firms based on accurate data.

As previously noted, using RFP technology means that the client can hold all proposal information in one secure place, retain all previous proposals, and monitor how law firms have performed by comparing actual costs versus estimates. Also, this application allows in-house lawyers to share documents with law firms in a secure and controlled manner and aids the client in building a centralized pricing knowledge repository.

Request a demo of eBilling.Space today and see our RFP functionality for yourself.

WIE RECHTSABTEILUNGEN UND KANZLEIEN VON RFP PROFITIEREN 

Posted on March 13, 2023 by - Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Eine Angebotsanfrage (Request for Proposal, RFP) ist ein leistungsstarkes Tool für Rechtsabteilungen, um ihre Arbeit zu rationalisieren und die wachsende Nachfrage in Unternehmen nach mehr Leistung für weniger Geld zu erfüllen. In unserem Blog „Was ist ein Request for Proposal?“ haben wir Ihnen einige wichtige Funktionen eines solchen RFP-Tools vorgestellt und zusammengefasst, welche Informationen typischerweise in einem RFP enthalten sind. In dem vorliegenden Blog stellen wir Ihnen zunächst die zahlreichen Vorteile vor, die intelligente RFP-Tools für interne Rechtsteams (und deren Kanzleien) bieten. 

DIE VORTEILE EINES RFP-FEATURES FÜR RECHTSABTEILUNGEN: 

Traditionell antworten Kanzleien auf eine juristische Angebotsanfrage in unterschiedlicher Form – per E-Mail, in einem schriftlichen Dokument oder sogar per Telefonanruf. Aus Sicht des Kunden hat dies natürlich mehrere Nachteile. So gestaltet es sich schwierig, die verschiedenen Angebote zu prüfen und den besten Anbieter für die Dienstleistung zu ermitteln. Mit einer RFP-Funktionalität, wie es unsere Legal Spend Management Lösung BusyLamp eBilling.Space anbietet, kann der Kunde die Angebote aller Kanzleien gemeinsam einsehen, das Tool dient also als „Single-Source-of-Truth“. Außerdem kann das Inhouse-Team die verschiedenen Angebote visuell darstellen, sodass die jeweiligen benötigten Ressourcen auf einen Blick erfasst werden können. Das Vergleichen und Überprüfen der einzelnen Angebote wird stark vereinfacht, wenn direkt ersichtlich wird, wie beispielsweise die Aufteilung von Partnern und Associates, die Sätze und Stunden für Timekeeper, der durchschnittliche Stundensatz oder die geschätzten Gesamtkosten und der Timeframe für die Bearbeitung des Projekts, ausfällt. Zudem kann die Kanzlei bei Bedarf eine alternative Gebührenregelung vorschlagen, wie die Erledigung der Arbeit zu einem festen oder gedeckelten Honorar. 

Unter Risikogesichtspunkten ist es von entscheidender Bedeutung, dass der Kunde durch den Einsatz einer speziell entwickelten RFP-Anwendung auch einen Audit-Pfad des Prozesses sehen kann. Dieser Punkt ist wichtig, da der Kunde durch den Einsatz von Beschaffungs-Software nachweisen kann, dass eine unparteiische und gerechte Entscheidung getroffen wurde. Dieser Nachweis kann als Rechtfertigung der Entscheidung herangezogen werden – was als wichtige Sicherheit für alle am Angebots-/Beschaffungsprozess-Beteiligten dient. 

Abschließend lohnt sich der Blick auf einige unerwartete Vorteile, die sich ergeben haben, nachdem die Kanzleien die Technologie eine Zeit lang eingesetzt haben und die bei der ursprünglichen Einführung von RFPs möglicherweise nicht absehbar waren. So ermöglichen RFPs es den Rechtsabteilungen, die Ergebnisse ihrer Verhandlungen mit ihren Kanzleien zu quantifizieren und diese damit sichtbar zu machen. Sie können beispielsweise den Zeitaufwand ihrer Timekeeper während des Ausschreibungsverfahrens reduzieren und die Einsparungen später in ihren Reports ausweisen. Der Kunde kann diejenigen Kanzleien monitoren, die in ihren Angeboten – aus welchen Gründen auch immer – durchweg zu wenig oder zu viel bieten, und sogar die Gründe dafür erkennen. So wird zum Beispiel ersichtlich, ob der Kunde genügend Zeit für die ordnungsgemäße Vorbereitung der Antwort einräumt oder ob die Kanzlei nicht über die notwendigen Ressourcen verfügt, um ein überzeugendes und detailliertes Angebot vorzulegen. Der Kunde kann auch nützliche Daten für jede Anwaltskanzlei sammeln, die bei Verhandlungen von unschätzbarem Wert sind und ein vernünftiges Gespräch mit den Kanzleien auf der Grundlage realer Daten ermöglichen. 

Wie bereits erwähnt, bedeutet der Einsatz von RFP-Technologie, dass der Kunde alle Angebotsinformationen an einem sicheren Ort aufbewahren, alle früheren Angebote speichern und die Leistungen der Kanzleien durch einen Vergleich der tatsächlichen Kosten mit den Schätzungen prüfen kann. Außerdem ermöglicht die Technologie den Inhouse-Anwälten, Dokumente mit den Kanzleien auf sichere und kontrollierte Weise auszutauschen, und unterstützt den Kunden beim Aufbau eines zentralen Wissensspeichers für die Preisgestaltung. Fordern Sie noch heute eine Demo von Onit‘s Legal Spend Management Lösung BusyLamp eBilling.Space an und überzeugen Sie sich von unserer RFP-Funktionalität. 

DIE VORTEILE FÜR KANZLEIEN: 

Wir konnten bereits feststellen, dass die RFP-Funktion viele Vorteile für Kunden hat, doch auch Kanzleien profitieren von einem RFP-Prozess. 

Dank unserer langjährigen Erfahrung und der engen Zusammenarbeit mit unseren Kunden und Kanzleien haben wir interessante Rückmeldungen von den Nutzern unseres RFP-Prozesses in eBilling.Space erhalten. In der Praxis begrüßen Kanzleien die Einführung dieser Technologie. Eine gut strukturierte Ausschreibung stellt ihnen geleitete Fragen, gibt klare Anweisungen zur Beantwortung, ist auf die Art des Projektes, für die ein Angebot eingeholt wird, zugeschnitten und stellt einen fairen und unparteiischen Prozess dar. 

Ein weiterer Vorteil besteht darin, dass die Kanzleien langfristig auf alle früheren Angebote oder Antworten auf Anfragen des Kunden zugreifen können. Sie können sehen, welche Arbeiten sie angeboten und angenommen haben und welche Arbeiten durchgeführt wurden. Außerdem haben sie Aufzeichnungen über die angebotenen Sätze und die voraussichtliche Zusammensetzung der an der Arbeit beteiligten Anwälte und kennen aus ihren eigenen Aufzeichnungen die tatsächlichen Kosten, die erfasste Zeit, die in Rechnung gestellten Gebühren und die Rentabilität der Arbeit. Ein Teil der Datenvalidierung im Rahmen der Ausschreibungen besteht übrigens darin, dass inkorrekte Sätze während des Prozesses angezeigt werden. 

Ein weiterer Pluspunkt der RFP-Funktion unserer Software ist, dass Kunden Kanzleien in den Ausschreibungsprozess einbeziehen können, auch wenn sie noch nicht für die elektronische Rechnungsstellung freigeschaltet sind. Diesen Kanzleien kann ein eingeschränkter Zugang zum eBilling.Space-System gewährt werden, um auf eine Ausschreibung zu antworten, die natürlich, wenn sie erfolgreich ist, letztendlich dazu führt, dass die Kanzlei Zugang zum vollständigen eBilling-System bekommt. 

FAZIT 

Der RFP-Prozess schließt den Lebenszyklus der juristischen Beschaffungs- und Spend Management-Funktion ab. Auf der Kundenseite bringen moderne Legal Spend Management-Lösungen wie BusyLamp eBilling.Space viel mehr als nur die elektronische Rechnungsstellung in der Zusammenarbeit mit den Kanzleien mit. Wie wir festgestellt haben, kann ein Inhouse-Rechtsteam auf die gesamte End-to-End Spend Management-Funktion zugreifen – einschließlich RFPs, der Anbieterauswahl, der Beauftragung externer Anwälte, der WIP-Kontrolle, der Genehmigung von Rechnungsentwürfen und -abschlüssen sowie der Datenanalyse und des Reportings. Heutzutage hat das Inhouse-Rechtsteam auch Zugang zu einer breiten Palette anderer Legal-Tech-Lösungen, darunter ein Matter-Management-System sowie weitere Anwendungen wie Contract Lifecycle Management, Legal Holds, Dokumentenautomatisierung und -erstellung, Vertragsprüfung und eine voll funktionsfähige Reporting-/Analysesuite.