Year: 2018

Five Must-Have Features in a Workflow, Process & Collaboration Platform

Posted on March 19, 2018 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Business process automation (BPA) platforms have been around for years. It can be an overwhelming task trying to decide which one is just right for your business. When it comes to state-of-the-art enterprise solution (or “app”) development, you must have the workflow, process and collaboration platform that is the best fit. In other words, software also needs to fit the collaborative way that business is now done. These are the reasons that a cutting-edge, collaborative platform is critical.

We now almost take for granted certain features we need in such a platform: no-code configuration, rapid value delivery, responsive user interface, and adaptive end user experience. But it should also be highly human-centric with certain simple capabilities — a simple intake form, a shared workspace, configured and ad hoc workflow, and a dashboard to view all of your transactions.

The platform should centralize all data, notes, documents, conversations and email threads in one location. Business teams should have real-time visibility into the process—whether it is a contract negotiation, NDA request or sales quote approval. It should easy to configure custom forms, fields, checklists, workflows and process tracking capabilities with the flexibility to make changes and improvements in-stream as often as required.

So, knowing the basic things needed, what are five features that you need to be looking for in the best BPA platforms?

  1. Short Development Time – A simple process pilot can be ready for implementation in hours and in production within days.
  2. Flexible – Technology that provides business users with the flexibility to route, comment, revise and track progress of the project to accommodate the variability and unpredictability inherent in knowledge work.
  3. Standard Intuitive Interface – A simple intuitive interface allows the user to focus on the “process” instead of the application.
  4. A Hands-On Approach – Business users can optimize their processes quickly using an agile approach, unlike traditional software customization that requires the development of process maps and workflow design.
  5. Cost Savings – Solutions developed with the platform should be a fraction of the cost of standard business process automation software and traditional enterprise systems.

We fully agree that the task of finding just the right BPA platform can be daunting, to say the least. But if you proceed in your quest armed with the knowledge of what you need to be looking for, you’re already a giant step ahead.

To learn more about Onit’s Apptitude platform, listen to our most recent podcast.

Onit Customer Jaguar Land Rover Featured in Corporate Counsel Business Journal for Transforming Legal Department with Enterprise Legal Management Solution

Posted on March 12, 2018 by - Company News and Events

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve been featured in the March/April edition of Corporate Counsel Business Journal (CCBJ) with our customer Jaguar Land Rover. We’re especially excited about this article, “Transforming the Legal Department: ELM Solution Puts Information at Everyone’s Fingertips,” as it showcases how we partnered with Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) in providing their enterprise legal management (ELM) solution. The article details how JLR drove change in the legal department with process efficiencies and Onit’s technology to better manage legal operations and legal spend. Readers will also learn:

  • Reasons why JLR needed a premier enterprise legal management solution, and why Onit was their partner of choice
  • Their successful partnership with Onit in building, testing and deploying e-billing and matter management technology
  • How they automated workflows to gain a quick overview of all on-going matters and transactions
  • How they effectively leveraged IT business partners early in the process to realize their implementation goals
  • Early results from gaining visibility into their legal spend (i.e. operational and financial results)
  • Lessons learned from the selection and implementation process

As Anna-Lisa Corrales, General Counsel of JLR puts it, “Onit’s ELM solution was just differently organized than other systems we had seen, and we really liked it because all the information was at our fingertips. And in today’s highly connected world, where information is spread across devices and in the cloud, that is more important than ever.”

To see the full article in CCBJ, click here.

Onit’s CEO Eric Elfman to Judge the 2018 Rice University Business Plan Competition for 17th Consecutive Year

Posted on March 8, 2018 by - Company News and Events

Onit’s CEO and co-founder Eric M. Elfman will serve as a judge for the 2018 Rice University Business Plan Competition. Scheduled for April 5-7, the program is known as the world’s richest and largest graduate-level business plan competition.

This will be the 17th year that Elfman has judged the competition, which is hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. The competition has grown from nine teams competing for $10,000 in prize money in 2001 to 42 teams from around the world competing for more than $1.5 million in cash and prizes. More than 130 past competitors have gone on to successfully launch their businesses, raising in excess of $600 million in funding.

The competition is designed to give collegiate entrepreneurs a real-world experience to fine tune their business plans and elevator pitches to generate funding to successfully commercialize their product. Judges will evaluate the teams as real-world entrepreneurs soliciting start-up funds from early stage investors and venture capital firms. The judges are asked to rank the presentations based on which company they would most likely invest. The participants will experience a diverse program over the course of three-days; with significant time designated for feedback and interaction with the judging panel.

During the competition, the entrepreneurial teams “pitch” both their business plans and visions to the judges. Each presentation is graded by the judges as if they were venture capital investors themselves. The winner of the competition is the business that the judges would most likely invest in based on the quality of the idea, the strength of the management team and the clarity and persuasiveness of the written plan and oral presentation.

To learn more about the competition, click here.

Onit and Client Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) Featured in Legal Evolution

Posted on February 28, 2018 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

After Onit’s and Archer Daniels Midland’s (ADM) joint ACC Value Challenge 2017 win, you’d think the smoke would’ve started clearing by now. Imagine our surprise when we saw the fantastic write-up by Bill Henderson in Legal Evolution, titled, “Successful technology adoption: David Cambria (ADM) and Eric Elfman (Onit) Discuss their Collaboration.“

The article encapsulates how Onit collaborated with ADM on a high-profile global legal technology project. ADM’s legal department needed workflow automation that didn’t require their lawyers to change, and also substantial productivity gains. By partnering with Onit, ADM was able to leverage technology and their new platform solution to reach all corners of the law department beyond legal and spend management.

Henderson also offers an enticing look into how Onit came into being and touches on how the book “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore, had significant influence on Eric M. Elfman, CEO and co-founder of Onit. The thesis of the book is the “big fish, small pond” strategy, which suggests that companies should focus the efforts of key personnel on a niche market. Having done this and then developing a “whole product” solution, the company can then cross the chasm into mainstream.

The article also plays fair and mentions the high risks involved when small companies try to cross the chasm by attempting to focus on niches like legal technology. This in mind, Henderson ended his write-up by noting an observation that Elfman made, “…technology startups are essentially a series of experiments until something works or you run out of money.” Good for Onit that things worked well.

Click here to read the entire article. To read more about our joint ACC Value Challenge win, click here.

Onit Beats 2017 Goals with Record Sales Growth, New Customer Wins, Strategic Management Hires and Recognition as an Innovative Thought Leader

Posted on February 22, 2018 by - Company News and Events

We are thrilled to announce that we surpassed our goals in 2017, in terms of new opportunities created and customer wins, strategic management hires, and several awards and distinctions. Our phenomenal success in 2016 set the stage for another stellar year in 2017.

Key 2017 Milestones

  • Bookings more than doubled from 2016 and annual recurring revenue increased 80%
  • We landed 30 new customers, 18 of which are Fortune 500 companies or equivalent
  • We increased our worldwide headcount by 96% and moved to a larger office in Pune, India
  • Secured recognition as a marker leader in process automation and enterprise Apps in the Hyperion 2017 Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) Report
  • Won the coveted Association of Corporation Counsel (ACC) Value Champion award with Archer Daniels Midland (ADM)
  • Launched a new corporate website using design and end user experience best practices
  • Unveiled a new user interface (UI) built on the ReactJS platform
  • Two key management positions were filled

Awards and Other Distinctions

Our company was also recognized by various software, legal industry and financial publications and organizations for its innovation, thought leadership and entrepreneurship in 2017. This commitment to unsurpassed technological excellence and user experience garnered Onit several distinctions in 2017:

Click here to see the full milestone release.

Onit’s CEO Eric M. Elfman Featured in Interviews with Innovators at Legaltech New York

Posted on February 19, 2018 by - Company News and Events

Now that Legaltech New York is finished, we’re excited to announce that it was an exceedingly fruitful event for Onit. One important part of our experience there was Onit CEO Eric M. Elfman’s interview with the Interviews with Innovators team. In this interview, Eric reveals how Onit is more than just a successful “niche” brand, but how we’ve transformed into a smaller SaaS company with a huge impact.

Eric continues the interview by underscoring how Onit’s software offers smarter workflows and operational efficiencies in a world where these qualities aren’t as common as one would think. He sums it up by explaining just how Onit’s more user-friendly and “natural” environment is appreciated by everyone who is familiar with social media – which includes almost everyone!

To view the video, click here.

Onit Takes Control at Legaltech New York 2018

Posted on February 14, 2018 by - Company News and Events

Onit had another successful exhibit at Legaltech New York this year. In advance of the show, we managed to secure a number of prospect, investor and partner meetings; all of which kept us busy as bees at our booth in the Cyber Café on the 3rd floor of the Hilton. We also had a sleek Ducati motorcycle at the booth to validate our “theme” this year – Take control of your destination. By the way, the bike itself was a big draw at the show and received a lot of attention.

Among all the excitement there, we co-presented an emerging technology session with Jaguar Land Rover (JLR). The session was Innovation in the Legal Department: A Case Study in People, Process and Technology at Jaguar Land Rover, and was presented by Onit’s Cole Morgan and JLR’s U.S. General Counsel Anna-Lisa Corrales. They discussed JLR’s partnership with Onit, and how we drove change in the legal department with process efficiencies and technology to better manage legal operations and legal spend. Attendance at the session was beyond our expectations – more than 200 people!

Eric M. Elfman, CEO and founder of Onit, also was featured in an interview with Interviews with Innovators. Eric revealed how Onit is more than just a successful “niche” brand, but a smaller SaaS company with a huge impact. For example, he underscores the fact that Onit’s more user-friendly and “natural” environment is appreciated by everyone who’s familiar with social media – which includes almost everyone!

To view his session on Interviews with Innovators, click here.

Onit Announces Enhanced Legal Hold Solution at Legaltech New York 2018

Posted on February 1, 2018 by - Company News and Events

With Legaltech New York 2018 currently underway in New York City, now is the perfect time to announce Onit’s newest legal hold solution. Designed with specifications from an industry-leading audit, consulting, tax, and advisory services firm, our enhanced legal hold solution is now more user-friendly, highly repeatable and defensible than ever before.

Our new wizard-based solution takes the user through the entire legal hold process – from hold creation, adding custodians, selection of the preservation notice, reminder schedules, and questionnaires through the highly intuitive and user-friendly Onit interface. The solution also contains a complete log of every activity taking place in the solution at every level of the process. This added level of transparency provides a complete audit trail throughout the legal hold process and allows users to track historical data for every legal hold. Every action in the system is logged on the front end of the system and independently stored; making the process even more defensible. The increased control at the front-end of the system (such as reviewing reminders, building templates, and setting notification schedules) provides an enhanced user experience.

Our enhanced legal hold solution also offers four unique ways to add custodians, again setting Onit apart from other competitors. Now, users can add custodians through bulk import, a multi-select drop down, by department or business unit and lastly by writing in custodians.

Additional new features of the Onit legal hold solution include:

  • Custom fields and pick lists that can be added to a legal hold memo
  • Custom questionnaires that can be created based on the type of legal hold
  • Helper text guiding the user through the legal hold creation process
  • A progress status bar indicating where the legal hold is in the creation process (i.e. 1% complete, 50% complete, 75% complete, etc.)
  • Preservation notices can ingest values from any number of configured data fields (ex. claimant, claim description, source locations, etc.)
  • Existing legal holds can be used as templates for the expeditious creation of future holds
  • A legal hold(s) summary report is available within the matter through a printer-friendly single click
  • Seamless integrations with existing matter management solutions, human resource information systems, single sign on and Active Directory

To see our press release, click here.

Gogo Goes Live with Onit’s Enterprise Legal Management and Contract Lifecycle Management Solutions

Posted on January 23, 2018 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

We’re excited to announce that Gogo, the leader in commercial and business aviation broadband connectivity, is now using Onit’s Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) and Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) solutions.

“It’s an honor to add Gogo to our rapidly growing list of satisfied clients. It’s also worth pointing out that the Gogo implementation was not only highly successful for everyone involved, but it was also a rather unique one,” says Eric M. Elfman, founder and CEO of Onit. “After going live with the ELM solution, they then quickly went live with the full CLM package. Users can quickly switch back and forth between ELM and CLM at any time. The implementation team went their usual extra mile on this project, and I am extremely pleased with their accomplishment at Gogo.”

Gogo, a company providing superior connectivity and entertainment in the aircraft industry, first went live with Onit’s ELM solution. Their ELM solution is not only a system of engagement, but also comprehensive and highly flexible in the sense that additions can be made quickly. And this was the case with Gogo – shortly after they went live with ELM, they added CLM and went live with that as well.

To see the full press release, click here.

Onit and Jaguar Land Rover to Present at Legaltech New York 2018

Posted on January 19, 2018 by - Company News and Events

Onit is pumped and ready to go to this year’s Legaltech New York tradeshow! We’re especially excited to attend this pivotal event this year, as we will be co-presenting an emerging technology session with Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) on Wednesday, January 31 from 10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. ET. The session is titled, “Innovation in the Legal Department: A Case Study in People, Process and Technology at Jaguar Land Rover.”

Anna-Lisa Corrales, U.S. General Counsel for JLR and Cole Morgan, VP of of Professional Services for Onit will be discussing the implementation of enterprise legal management (ELM) and the subsequent transformation of JLR’s legal department. Many legal departments spend endless hours on day-to-day tasks that could be handled in seconds with the right enterprise legal management solution. JLR’s story reflects this common dilemma that haunts many legal departments, and how they ultimately solved it.

Anna-Lisa will discuss her partnership with Onit, and how they drove change in the legal department with process efficiencies and technology to better manage legal operations and legal spend. Topics of discussion will include:

  • Reasons why JLR needed a premier ELM solution, and why Onit was their partner of choice
  • Their successful partnership with Onit in building, testing and deploying e-billing and matter management technology
  • How they effectively leveraged IT business partners “early” in the process to realize their implementation goals
  • Early results from gaining visibility into their legal spend (i.e. operational and financial results)
  • Lessons learned from the selection and implementation process
  • Success: The transformation to finally being able to do more legal work than billing and matter management

We hope you can join us in Americas Hall II at 10:15 a.m. ET for our session.