Author: Onit

Onit’s Own York Richards a Finalist for CFO of the Year, 2018

Posted on October 9, 2018 by - Company News and Events

Onit is excited to announce that our chief financial officer, York Richards, has been selected as a finalist by the Houston Business Journal for CFO of the Year, 2018! The CFO of the Year Awards shine the spotlight on top financial executives across the city. All finalists are the CFO or the principal financial officer at his or her organization in the greater Houston area.

A panel of judges will select the CFO of the Year and he or she will be announced at a luncheon on November 8 and in a special publication in the November 9 issue of the Houston Business Journal. All 30 finalists will receive recognition at both the event and the publication. Learn more about the event and get your tickets.

The finalists were selected for their qualitative and quantitative accomplishments, their community involvement and their ability to manage change, adapt to disruptions and help the company navigate a successful course in a dynamic world.

See the official announcement of York’s selection.

Onit Launches New Multi-Media Page with Videos and Podcasts

Posted on October 5, 2018 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

We wanted to let you know about a new page we launched with some videos and podcasts highlighting our various product offerings. You’ll find informative thought leadership interviews with our CEO and co-founder Eric M. Elfman at various tradeshow and podcasts containing thought-provoking discussions with domain experts from our company. Some of the topics highlighted include our business process automation platform, Apptitude, the history of the enterprise legal management space (ELM) and how it has evolved in the last two decades and a discussion about the increase of contract management software usage in corporate legal departments. We’d like to invite you to take a look at our media page, and feel free to explore other sections in the website too!

Click here to go to our media page.

Technology Creates Operational Wins in Legal Department Operations

Posted on September 26, 2018 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

The Blickstein Group recently published their Law Department Operations Survey 10th Anniversary Report. According to the report, the percentage of time that LDO professionals spent on tasks hasn’t changed much between 2012 and 2017. Last year time spent on technology was 14%, process improvement was 12%, implementing integrations was 3% and vendor management was 6%. A key take away is that technology is becoming much more of a driving factor now. In 2014, 53% of survey respondents agreed that they had access to the right technology to do their jobs. Last year this number increased to 71%, which means something is working right.

Onit’s CEO Eric M. Elfman is passionate about building software for the legal industry and was honored to include a bylined article titled, “The Transformative Fabric of Law Department Operations: Technology is Foundational.”

An excerpt from this is below and the full article can be found here.

“Legal operations is all about optimizing the law department’s ability to help grow the company. This requires a higher level of operational excellence, as evidenced by the embracing and reliance on innovation, increasing demand for automation of repetitive tasks and a workflow-centric approach. Simply put, law department operations professionals turn to technology to create operational wins.

The need to drive efficiencies and contain costs are two key reasons that the legal operations function is growing so quickly. That growth is no longer only in the Fortune 500 companies; smaller companies are saddling up as well.

Many believe, and rightfully so, that legal operations will be responsible for some of
the biggest changes in the legal ecosystem. In fact, according to the Annual Law Department Operations Survey, 85 percent of LDO professionals believe that corporate law departments will be the primary driver of innovation and change in the legal sector. In fact, change is so prevalent in the minds of LDOs that 62 percent of them believe their jobs to be “primarily change management.

Technology will increasingly play a prominent role, as the only way for LDOs to fulfill their mission is by leveraging well-chosen technology solutions to automate processes, track legal spend and deliver key decision-ready information. Again according to the Survey, LDOs split their time on more than a dozen different tasks, leading with outside counsel management and technology (14 percent of their time each), law department administration (13 percent), process improvement (12 percent) and financial reporting (11 percent).”

Onit to Moderate Session on Operational Transformation at 30th Annual General Counsel Conference in New York City

Posted on September 20, 2018 by - Company News and Events

Onit’s Vice President of Global Sales Matt DenOuden will moderate a session at the 30th Annual General Counsel Conference on September 27 from 11:15 am. – 12:15 p.m. ET in New York City at the Marriott Marquis.

We’re honored to join thought leaders from TIAA, Compass, Shake Shack and NuHealth to discuss how legal departments are transforming their law departments with innovation and technology.

The session titled, “Driving Operational Transformation to Innovate and Reinvigorate Your Law Department” will include an interactive discussion of the emergence of legal operations and how this new function is handling more of the day-to-day operational and strategic aspects of the role.

This session will also look at how law departments continue to evolve and best practices for moving yours forward – from developing KPIs for your team to separating the legal operations function, to expanding the team and thinking in global terms.

The 30th Annual General Counsel Conference addresses the issues of the modern legal business and provides in-house counsel and legal executives with real-world examples and usable takeaways from best-in-class speakers and general counsel peers. The General Counsel Conference gathers an elite audience of in-house, general counsel, chief legal officers and senior legal management to tackle the top issues facing general counsel today. Participants hear from experts with a variety of perspectives, and take away actionable strategies to tackle key challenges and deliver on departmental and company-wide goals.

Learn more about the conference.

Onit and Jaguar Land Rover Runners-Up for Best Use of Technology Award

Posted on September 7, 2018 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

The Buying Legal Council, the international trade organization for legal procurement, announced on Wednesday evening the winners of the 2018 Legal Procurement Awards at the North America Legal Procurement conference. Onit is excited about our joint win with Jaguar Land Rover, who is also an Onit client. The award citation reads as follows:

“Jaguar Land Rover North America’s technology ‘makeover’ enabled the legal department to spend less time on tasks associated with reviewing and processing invoices, save money on legal fees by better managing outside counsel billing practices and rates, create a one-stop shop for all matter information and updates, maintain a document repository for all executed contracts, resolutions, and important documents, and gain visibility into all areas of reporting for all types of litigation and outside counsel spend.”

The Buying Legal Council Legal Procurement Awards showcase the advances in legal procurement and legal procurement best practices. They honor those who are at the forefront of new developments and inspire others. The goal is to identify and acknowledge the best industry initiatives in five areas of legal procurement, including Innovation, Collaboration, Teamwork, Best Use of Technology and Process Improvement.

Legal procurement professionals from any industry and country can participate by submitting a detailed description of their project which includes the following – project goals,  strategy and implementation, results from the project, a discussion of the budget and the project’s return on investment. Submissions for the awards were entered in a blind peer-review. All decisions were made unanimous among the judges, all of them legal procurement professionals.

Read more about the awards.

Business Process and Workflow Platforms: 4 Suites and Dashboards that Matter

Posted on September 5, 2018 by - Business Process Management

We now almost take for granted certain features we need in a business process and workflow automation platform: no-code configuration, agile project management, rapid value delivery, responsive user interface, and an adaptive end user experience. But it should also be highly human-centric with certain simple capabilities such as user suites and dashboards 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 be easy to configure custom forms, fields, checklists, workflows and have process tracking capabilities with the flexibility to make changes and improvements in-stream as often as needed.

Suites and dashboards come in many flavors, but we’ve selected a few that should be at the top of your list.

Operational and User Suites

Suites should be designed to meet the specific needs of an individual or role. Suites provide the ability to group smaller processes together to form an end-to-end solution and user experience. Each suite widget should be informational, as well as a quick entry point to any given slice of data. The ability to create persona-based home pages that visualize data, action items, and trends/metrics for end-users is very important, as is being able to choose between a dozen different visualization widgets, such as pie charts, bar charts, counters, timelines and more.

Leadership Analytics Dashboard

Your platform should natively integrate with Tableau as the primary business intelligence and analytics engine. Ideally, Tableau can be pulled directly into the platform to provide a seamless user experience to interact with the underlying data contained within the platform.

User and Smart Selection Tableau Dashboard

This type of dashboard can drive a user to underlying Tableau reports, specifically addressing the user’s needs.

Other vital dashboards should include:

  • Evaluation
  • Comparison over time
  • Business unit analysis

When it comes to human-centric, adaptive and responsive user interfaces, it’s not the time to skimp or cut corners. You need the workflow, process and collaboration platform that is the best fit for the way your teams work, and choosing a provider who offers unsurpassed suites and dashboards puts you one step ahead of the rest of the pack from the very beginning.

 

IaaS, PaaS, SaaS Part II: Which is Best for My Organization?

Posted on August 28, 2018 by - Business Process Management

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”  – Pablo Picasso

Fortunately for us, computing and cloud technology has evolved to benefit us much more than what Picasso had envisioned. In part I of this blog series we discussed the basic differences between the three most common models of cloud computing:

  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS)
  • Software as a Service (SaaS)

Now we’d like to go into a little more depth about the advantages of each model.

IaaS is for companies that want to have the most control over their service, and have the technical talent to manage everything from the O/S to the applications, and everything in between. There is no need to invest in hardware, and infrastructure scales on demand to support dynamic workloads. Other benefits include cost savings, scalability, focus on business growth, support for disaster recovery and business continuity, and faster time to market. Again, the company must have the technical expertise on hand in order to get the most out of IaaS.

PaaS provides companies with the means to conduct the building and delivering of applications, without the headaches and costs of buying and managing hardware, software, provisioning and hosting. Companies are able to develop and get applications to market faster, and deploy new applications to the cloud quickly. Other benefits include scalability, self-service/reduced administrative costs, lower up-front costs, reduced skill requirements, sharing of resources across multiple development teams and reduced lead times. While PaaS doesn’t require the tech savvy as does IaaS, it may take a little practice to get familiar with the software and start creating your own business applications. An important aspect of PaaS is that it is typically used by companies to build applications that are then sold to other customers as SaaS.

SaaS is for companies who want to quickly start using pre-built applications. This is the key difference between this model and the first two. Applications are accessible from any connected computer and since data is in the cloud, it’s still safe even if your organization’s system crashes. Dynamic scalability based on usage needs is another reason many feel SaaS is the way to go. SaaS is wildly popular as evidenced by the huge number of applications delivered by this means, including Microsoft Office 365 and Salesforce. In a nutshell, you sign up for a service and you’re up and running with the applications you need. Of course you’ll need a little practice on the system, but you get the point. Interestingly, most companies now use at least one form of SaaS, even if they rely heavily on IaaS or PaaS as their primary cloud model.

In the end, you and your team will have to weigh the advantages of each model to see which is the best fit for your business requirements. We guess that for the majority of people who landed on this website and chose to read this blog, there’s a good possibility either PaaS or SaaS would fit the bill. That means you’re seeking quick gains in productivity, efficiency and a hassle-free experience. Then again, your company may have the technical expertise and business requirements that call for IaaS. Some companies quickly seem to know which model is the best fit for them and before you know it, they’re benefitting from their new solution. Don’t feel bad if this isn’t your company – the vast majority of us need to spend more time and research before deciding which way to go.

Onit Customer Jaguar Land Rover is a 2018 National Women in Law Honoree

Posted on August 24, 2018 by - Company News and Events

Onit is excited to announce that Anna-Lisa Corrales, General Counsel of Jaguar Land Rover North America (JLRNA) is a 2018 National Women in Law award honoree, a program sponsored by Corporate Counsel and InsideCounsel.

This is especially exciting for us since we partnered with Anna-Lisa and JLRNA for a major technology implementation last year. These awards honor general counsel, in-house leaders and law firm partners who have demonstrated a commitment to advancing the empowerment of women in law. These outstanding women will be recognized at an awards dinner on Oct. 3 as part of the Women, Influence & Power in Law Conference in Washington, D.C.

These awards spotlight North American women in-house and law firm leaders who have demonstrated extraordinary leadership and business acumen as they have guided their organizations through often treacherous roads to achieve success. These women stand out because they are business strategists, complex problem-solvers, and of course, great lawyers. And as important (especially to them) is that they are great people-leaders—they care more about the success of the team than their individual success.

The Women in Law awards recognize legal department leaders in the following industries: Banking & Finance; Insurance; Transportation & Infrastructure; Manufacturing & Chemicals; Technology, Media & Telecom; and Retail & Consumer Goods. The program is also highlighting extraordinary leadership by recognizing female general counsel and law firm partners in the following categories: Innovative Leadership; Thought Leadership; Collaborative Leadership; Transformative Leadership; General Counsel of the Year or Managing Partner of the Year; and Lifetime Achievement.

Learn more about the National Women in Law award.

IaaS, PaaS, SaaS Part I: Which is Best for My Organization?

Posted on August 24, 2018 by - Business Process Management

Most of us are familiar with Software as a Service (SaaS), since it probably gets more attention and is more popular than Infrastructure as as Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), for reasons we’ll get to later. Interestingly, there have been recent rallies to get rid of the term “SaaS” and simply call it software since virtually everything is done on the cloud now. It’s a fair point, but even so, we believe it’s still useful to retain the term in order to differentiate the three major models. Each of the models is a bit different than the others, based on just how much “control” the client (end user) wants over the service provider’s computing infrastructure, project budget, etc.

In a nutshell, the three most common models of cloud computing currently in use are:

  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS)
  • Software as a Service (SaaS)

IaaS is the pinnacle model for companies who want to rent servers, networking, storage and virtualization – these being managed by the service provider. The company itself will manage the O/S, middleware, runtime, data and ultimately, the applications. Of course, companies that choose to go this route need the technical expertise on hand to build applications themselves from scratch. Having ultimate control over the service has its advantages, but also drawbacks. Some companies have expressed concerns that their data is not as secure using IaaS as compared to other models. Amazon Web Services EC2 and Rackspace Cloud are two examples of IaaS.

PaaS is considered the mid-range model when it comes to the client’s level of control. Here, a company is renting not only networking, storage, servers and virtualization; but also an O/S, middleware and runtime – all being managed by the provider. The client company manages the data and applications. An important part of this is that PaaS provides tools the client’s developers can use to create applications. Amazon Web Services Elastic, Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure are examples.

SaaS is by far the most commonly used cloud computing model today. The service provider manages the entire ball game, so the client simply uses the applications on a pay-as-you-go basis. Pretty much everything that’s technical, including the hardware and O/S, are out of sight and mind for the end user. Many applications can be bought off-the-shelf, while others can be customized by providers per the client’s requests and particular business process problem. Some common examples of SaaS in current use are Microsoft 365, Docusign, Netflix, Google Apps and Onit.

So which model is best or your company? That’s a question only you and your team can answer, but we’ll give you more food for thought in the next part of this blog series.

In part II we’ll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each model in more detail.

Onit Honored for Third Consecutive Year on the Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Company List

Posted on August 16, 2018 by - Company News and Events

Inc. magazine today revealed that Onit is number 1431 on its 37th annual Inc. 5000, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. Onit achieved a staggering three-year growth of 327%. The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economy’s most dynamic segment—its independent small businesses. Microsoft, Dell, Domino’s Pizza, Pandora, Timberland, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zillow, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees on the Inc. 5000.

The 2018 Inc. 5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2014 and 2018. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2014. They had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2017. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired). The minimum revenue required for 2014 is $100,000; the minimum for 2017 is $2 million.

The Inc. 5000 is a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the nation. Started in 1982, this prestigious list has become the hallmark of entrepreneurial success. The Inc. 5000 conference & awards ceremony is an annual event that celebrates the remarkable achievements of these companies. The event also offers informative workshops, celebrated keynote speakers, and evening functions.