Tag: Onit customer

The Future of Contracting: CLM Automation with AI at Lenovo

Posted on March 30, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Company News and Events

Every company can benefit from faster and more efficient contracting processes, such as CLM software automation and AI, that enhance risk and spend management, improve revenue and profit margins and increase visibility into counterparty relationships. In a recent webinar for the World Commerce and Contracting Association, the Lenovo Legal Department described a transformation journey that can deliver value to any business.

The webinar paints a picture of the ideal overall transformation of the legal function, going from a bespoke system of subject matter experts to a legal function that combines that bespoke talent with standardized operations and digital efficiencies. The result is a legal department that’s digital, scalable and value-driven. This is achieved through the right combination of contract lifecycle management (CLM) and artificial intelligence (AI).

The Pillars of Lenovo’s CLM Automation and AI Journey

Lenovo identified three ideal outcomes that guide contract management transformation.

  1. Centralize – Your organization should have a single legal team – not geographically, but operationally. Centralization enables agile support for both the legal function and the enterprise as a whole. It also allows the legal function better flexibility to support new business areas and a greater ability to align resources with tasks.
  2. Standardize – Once you’ve centralized your legal function, you want to create and reinforce standardization across all activities. This includes enhanced and consistent documentation, harmonized workflows and standardized R&Ps for legal and other stakeholders in the organization, among other things.
  3. Digitize – A modern legal function is built around system-based workflows with increasing automation. Digitizing increases visibility into the E2E process and improves your reporting capabilities. It has also proven crucial for helping businesses navigate pandemic disruptions, thanks to solutions like CLM with e-signature capabilities.

Improving Efficiency by 30% with Contract AI

"It's not just a matter of looking at the CLM system and the capabilities. It’s really understanding the journey that you're going to go through and having the right partner to be with you. For us, we needed flexibility. We needed to have strategic discussions with stakeholders at our partners' organization, both from Duff & Phelps and Onit. When we were selecting our [CLM] solution, those were key elements.”AI is critical to the CLM automation process, according to the Lenovo team, because it not only improves the efficiency of the work, but it’s also actually doing some of the work for you. AI-powered CLM software helps remove the productivity bottleneck that plagues many areas of the legal function today.

While CLM software and AI have already established a strong foothold in legal departments across the country, their prevalence is only going to grow in the coming years. By 2023, Gartner estimates that 90% of multinational global enterprises and 50% of regional midsize organizations will have invested in CLM solutions, and that AI will bring 30% more efficiency to the contract negotiation and document completion processes in organizations that deploy leading CLM solutions.

CLM handles your contracting from end to end, starting with legal review intake and leading you through redlining, drafting and negotiation to approval and execution, and finally creating a repository and empowering intelligent reporting to support informed decision-making. CLM with AI does all those things even more accurately and efficiently.

The panel walked through the major goals of any successful CLM automation and AI program:

  • Faster and cheaper contracting
  • Enhanced risk management
  • Data analytics
  • Visibility
  • Revenue and profit improvement
  • Spend management
  • AI capabilities

Additionally, the webinar highlights a number of key themes that are critical to anyone on the CLM transformation journey, including:

  • Lenovo’s CLM evolution and transformation roadmap
  • Multi-year goals related to their contract management technology
  • Why the culture must eat change management for breakfast
  • The benefits and ROI of a single CLM platform
  • How AI is driving the future for its enhanced vision

Download the webinar here to learn more about Lenovo’s strategy for a global rollout of CLM technology and why AI is key to the services delivery model of the future.

Advice from Travel and Hospitality Legal Operations Leaders on How to Address Pandemic Challenges

Posted on October 22, 2020 by - Company News and Events

The U.S. Travel Industry estimates that travel spending is now 41% lower than last year at this time, representing a $9.1 billion loss. These losses are not a surprise, considering the rise of social distancing and stay-at-home orders. People have canceled vacation plans, including flights, hotels, cruises and more – resulting in $415 billion in cumulative losses for the U.S. travel economy. Restrictions resulting from the pandemic will have an even larger impact globally, with one study claiming that worldwide tourism revenues may take a $3.4 trillion hit.

Travel and hospitality legal departments face challenging times as their companies react, rethink and reset. Now more than ever is a time for legal operations professionals to connect and compare strategies and experiences.

On October 7, Onit and HBR Consulting held a virtual discussion with corporate legal department leaders in these industries to hear how they have been impacted by COVID-19, what changes they are planning for the short and long term and how lessons from this crisis will inform their approach to legal issues in the future.

The panelists, moderated by Kevin Clem, Chief Commercial Officer for HBR Consulting , included:

  • Fred Headon, Assistant General Counsel – Labour and Employment Law for Air Canada
  • Eric Kabot, Senior Associate Counsel of Royal Caribbean
  • Saumil Mehta, Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel of Gogo Air

The webinar, titled Checking in on Travel & Hospitality Legal Departments, is now available for on-demand viewing. It is one in a series of Onit’s online learning program for legal operations professionals called Lean Into LegalOps.

Pivots, Cross-Collaboration and More

No matter what impact the pandemic has on your company, the discussion offers valuable insight into navigating through unexpected changes.

Eric Kabot shared how Royal Caribbean’s corporate legal department has undergone staff reductions and now accomplishes more with fewer resources. As a result, the team has shifted from focusing on their respective functional areas prior to the pandemic to a cross-collaborative environment. Fred Headon of Air Canada described how they pivoted their business model on several fronts and how this change has affected the company and its legal operations. Saumil Mehta also said his company, Gogo Air, has changed course as well and emphasized the importance of partnerships and creativity in trying times. According to him, products from Onit helped when the pandemic hit – especially since they had to start working from home.

To hear more from the speakers, you can watch the recorded webinar here.

More Learning Opportunities for Corporate Legal Operations

Onit’s fall series for Lean Into LegalOps continues with more timely learning exchanges, including:

  • Virtual Legal Resourcing Debate with Buying Legal Council, where three debate teams present scenarios to their hypothetical general counsel, who has asked for options to reduce expenses related to outside counsel. (Wednesday, November 18 | 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. CST).
  • The GC’s Guide to Contracts and a Single Point of Truth, as Prosus explains its digitalization initiative and platform technology strategy to improve legal operations. (Thursday, December 10 |  2:00 p.m. BST / 8:00 a.m. CST)

You can register for these events and hear past ones here.

Welcome to the Fall Series of Lean Into LegalOps, Featuring Peer-Led Discussions with Global Companies

Posted on September 10, 2020 by - Company News and Events

We at Onit are excited to announce our fall series of Lean Into LegalOps, where we feature legal innovators from DaVita, Johnson Matthey, Gogo, Royal Caribbean and more. Lean Into LegalOps unites legal operations professionals worldwide and online to share experiences in this time of dispersed operations. The community is supported throughout the season by peer-led webinars, roundtable discussions and check-in calls.

Since its launch in March, Lean Into LegalOps has welcomed more than 2,000 registrants and featured insight from McDonald’s, BT and Colgate-Palmolive. General counsel, inside counsel and legal operations professionals can join at no charge in both the United States and Europe.

As Christine DiDomizio, legal operations lead at Jaguar Land Rover North America and a Lean Into LegalOps contributor, describes it: “Onit technologies helped us adjust to the process of going 100% remote back in March. Now, Onit’s Lean Into LegalOps supports customers and the rest of the legal community looking to connect and learn from each other. I’m excited to see the program continue beyond the initial pandemic emergency and provide more opportunities for legal operations professionals.”

Discussions with Legal Operations Innovators

The fall series of Lean Into LegalOps offers presentations such as:

  • The Power of a Platform – Daniel Lee, director of legal operations for DaVita, will share how the corporate legal department uses a business process automation platform to configure workflows and consolidate data and reports. (September 17, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. CDT, register here.)
  • Automating Processes to Connect Legal and the Business – General counsel and legal operations presenters from Johnson Matthey, Duff & Phelps and more will focus on using technology to drive savings. (October 2, 9:50 a.m.–10:30 a.m. BST, request a complimentary conference pass to attend.)
  • Checking in on Travel & Hospitality Legal Departments – Speakers from Royal Caribbean, Gogo and more will explore the impact of recent events and how they will inform their approach to legal issues. (October 7, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. CDT, get notification of open registration here.)
  • Checking in on Travel & Hospitality Legal Departments – Leaders from industries hit hardest by societal changes will explore how recent events have impacted their legal departments, what changes they anticipate and how lessons from this crisis will inform their approach to legal issues in the future. Kevin Clem, chief commercial officer at HBR Consulting, will moderate the discussion, and speakers will include legal professionals from Royal Caribbean and Gogo. (October 7, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. CDT, get notification of open registration here.)
  • Legal Operations Reporting Done Right – Legal operations leaders at Mylan, a global pharmaceutical company, discuss creating meaningful reports for different audiences across the enterprise. (October 22, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. CDT, get notification of open registration here.)
  • Virtual Legal Resourcing Debate with Buying Legal Council – This lively session will feature three teams debating scenarios to their hypothetical general counsel, who has asked for options to reduce outside counsel expenses. (November 18, 10:00 a.m.–11:00 a.m. CST, get notification of open registration here.)

Lean Into LegalOps also hosts check-in calls every other week, where members connect informally to discuss topics like diversity, streamlining cross-departmental workflows and cost savings.

Click here to learn more about the program and register for events.

To view previous Lean Into LegalOps presentations, visit here.

 

One Platform, Limitless Opportunities: How Legal Operations Pros Solve Business Process Challenges

Posted on September 1, 2020 by - Business Process Management

There are more than 1.3 million lawyers in the United States. And they’re interested in learning what other lawyers are doing – especially when it comes to technology and legal operations. Whether through networking, industry organizations like CLOC or ILTA or on-the-fly discussions in (virtual) hallways, they make connections to explore legal innovation and how it can work for them.

One of the latest areas of interest is automation. According to the CLOC 2020 State of the Industry report, a high priority for most corporate legal departments is automating legal processes. As automation continues within the department, innovators are quickly realizing that they can automate beyond legal. Each day, in-house counsel and legal operations professionals work with departments across their enterprises like sales, HR, accounting, procurement and more. The automation potential is limitless and promises substantial results in streamlining processes and increasing efficiency.

With this in mind, we are thrilled to announce the release of our Onit Solutions Catalog.

The catalog represents more than 5,500 Apps and 130 solutions built on our workflow and business process automation platform Apptitude. Developed by Onit customers, partners and employees (aka the Onit Nation), the catalog reveals innovative approaches corporate legal departments have taken to automate business processes in legal operations and across departments.

As our CEO and co-founder, Eric M. Elfman, explains it: “If there’s a use case, Apptitude can automate it.”

Apps that Reach Beyond Legal

Examples of innovative Apps built on Apptitude include:

  • TREAD Report – One of the largest automotive manufacturers uses Onit to automate reporting for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability, and Documentation (TREAD) Act, reducing manual work and ensuring the company complies with the act.
  • Trade Association Approval and Management – This App, created by a Fortune 500 company, manages memberships, renewals and spend for trade associations worldwide. By adding transparency and reporting to the process, the company drives more value from association participation and greater accountability that lowers costs.
  • Fund Management – This App helps manage all of the necessary business processes, reviews and approvals for the transfer of assets between portfolio companies and generates the legal documents needed to memorialize the transactions. Now, a company can facilitate higher volumes of these complex financial transactions with the same size staff.
  • Policy Endorsement Drafting Portal – With this App, insurance underwriters can submit policy endorsement drafts for review and approval, saving time and improving response rates with self-service and automation.
  • Marketing Challenges – A leading global consumer products company uses Onit to centralize challenge requests from emails to a single location, increasing knowledge management and enabling analytics to understand the consistency and success rates of challenges.

A Worldwide Platform

More than 400 customers, including 57 Fortune 500 corporations, use Onit’s Apptitude platform. It is highly configurable and scalable and supports hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. The recent launch of its new visually oriented, drag-and-drop-friendly, workflow-building interface Process Builder dramatically simplifies the creation of workflows and business logic for all users – regardless of technical proficiency.

This latest version of Apptitude offers features such as 200+ out-of-the-box workflow actions, unlimited end-user licensing, and an intuitive interface that creates a workflow visualization before it is even finished.

Next steps

If you’re an Onit customer interested in learning more about the Onit Solution Catalog, contact your account manager or email [email protected]. For anyone else, please request access via [email protected].

To see how one corporate legal department used Apptitude, view this webinar: TIAA: Transforming Operations and Driving Innovation with a Platform Technology Strategy.

To see Apptitude in action, you can request a demo here.

New On-Demand Webinar: McDonald’s Special Sauce for Corporate Legal Operations Strategy

Posted on July 23, 2020 by - Company News and Events, Enterprise Legal Management

In our latest Lean into LegalOps session, we invite you to learn how corporate legal operations leaders at McDonald’s created a cohesive, long-term strategy to achieve the right balance of people, process and technology. The webinar, McDonald’s To Reveal Special Sauce for Legal Ops Strategy and Transformation, is now available to view on-demand. Here’s a brief recap of the transformation.

Curtis Batterton, legal operations and global technology manager at McDonald’s, has spent more than a decade at McDonald’s. Seven of those years have been in IT management roles for legal. When he started in the corporate legal department, he found it had a squeaky wheel approach to technology – whoever spoke the loudest got the most attention.

The department had on-premise and custom-built systems, with some in use for 15 years. That technology, which included matter management and a document repository, often led in-house counsel and legal professionals to complain about usability and functionality. With a decentralized business structure and multiple systems, IT had to concentrate more on managing infrastructure instead of driving business insight.

Shift to Global

About five years ago, the company shifted to a global legal operations focus. Legal leaders also wanted more flexibility in how and why work gets done. They opted for a business process approach that included legal teams outside of the U.S. and an emphasis on efficiency.  The corporate legal department also wanted more insight into their legal spend.

Solving Business Problems  

Curtis explained in the webinar how the drive to global operations led them to solutions like Onit, which ticked his boxes for their ability for worldwide deployment and flexibility while moving infrastructure management to providers.

“Onit is really a workflow platform,” he shared. The Onit Apptitude platform provided a strategic advantage for building customer apps, allowing them to capture and share technological innovations across legal operations worldwide. They also deployed eBilling from Onit, which gave them greater visibility into legal spend and other important metrics.

Document management was another challenge they addressed. Curtis partnered with Onit partner Morae Global on a worldwide deployment for iManage.

The Future State

New technologies resulted in greater efficiency and business intelligence, as well as a platform for worldwide legal operations. For Curtis, future successes will rely on continuing the vision for global operations. That includes listening to users and their needs and collaborating with adaptive and flexible technology partners.

Learn more about McDonald’s corporate legal operations transformation by watching the webinar here.

Lean into LegalOps

Lean into LegalOps is an online learning initiative open to all legal operations professionals. It connects thousands of in-house counsel and technology experts, offering an expanded toolkit of masterclasses, case studies, educational content and virtual discussions. To join, sign up for the U.S. or European programs today.

BT Implements Onit Workflow Platform Apptitude

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

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

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

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

Read the press release.

Register for the webinar.

Learn more about Onit Apptitude.