Category: Contract Lifecycle Management

Across your business, whether in sales, legal, marketing or vendor management, contracts help protect your company, define relationships and solidify business deals; contracts are the lifeblood of your organization. The sheer number of contracts the average Fortune 2000 company depends on is staggering; tens of thousands of active contracts at any given time. In addition to active contracts, your business also deals with tens of thousands of archived or defunct contracts. Further complicating the contract management predicament is that contract needs vary across business units. Contracts for legal and vendor management are concerned with compliance, for example, while a sales contract defines a specific set of deliverables or products to expedite a sale. Knowing these complicating factors, why do so many organizations employ ad hoc processes for a vital activity such as contract lifecycle management?

Or rather, maybe our question should be…how do top performing companies handle this seemingly endless cycle of contract management? There are many well-documented best practices for contract management in circulation, but one thing these proven techniques have in common is that they exist as part of a measurable, repeatable and visible sales contract management process. What exactly is sales contract management? It is a technology-enabled process by which a selling organization is able to create, store, manage, revise, and track progress around formal business contracts.¹

According to Aberdeen Group, top performing sales organizations are 116% more likely to create a formal process to streamline sales contract workflow.² We’ve seen it time and time again, across many different business activities such as legal matter and spend management, budgeting, or CRM; formal processes enable business units to increase their overall productivity. Here at Onit, we’re not surprised that contract review and approval processes are a major factor in these top performing companies meeting sales quotas and increasing their sales productivity and long-term client value. When Aberdeen Group evaluated key sales KPIs for organizations with and without sales contract management processes, they found that the average sales cycle among companies with a contract management process in place, was a month faster than lower-performing companies without contract management process.³

Sales contract management practices for top performing companies have these five traits:

Fully technology-enabled

Top performing companies usually have one thing in common; they utilize technology to enable their end-to-end sales contract process – from creation to fulfillment. Along the lifecycle, these companies employ e-signature capabilities to keep everything moving along in the digital workspace and a central repository for finalized contracts.

Collaborative

Account management is collaborative by nature. Top performing companies make use of technology-enabled management tools to help foster engagement amongst the sales team and between account managers and clients or prospects. The ability to allocate tasks and define roles and responsibilities in a digital workspace facilitates a more productive and efficient (and enjoyable!) workflow for the people involved. Another healthy side-effect of contract management workflow technology is that it reduces the non-collaborative, time-wasting, administrative tasks account managers must do, leaving them more time to devote to nurturing long-term client relationships. Learn more about adding engagement to your workflows

Transparent

In an optimal sales contract workflow, transparency is paramount. Each sales team member can view where his/her contracts are in the workflow, and what the next steps are to completion. Visibility into the lifecycle increases the ability of the sales team to build a track record of solid communication, an essential component of any long-term business relationship. In addition, a transparent process holds sales team members, managers, and invested parties accountable for their responsibilities within the workflow. With all of the stages of the process being conducted in a digital workspace, the time it takes to finalize contracts decreases. In fact, one Onit client saw a reduction of the time it took to complete contracts, from an average of 16 days down to around 24 hours!

Scalable

A top-functioning sales contract process has standard language and pricing models to fit the bulk of contracts the team will need, thereby creating time and space for legal and management to prioritize resources around the atypical, more complex contracts. The formal, measurable process around standard contracts increases the speed at which your sales team can close potential business. Utilizing a standard contract structure also helps build a solid foundation that can scale alongside the business and the sales organization to fit their evolving needs.

Data-driven

Having real-time contract workflow data into how the process is working and where the process is lacking or affecting the business negatively, enables top performing companies to allocate their people and monetary resources more efficiently. Analyzing the accessible data around your sales contract process also helps to foster an environment of continual improvement.

Could your sales process benefit from more engagement and collaboration? Onit Apps can help you bring transparency, efficiency, and collaboration to your sales contract management workflow. Contact us, or schedule a demo today!

Learn how to standardize and optimize workflows throughout your sales organization with our new whitepaper: Achieving Measurable Success in Account Management.

1. “Reducing Friction in the Sales Cycle: Best Practices in Sales Contract Management,” October, 2013. Aberdeen Group
2. “Getting it Right the First Time: Better Sales Contracting for Busy B2B Sales Operations Leaders,” February, 2015. Aberdeen Group
3. “Reducing Friction in the Sales Cycle: Best Practices in Sales Contract Management,” October, 2013. Aberdeen Group

From the continued ripple effect resulting from Edward Snowden’s leak of NSA surveillance programs, to increased reporting stemming from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, whistleblowing is a hot topic. A recent article in Corporate Counsel, Lawyers on All Sides See Whistleblowing Evolving Fast, explains the changing whistleblowing landscape. For one, the sheer number of whistleblowers has exploded. Take Dodd-Frank for example; according to a SEC report, in 2011 there were 334 tips compared with 3,620 in 2014. Secondly, the awards are getting bigger, with one recent payout amounting to an impressive $30 million. With statistics like these, companies have to be prepared.

Is your organization prepared?

Do you currently have an internal or external reporting policy or program? Even well-intentioned companies with reporting systems in place, haven’t quite found the right balance between encouraging reporting, protecting employees who come forward and protecting the company interests over time. A recent article in the Journal of Accountancy, Are Organizations Hindering Employee Whistleblowing?, discusses this phenomenon:

“Companies that maximize their employees’ willingness to report fraud in-house position themselves to learn about problems before they become bigger issues – and before employees feel the need to report them outside the organization.”

The article also references a 2009 study published in Auditing: Practice & Theory, that found that employees are more hesitant to report possible fraud to outsiders as opposed to using internal company reporting programs. In addition, employees are much more willing to report if they can do so anonymously.

Onit can help.

The Onit Whistleblower App enables you to customize an internal reporting & case management system for your organization’s needs. Using simple reporting forms, employees can anonymously report issues into a single repository, giving management visibility into potential problems that might otherwise go unnoticed or unreported. The larger benefit to the company, of course, is that by getting early insight into exposed risk, management can start internal investigations and address the issue before it becomes a much larger problem. As with other Onit solutions, the Whistleblower App allows for a collaborative workspace, enhanced visibility into cases, and supports compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.  Affordable, intuitive and easy to use, Onit’s Whistleblower App can help you effectively manage your organization’s risk and exposure in a way that encourages employee reporting in a protected environment.

Click here to learn more about our Whistleblower App. Contact us to find out how Onit Apps can help streamline any number of your business processes.

Resolution: Change
Where is your organization headed in 2015?

It’s that time of year again, where we take stock of what happened over the past year, both the good and the bad, and declare our hopes for 2015. What are the things you’d like your business to accomplish next year? What changes or improvements are necessary to bring this about? Taking stock of where your business is today, how can you evolve to meet the demands of digital business next year and beyond?

First, we think it’s helpful to look at the trajectory of technology and digital business. It serves as a reminder that the world is changing around us, whether we like it or not. Looking at these trends also reminds us that we are in this boat together, so let’s learn from each other and grow together. Working with our clients over the past few years, we’ve observed that technology as a business tool has fundamentally changed, so has the role of IT. The move towards customer-driven solutions, and away from large-scale systems of record has had far-reaching consequences. The way our customers research vendors and buy products now is accomplished largely outside of a direct human-human sales context.

Gartner’s recent predictions for 2015 and beyond tell a similar story. In their list of Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2015, analytics will play a huge role in critical app functionality. However, it’s not enough to have access to big data, instead “we’ll need big questions and big answers,” in order to put those analytics to work. Also on the list are Cloud/Client Architecture (centrally coordinated apps that can be delivered to any device) and Software-Defined Infrastructure and Apps. Of the latter, Gartner says, “computing will have to move away from static models to deal with the changing demands of digital business.” With regards to who is engaging the new technology, Gartner found that almost 38% of technology spending is happening outside of IT, signaling “a shift of demand and control away from IT and towards business units closer to the customer.” (Gil Press, Forbes). This is something we see at Onit all the time, given that most of our buyers are from legal or sales departments.

For the first time, Gartner predicts that technology through connected devices will improve our overall health. Technology is better responding to the needs of consumers and is providing incredibly useful tools to manage our health and to reduce the amount of mundane processes we go through to get information or to accomplish our objective. As mobile technology will impact our individual health and efficiency, Onit believes that nimble app-centric solutions will impact our businesses’ health for the better. By removing or improving the tactical processes that impede or delay progress, these apps can drive department efficiency and reduce risk, impacting both employee’s job satisfaction and the bottom line.

Evolution is a necessity for business survival, but you needn’t scrap your existing systems and start over. We have found that meaningful change can come from some of the smallest, projects or processes. Our customers have developed apps for everything from contract administration to whistleblowing, to vendor management and sales enablement and have seen tremendous success.

So, what are your improvement goals for 2015? Onit can help. Contact our team, and check out our new whitepaper, Your First Enterprise App: 6 Steps to Successfully Implement Change in Your Organization.

Sources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2014/10/09/gartner-predicts-top-trends-for-technology-it-organizations-and-consumers-for-2015-and-beyond/

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/fgjd45eldm/4-advanced-pervasive-invisible-analytics-2/

For many organizations, the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) lifecycle is an often-overlooked Achilles heel. These critical documents protect intellectual property, but too often they are pulled together haphazardly, not countersigned, and left to languish in an email inbox. Work commences, and both parties forget about the NDA until a problem arises.

However, products and services are becoming more complex, meaning that more businesses have their own “secret sauce” that needs diligent protection. Combine this with an evolving workforce trending towards third-party contractors, NDAs are an essential first step in establishing a business relationship. If that first step takes too long, or isn’t handled properly, it can mean a missed opportunity or worse, a dispute where you lack the legal leg to stand on.

With the increased need for tools that help track NDAs, as well as standardizing mechanisms that help to facilitate a timely preparation, organizations are left looking for solutions. Some companies have adopted rudimentary word processing templates; others rely on spreadsheets for tracking sent NDAs and monitoring renewals. Progressive organizations are storing the NDAs in document management systems and calendaring renewal dates. At the end of the day, someone still has to ride herd on NDA formats and statuses. This becomes especially true when non-standard or special provisions need to go into NDAs dealing with the most secret of secret sauces.

How To Close the NDA Lifecycle Loop

There is a solution to this gaping compliance, however. Fortune 500 companies have discovered the solution to their NDA woes in a customizable, quick-to-implement and easy-to-use App. Onit’s NDA App can hit the ground running in a matter of days, not weeks, and integrate with document repositories for easy access to documents that need attention. Getting started with an NDA is simple: the NDA App allows users to cement business relationships quickly using standard NDAs, and work can start. And with the NDA App, organizations can track outstanding NDAs and know when their agreements are up for renewal.

When NDAs become a simple, repeatable process, leveraging the NDA App to add that level of consistency and visibility, organizations can stay on top of their legal obligations and protect their secret sauce. There will be exceptions, of course, when a relationship calls for a more complex NDA. However, instead of the legal team reviewing every single NDA generated, the legal team can focus on the ones that are the exceptions, not the rule. Meanwhile, the user-generated NDAs comply with company policy and are fully audited.

Onit’s NDA App effectively closes the loop on the NDA lifecycle: notifying the participants and closing the request once an NDA is fully executed.  Moreover, as the icing on the cake, Onit’s NDA App also includes support for the two most popular e-signature vendors, EchoSign and DocuSign. The NDA App helps you manage the NDA lifecycle from creation to execution, jump-starting what will be a productive working relationship.

To learn more about how an app can simplify the NDA lifecycle, download the whitepaper: Coming Full Circle: Using Technology to Close NDA Lifecycle Gaps.

To close the loop on your NDA lifecycle, Onit can help! Contact us today.

There are times when ad hoc can be a wonderful thing: when groups come together as a committee for a special event, or when an urgent and isolated situation calls for a creative solution. However, when it comes to a critical business activity such as administering Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), ad hoc solutions can be a disaster. Merriam-Webster’s very definition of ad hoc is “for the particular case at hand without consideration of wider application,” and when companies go ad hoc with NDAs, inconsistency and non-compliance become the norm.

Many organizations have tried standardizing their NDA process from start to finish, beginning with word processing templates. But the problem with document templates is that they, too, develop into ad hoc solutions as users customize the NDAs for their particular situations, recycle previously modified NDAs, and change provisions until the document sent to the other party is very different than what the company intended.

The next step in the NDA process is sending the document to the other party, getting confirmation of receipt and then tracking whether or not the NDA was countersigned. If your NDA process is ad hoc, no one keeps track of whether or not the document was signed by both parties, nor does anyone know if, and where, the signed NDA is filed. Considering our dependence on electronic communication, if the signed NDA is received by the originating party, then it is likely left to languish in an inbox or email folder. While most of the time this isn’t an issue, sticky situations can arise if dealings with the other party go awry, and the company cannot find the signed NDA.

Many companies have tried to standardize tracking with another ad hoc solution, the spreadsheet. Someone in the legal department inputs when NDAs are sent out, if the NDA needs to be renewed, and whether or not it was received. However, this approach doesn’t take into account NDAs being created and sent on the fly. It also depends on human input at every stage and doesn’t give you real-time visibility into the process. Additionally, the spreadsheet may be buried on someone’s hard drive or in a folder on the server, which may cause problems down the road if the employee has left his/her position.

With one ad hoc solution piled on top of another, it’s no wonder that what should be a simple agreement between two parties to kick off a business relationship turns into something that can leave a gaping hole in your legal state of affairs. Ad hoc is the enemy of repeatability, efficiency, and risk management. It undermines all attempts to standardize processes and is not a long-term solution for an ongoing business need. Ad hoc is the problem, not the solution.

The answer to ad hoc is something that can standardize the process and bring its lifecycle full circle: Onit’s NDA App. The right solution is an App that integrates into document management repositories, allows users to track status, provides users with the ability to create standard NDAs, and routes non-standard NDAs to the appropriate person for review. It manages renewal and termination dates and non-standard terms. The end result is a closed-loop process that helps the company comply with internal policy requirements and external legal obligations, all while keeping the NDA process efficient so that your work can commence.

Need to eliminate ad hoc from your critical business processes? Learn more about Onit’s NDA App in this white paper.

Quick: How many contracts are pending review in your department? How many have been approved in the last 30 days? Who is reviewing each pending contract right now and how long does it take for a contract to be approved?

If you can’t easily answer these questions, chances are that you might not have the right tools or practices in place. A lack of transparency can lead to impaired overview and decreased service that can impact revenue. As one general counsel of a Fortune 500 corporation shared, We weren’t tracking assignments properly, and we weren’t being responsive to customers. I felt we had to get rid of the black hole mentality, and one way was to have a better way to track contracts coming in.

Find out how to banish the black hole mentality with this new whitepaper: Streamlining ReviewAI & Approval to Drive Revenue Velocity & Increase Client Satisfaction.

The white paper examines common contract review and approval processes and tools to determine:

• How tools like email and spreadsheets fall short
• Why traditional approaches are not sustainable
• How Apps are reinventing the contract review and approval process
• Why Apps are the wave of the future

Download the white paper today.