Category: Digital Transformation

How to Implement Legal Digital Transformation

Posted on October 19, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation

Companies both large and small have increasingly been turning their attention to legal digital transformation, with an eye toward implementing new initiatives and pursuing innovation that will help increase efficiency and improve the legal function. However, it can be challenging to know where to start and how to keep yourself on track.

Brad Rogers, Onit’s SVP of Strategy & Growth, headed up a CLOC Ask the Experts panel that offered some valuable advice for companies looking to implement legal transformation projects. Here are the top five considerations to keep in mind as you pursue legal transformation at your organization.

1.   Remember that legal digital transformation is a journey.

No matter how prepared or dedicated you are, the transformation won’t happen overnight. You need to think of it as a journey – and one that’s disruptive and often messy. You might not be able to plan precisely where you’re going, but you should know where you want to get goal-wise. Just be prepared for the path there to zig and zag along the way. Too many people think of legal digital transformation like building a skyscraper with square corners where you can count all the nuts and bolts you’ll need to get the job done. In reality, transformation is more like building a city, where many people are involved, and some neighborhoods will go faster or slower than others.

2.   Know the primary goals of your GC.

It’s essential to keep your GC’s primary goals in mind as you implement legal digital transformation and align your strategy with those goals. Most GCs have the same priorities, namely to protect the company, have a team of highly engaged, top talent, and boost efficiency to be a world-class legal department. Keeping these goals in mind at all times will keep your GC engaged in your transformation efforts and lead to a better outcome.

3.   Know the primary reasons why you’re transforming in the first place.

No transformation initiative will be successful without a concrete plan. It’s not only important to have a plan, though – you also need to be able to articulate it. Successful digital transformation requires buy-in from all the stakeholders in your organization. If you want to secure that buy-in, you need to be able to adequately explain the reasons behind your transformation in your company’s town hall, in team meetings or even in the elevator.

4.   Understand why data is important for legal digital transformation.

Data plays into legal transformation in a number of ways. First, a data-driven staffing model is the only way to fully understand how many and what type of resources you’ll need to make your transformation initiative succeed. Second, you need to present data on matters, risks, legal spend and more to help your GC and your company’s leadership team understand your organization’s legal exposure. Finally, you need to give your leadership and your lawyers data on the legal function to help them manage the business better.

5.   Foster a process-based mindset.

It’s not always easy to get your lawyers to think about processes. The way you think and speak about legal digital transformation may not line up with the way your lawyers think. To overcome the gap, you should start with a high-level process map that your lawyers can follow. It shouldn’t be overly detailed, but simply create clarity around roles and responsibilities. Another helpful tool is a dashboard that provides key operational metrics that break down the process in a way that’s easily understood.

You can listen to the entire panel here for more insight into best practices for pursuing legal digital transformation.

Onit is helping businesses of all sizes with their legal ops transformation journey. Contact us at [email protected] or schedule a demo to learn more.

ACC Panel: BT’s Efficiency Gains Through Digital Transformation

Posted on October 14, 2021 by - Company News and Events, Digital Transformation

Every year, the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) hosts the world’s largest gathering of in-house counsel. Onit is proud to be a gold sponsor of this year’s ACC Annual Meeting, which will take place virtually from October 19–21, 2021.

This year’s schedule features an impressive roster of speakers from some of the world’s top corporations, who will be addressing some of the most pressing topics for corporate legal departments today. Among them is Onit customer British Telecom (BT), who will be talking about the company’s digital transformation journey along with Matt DenOuden, Onit’s SVP of Global Sales, on Thursday, October 21 at 9:00 a.m. CT.

BT’s Digital Transformation Story

Digital transformation has recently been sweeping across corporate legal departments, and BT is a prime example of how to do it successfully. BT’s recent efforts allowed them to see increased efficiency and productivity gains in a short period of time, thanks to implementing the right tools.

BT’s legal team took a multi-pronged approach to digital transformation that allowed them to re-envision their processes and technologies to optimize the delivery of legal services to stakeholders across the organization. Ultimately, BT reduced the complexity of its technology stack by 75 percent, were able to track and report on 70 percent of matters and overhauled how they track and control legal spend.

For BT, the digital transformation journey started with implementing technology that would serve as the backbone for company-wide transformation. BT replaced its existing piecemeal solutions with Onit’s business automation and workflow platform Apptitude. Using the platform, BT’s legal department was able to build the Apps it needed to help manage its matters and documents.

Within three months, BT’s new system was live for matter management and real-time reporting. Within a year, BT had successfully implemented a cutting-edge platform that eliminated manual management tools and disconnected processes. Going forward, BT’s legal department will continue to build and deploy the configurable solutions it needs on Onit’s platform, Apptitude, to automate legal operations and compliance processes and increase collaboration across the organization.

To hear more about BT’s transformation journey, you can listen to our podcast.

At the ACC panel, BT and Onit will offer insights into creating a digital transformation plan, how to combine organizational health, customer service and technology to create organizational success, what we can expect to see in the world of digital transformation going forward, and more. You can read the entire program for the ACC Annual Meeting and register to attend here.

Onit will be offering demos of all our products at our virtual booth. To find out more about how Onit can help with your organization’s digital transformation, contact us today.

The Role of Data in VMWare’s Digital Transformation Journey

Posted on October 4, 2021 by - Digital Transformation

As technology continues to advance, the data it generates has become increasingly important to the functioning of today’s corporate legal department. Data is central to prioritizing and justifying investment in technology at companies of all sizes as exemplified by the VMware digital transformation.

For our customers, Onit functions as their department’s “central nervous system,” driving the collection and presentation of that data. To help explain just how important data is to companies today, Onit recently hosted a webinar with executives of HBR Consulting and VMware to discuss trends in the legal space and how data played a critical role in VMware’s successful legal tech transformation journey.

The HBR Survey

The most recent HBR Law Department Survey focused on the technology investments law departments are currently making and plan to make going forward, looking at areas like staffing, spending, process, technology, and compensation.

The survey results show that 2.1% of the internal budget across all participants was allocated to technology, a very slight increase from the previous survey. The top three areas where companies are currently implementing technology are e-billing, legal hold, and matter management, whereas AI, a previous hot technology, is now being considered as something to implement down the road. E-signature technology saw the biggest increase in implementation due to law departments’ need to figure out how to deal with a remote workforce. While AI has taken a bit of a downshift in terms of priority, it’s expected to pick back up in the years to come.

The survey highlights the importance of not just the amount of money that departments are spending, but of what actual technology categories those companies are spending money in and prioritizing.

The VMware Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is sweeping the legal sphere, but every company’s journey looks a little different depending on what its priorities are. For VMware, the mission was to transform and scale legal services to accelerate the company’s growth and simplify the customer experience.

VMware resisted the temptation to simply turn to the latest tools on the market, and instead took a step back first and figured out what business problems they were trying to solve and what the best path to solving them was. As VMware will tell you, transformation is not something that can be rushed.

An important part of the VMware digital transformation was to analyze the challenges and establish baseline metrics. Next, you need to simplify your infrastructure and workflows to resolve process problems that can’t be treated with a quick technology fix. Only after both of these steps should you start to implement technology.

Data plays a huge role in making the journey a successful one. While the technology you choose matters, it should also be viewed as an enabler to get information and benchmarking data. You always need to understand the baseline metrics of the problems you’re trying to solve.

Despite their success, VMware will be the first to admit that you should expect to see failures and mistakes along the journey. Relying on data will allow you to measure the impacts your changes are having on the business and whether you’re meeting the necessary benchmarks that will drive adoption and value.

The VMware digital transformation involved a number of pieces. Among other things, they created an enterprise contract repository that served as a single source of truth for the organization. They also automated their core contracts that generated the most revenue.

Perhaps most importantly, though, VMware took a platform approach, using the Onit platform, Apptitude, to consolidate all matters in a single place. Within that platform, VMware was able to leverage Onit dashboards to drive proactive strategic decisions and monitor both risks and trends. They also created a self-service NDA portal that allowed for nimble and agile processes, real-time visibility, and a reduction in time, cost, and errors in the NDA process.

Ultimately, the reason VMware chose to double down on Onit is because they truly believe that platform solutions, rather than single-point solutions, are the future. When you can take advantage of AI that’s embedded in a platform, you can amass data in one place, rather than implementing and justifying more and more disparate solutions. Onit’s platform also gave VMware confidence that they were adequately handling all their privacy and security concerns.

At the end of the day, VMware’s success depended on investing in a change management strategy that aligned its data transformation journey with its business priorities. Success depended on defining metrics upfront and establishing baseline benchmark metrics. Data was pivotal to it all.

These are just a few highlights from the discussion about the VMware digital transformation. You can listen to the entire webinar here.

For more information on how Onit can help with your transformation journey, contact us today and schedule a demo.

CLOC Panel: Legal Department Operations Experts Weigh in on Transformation Best Practices

Posted on September 16, 2021 by - Company News and Events, Digital Transformation

Today’s legal department operations teams significantly impact how corporate legal functions daily, spurring transformation through innovation. A CLOC Ask the Experts panel (you can view the session here) gathered recently to discuss this phenomenon and best practices for legal digital transformation. Presenters included:

  • Danielle Antil, Director of Legal Operations at Barings LLC
  • Tony Curzio, Program Manager Legal Technology & Projects at MassMutual
  • Sarah Mintz, Legal Operations Analyst at Barings LLC
  • Brad Rogers, SVP of Strategy & Growth at Onit

The presenters drew from their extensive experience to offer listeners advice for successfully scaling legal transformation projects within a legal team and organization. Whether companies are just starting with transformation or are well into the process, the panelists offered up best practices, lessons and learned perspectives to help with success.

How Legal Department Operations Can Drive Transformation

The following is a summary of some of the biggest takeaways from the panel.

  • Include legal operations projects in the regular corporate budget and the roadmap of transformation programs. Start by establishing a high-level strategy and roadmap that articulates your business case for funding the transformation initiatives. Then, make that business case clear to the people who need to hear it.
  • Help your team develop a process-based mindset. It’s important to realize that lawyers may not be fluent in the language of process. When you implement training to support your transformation efforts, you want to make sure it speaks to the specific audience you’re trying to reach. In addition, after you start to implement change, you should have support materials available and offer yourself as a support resource for the department and the organization as a whole.
  • Start transformation from scratch. If you’re starting your transformation journey from nothing, an excellent first step is to inventory the current state of your infrastructure. Look at technology from the perspective of what isn’t compatible with your plans going forward. Also, evaluate its usability and whether it will lead to adoption. Before you can move forward, it’s essential to understand what your current processes are.
  • Ensure you have the right talent available when you need to quickly scale. You should always be networking to build a collection of internal and external resources to tap into. Consider bringing in consultants and subject matter experts that can help you prepare the groundwork or pitch in when you need additional help on short notice.

Listen to the On-Demand CLOC Session

These are just some of the insights the legal department operations panelists shared. To hear more, including discussions on what best-in-class legal operations support looks like, how to decrease your staff’s workload without increasing outside spend and more, you can listen to the entire presentation: CLOC Ask the Experts – Legal Transformation Projects and How to Scale Up or Down to Your Needs

Additional Legal Operations Resources

Brad, who served as Chief Operations Officer and Chief of Staff for Advocacy and Oversight at a Fortune Global 100 company before joining Onit, has executed more than 10 significant transformations at five different Fortune 100 companies. You can hear more digital transformation advice from him by listening to his Onit podcasts:

Corporate Legal Market Trends for August 2021

Posted on August 5, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Digital Transformation

Welcome to the August edition of our monthly look into corporate legal market trends. In this edition, we share some thought-provoking articles covering innovative GCs, the digital transformation of BT’s legal operations and how AI and contract lifecycle management help legal departments run like a business. We hope you find some practical takeaways in the following articles.

1. Examples of Operational Excellence from Legal Teams Running the Department like a Business

Running corporate in-house legal departments like a business is quickly gaining traction in legal departments around the globe. The age-old complaint that lawyers are holding up critical processes is rapidly turning into a thing of the past. Technology solutions have significantly contributed to alleviating this problem, providing faster processes and newfound collaborative abilities at unforeseen levels. Of particular note: Lenovo’s contract management transformation, which happened thanks to a strong vision and the adoption of contract lifecycle management technology and AI.

According to the article:

Lenovo has recently digitised its contracting processes and is now able to measure how much time is spent on a contract, how many lawyers worked on it, and how much a template has been modified. “Data analytics has enabled insights we never had before,” says [Marcelo] Peviani [legal director at the centre of excellence for Lenovo].

Source: Financial Times

2. The Next Legal Market Trend to Put on Your Radar: Running the Post-Award Phase of Contract Management

According to a World Commerce & Contracting Association and Deloitte survey, contract professionals are shifting their focus to the post-signature phase of contract management. The results show a growing emphasis on the post-award stage of contract management. According to the survey, “less than 30% of organizations currently have centralized or center-led post-award contract management resources” and “only a little over 20% attempt to monitor or calculate the costs or overall benefits associated with contract management.” It also discovered that nearly 40% of the participants are looking to improve post-award processes, and more than one-third are striving to introduce more “robust approaches to obligation management.”

Source: World Commerce & Contracting Association

3. Hear BT Discuss Its Award-Winning Legal Operations Digital Transformation  

David Griffin, head of legal technology and change at BT, joined the Onit podcast recently to discuss his company’s award-winning legal operations transformation. He shared how the company led legal market trends by replacing manual and disconnected process and management tools. The change helped the department handle workload and matters across the teams from inception to closure.

Judges for the Legal Innovation Awards took note, sharing with Law.com that BT stood out “not only due to the speed of their roll-out of the platform but by taking an existing process and migrating it into a streamlined, efficient platform.”

BT won the Legal Innovation Award for “Future of Legal Services Innovation – In-House Legal Operations” and was named a finalist for the Legalweek Leaders in Tech Law Awards. You can hear David’s story here.

Source: Onit

4. Thinking outside of the Box Reaches New Level among In-House Lawyers

The Financial Times has featured 20 highly experienced GCs who are directly challenging traditional legal roles. By redefining themselves as strategic thinkers, they are making market-leading headway when it comes to sustainability and digital transformation. Companies are now operating in ways that require lawyers to use their skills and experience in new ways. The continuing proliferation of implementing legal technology gives these lawyers more time to focus on high-impact legal work.

Source: Financial Times

5. AI and Contract Lifecycle Management: What Should You Expect?

If you’re following legal market trends, you’ve probably already heard how contract management software can drastically streamline contract creation, review, execution and management. But now that AI is in the mix, how does that affect contract lifecycle management? A new visual guide tackles this topic to get you up to speed in no time. It explores questions such as:

  • Should you look for pre-trained AI?
  • What redlining capabilities should contract AI offer?
  • Can AI offer interactive checklists to accelerate review?
  • How can AI repaper contracts for regulatory, policy and commercial changes?
  • Can AI help you analyze legacy contract data for better contract management?

Source: Onit resources

Bonus Resources: The Latest on CLM and AI

Year after year, legal market trends have pointed to lawyers and legal departments finding ways to be more efficient while controlling costs. Adopting cutting-edge technology, thinking outside of the box and running the department like a business are important ways to achieve these objectives.

Combining contract lifecycle management tools with AI is a prime example of working toward those means. When paired, they offer streamlined processes, a decrease in friction for employees across the enterprise and deliver more business value. If you’d like to learn more about legal market trends for contract lifecycle management tools, check out some of our recent blog posts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Introducing Onit Process Builder

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

Join Us for Apptitude Training

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

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

You can find classes and schedules here.

 

5 Common Challenges Facing Contract Lifecycle Management: How to Overcome Them

Posted on December 11, 2019 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Digital Transformation

Businesses that implement a seamless contract lifecycle management (CLM) process compress their time to revenue, mitigate risks by having fewer contractual exceptions and increase customer satisfaction. But managing the lifecycle of a contract – from request and creation, review and approval, to execution and renewal — involves a lot of departments, and those departments often don’t have access to the same systems. But there are other hurdles to overcome, such as these five common contract lifecycle management challenges:

  1. Speed vs. Control
    The biggest source of friction in the contract lifecycle comes from the balancing act between speed and control. Because contracts are so critical, legal’s preference is to examine contracts in extreme detail. Sales often has a different interest, pressuring legal to get out of the way so deals can close faster. The main business challenge becomes moving contracts through quickly but with enough oversight to effectively manage company risk.
  2. Lack of Visibility
    Part of what exacerbates the speed vs. control dilemma for legal is a general lack of visibility into contract terms, obligations and value. If you can’t see it, you can’t control it. This becomes a major pain point because agreements outline the terms of the value exchanged, and if you can’t ensure you are getting the right value for your deals, money is slipping through your company’s fingers. Lack of visibility is an especially serious problem for expiring contracts and renewals.
  3. Inconsistent Legal Language
    It’s important to be consistent in the use of terms and language in your contracts. Gaps in standardized language can introduce risk or confusion. If you can’t determine if your contracts contain accurate language, or what is different between contracts, lawyers might have to get involved in every single deal. This is not only inefficient but also increases the risk of being non-compliant or leaving revenue on the table.
  4. Information Silos and Manual Processes
    Managing all of the necessary steps in your contract process is hard enough internally across several departments. The complexity of managing contracts increases exponentially when you have to manage contracts across several office locations, time zones or languages. The ability to have everything centrally located with changes tracked in real time becomes critical. Human error, bottlenecked contract cycles and limited process control can increase risk dramatically when contracts are managed manually. Automating contract management helps companies improve control and visibility and significantly shortens contract creation time.
  5. Inability to Manage Changes
    It’s important to have a mechanism for managing changes over time. You need to be up to speed on renewal dates, pricing changes, emerging legal requirements and other events that will require you to speak to your customer/vendor specifically about your contractual relationship. Your ability to manage the contract, particularly changes over time and the renewal process, will have a direct impact on your customer retention rate.

So what can we do to meet these contract lifecycle management challenges head-on and with limited resources? You guessed it: technology is the clear winner in this category. The profound impact of technology on CLM is gaining momentum globally as more companies are realizing its extensive benefits as a business value driver. These cloud-based solutions offer painless integration, user-friendly interfaces, increased workflow and reduced costs across the board. Collaboration in handling projects is becoming more prevalent and sought-after, and CLM software companies have responded in kind by injecting more collaborative functionality into their products, another benefit of the SaaS model.

The best CLM solutions offer an array of features and benefits to fit organizations of all sizes and needs. A contract lifecycle management solution should offer complete control and visibility of your customer contracts, in all stages from review to approval to execution to renewal. The best CLM solutions simplify the submission, review, approval and management of contracts in one easy to use tool. Team members should never have to search their inbox or hard drive for the latest version or keep an Excel spreadsheet to manage their contracts. Powerful business analytics and reporting engines are additional hallmarks of the best CLM solutions, and are crucial in helping team members with their reporting, configuring notifications and other tasks.

Another important consideration in the value of CLM is how high the cost of non-compliance with regulations can be, and CLM is well-prepared to assist with this. Efficiency and transparency in reporting is another much-welcomed feature of these solutions, as well as the ability to flag possible problematic contracts before they reach the execution stage. Collaboration is a key ingredient in any operation involving many people, and contract management is a good example. Oftentimes, solution providers miss the mark (or ignore it altogether) on collaboration ability in their software. The interaction of multiple stakeholders such as legal professionals, attorneys and accountants requires that the CLM solution enable and encourage collaboration from inside and outside of the organization. Team members are then able to leverage knowledge from one another, and in turn be more productive and conserve the amount of time spent on projects.

If you’d like to see a demo of Onit CLM, click here.

CLM Management Software: Is Yours Driving Business Value?

Posted on December 4, 2019 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Digital Transformation

The rising need to reduce, eliminate, or mitigate risks related to legality, financing, and procurement is driving the contract lifecycle management (CLM) market growth. Additionally, CLM software allows users to maintain documentation related to pricing, dates, and information regarding internal & external entities involved and signatories. The growing demand for a central repository for efficient contract lifecycle management software among enterprises across various sectors is proliferating CLM market growth. The profound impact of technology on how contracts are managed is gaining momentum globally as more companies are realizing its extensive benefits as a business value driver.

We need a CLM solution that goes far beyond the basic necessities. We need a solution that offers a number of ways to drive business value. CLM should help organizations maximize the value from their core contract assets. In our new white paper, A Roadmap to Evaluating Contract Lifecycle Management Technology, we offer some useful insights about:

  • CLM Market Trends
  • Sources of Business Value
  • Features and Benefits of the Best CLM Solutions

The market for best of breed contract lifecycle management solutions has grown significantly in recent years and all signs indicate that this momentum will only increase in magnitude in the near and long term. Companies now expect more than just the basics in a CLM solution; they want a system that not only handles all the workflows involved in contract management, but also a solution that drives business value. Learn how to identify the most important business value drivers to look for in a contract lifecycle management solution in our white paper.

Download our new white paper, A Roadmap to Evaluating Contract Lifecycle Management Technology.

7 Best Practices of Business Process Automation and Digital Transformation

Posted on June 19, 2018 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation

As corporate legal departments search for better ways to work, the topic of business process automation (BPA) and digital transformation is becoming hotter than ever. Improving efficiency, exceptional user experience and reducing costs are top priorities for savvy companies and should be strategic priorities.

There are numerous best practices out there in the world of BPA and digital transformation. Here are some of our top ones to consider: 1

  1. Start with what you have. Already have a few processes outlined? Great! Start building from there. Are all your processes just “in your head”? That’s okay, too. Over the course of a typical business day, start writing down everything you do. Soon, you’ll start to notice process patterns emerging, as well as common bottlenecks.
  2. Don’t assume automation will fix all your problems. Yes, automating common processes can save you time and money, but only if the processes you have in place are effective. A bad process will not improve with automation.
  3. Root out waste. Look for the root cause of the business problem to discover and nullify inefficiencies.
  4. Assess what you have. Log your current BPA capabilities and note what is missing regarding requirements, 
so you only invest in missing technologies and avoid unnecessary duplication.
  5. Start with business needs and build out. Track the business requirements and use them to build your functional requirements accordingly. Use functional needs to develop technical requirements and assign these to your existing technology sets.
  6. Go mobile. Investigate mobile and cloud technologies, including mobile apps, that may provide solutions for your present needs and help stakeholders and remote staff in your processes. Take the time before implementing these technologies to understand how they will align with your current enterprise applications. Remember, BPA can also play the role of the integrating mechanism.
  7. Build in real-time optimization. Adopt an ongoing improvement program that will continuously monitor and optimize changes in real time. BPA is not a “one and done” project. Successful BPA requires an ongoing, cross-functional effort from all stakeholders.

To learn more about business process automation, download our white paper.

1 Brian Hughes: “How Business Process Management Will Change Your Small Business,” Huffington Post, July 2016

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.