4 Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) Code Phrases to Fear

Our previous two posts discussed – Enterprise Legal Management Needs to Grow Up and The Beginning of the ELM SaaS Revolution. This will address some of the ways traditional ELM vendors may try to shift the blame for problems introduced by overcomplicated, underpowered solutions to the customer.

If you hear the following four phrases when evaluating an ELM offering, consider the following translations before you make your decision:

“Senior management has to champion the idea.”

Translation: People won’t use this unless they are forced.

This is something you’ll hear if user experience (UX) isn’t considered an integral part of the design process. Onit ELM solutions are designed to be configured to existing workflows, making adaptability and user adoption simple.

“Change Management is essential for success.”

Translation: The benefit to your business and legal users is illusory.

If a solution claims to offer a significant benefit, that benefit shouldn’t be negated by the amount of effort required to enforce compliance with a new process. Change management is entirely unnecessary when a solution is designed with the user and workflow in mind.

“A strong training program is critical to adoption.”

Translation: This software is incredibly hard to use.

It’s 2016. The vast majority of us have daily interactions with multiple pieces of software. We know our way around a computer. If we still need to attend multiple training sessions to learn how to operate a user interface, that is not a failure on our end. It is a failure in design.

Business software should work and be designed with the same expectations of usability as consumer software.

“We release new versions once or twice a year.”

Translation: Prepare to spend a lot of time and money staying current.

With already lengthy implementation times, frequent version updates can make keeping an application current a full time job. You shouldn’t pay someone a salary to maintain minor changes and oversee the addition of features you never asked for and don’t need.

Case Study: Transforming the Way Legal Works

Now, let’s look at what you can expect from a standard Onit solution implementation.

Onit partnered with a large Fortune 500 client to deploy an NDA App. The company’s in-house legal department processed upwards of 10,000 NDAs annually, with an average turnaround time of 16 days.

Onit developed and deployed a prototype solution within a month to handle global submission, negotiation, and electronic signature of NDAs that supported the existing demand.

The company processed over one thousand NDAs within the first month of deployment, with the completion time reduced to just 24 hours (that’s a 95% reduction from the previous average.) 90% of the NDAs were processed without lawyer involvement.

Modern ELM solutions from Onit are cheaper, quicker to deploy, and more responsive to your actual business needs.

Learn more about what Onit brings to Enterprise Legal Management in our free white paper“ A New Approach to Enterprise Legal Management.”