Author: Onit

Onit’s Apptitude Platform Part II: The Differentiator

Posted on October 17, 2018 by - Business Process Management

In part I of this blog series we discussed the Apptitude platform, focusing on an overview of what it does and how it works. We referred to the platform as a differentiator because it stands out from the rest of the pack. Onit differentiates itself from other providers because we have a deep understanding of what customers need and are looking for to stay ahead of the game.

Apptitude offers more than 200 pre-built actions, is easily configurable, scalable, agile and sports low-code configuration to facilitate fast development. Among its many capabilities, Apptitude features state-of-the-art collaboration, integrations, security, process and workflow. Robust reporting ability shouldn’t be ignored, and Apptitude offers Onit Suites, grid-based dashboards, Tableau integrations and Microsoft Word and Excel reporting. Onit integrations are highly robust with an extensive API and REST request action.

Apart from its capabilities, here are five reasons to use a platform like Apptitude:

1. Cost savings:
Solve business problems without the need for costly support, training or IT infrastructure. Software as a service (SaaS) is the way to go, freeing up your team members to do their “real work.”

2. Solutions are easy to create:
Some workflow solutions can be created in less than 30 minutes, depending on the complexity and scope of the workflow.

3. Transparency:
Business teams have real-time visibility in processes, such as legal service requests, NDA requests, or contract negotiations.

4. Implementation is fast:
Most implementations take place in weeks, not months and ROI can be seen much sooner than with traditional process automation projects.

5. Highly human-centric:
Each solution has four simple but crucial built-in capabilities:

  • A simple intake form
  • Shared workspace
  • Configured and ad hoc workflow
  • Dashboard views

Business process automation platforms have been around for years, but the best have only recently emerged. 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 solution development, you must have the workflow, process and collaboration platform that is the best fit for the way your teams work.

To learn more about our business process automation platform, listen to Episode 3 with our Apptitude expert Jonathan Powers.

Onit’s Apptitude Platform Part I: The Differentiator

Posted on October 16, 2018 by - Business Process Management

“Now one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type.”

– Frederick Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management, 1911

Fortunately, we’ve made a bit of progress since Frederick Taylor offered his assessment of process management. When you’re looking for a process automation platform that is not only collaborative but helps you quickly simplify and solve real-world business problems, there’s not a lot of time to waste. There are many process automation platforms out there that tout how they can easily solve all your business problems with a wave of the wand. The differentiator, however, comes from Onit’s Apptitude platform and its ability to apply individualized workflows and tasks by matter and matter type. These apps can be connected to other related apps to form a “suite” of cross-functional integrations to support complex operations.

With Apptitude, users can build a matter intake system to streamline the process of multi-party data entry and review/approval, or a collaboration workflow to resolve timekeeper issues directly with outside law firms. Onit’s flexibility allows businesses to quickly develop both very simple and very complex processes and workflows to drive everyday business functions and operations—in legal and other departments. In a legal context, this could include the creation and approval of matters, the drafting and review of non-disclosure agreements, and many other every day activities.

Onit uses a workflow-centric approach that seeks to deconstruct matter management into independent, collaborative functional lifecycles that lawyers and operations managers use on a regular basis; a la carte model empowers users to add capabilities and components as needed. Modern architecture showcases class-leading technology and a decidedly SaaS-based approach to legal business application management. Onit’s Apptitude platform is designed for rapid deployment, flexibility and agility.

In part II of this blog series we’ll discuss Apptitude’s features and its benefits of ownership.

Click here to read Part II…

Onit’s Fired Up and Ready for ACC Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas

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

Onit is all set to participate in this year’s ACC Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas October 21-24 at the Austin Convention Center. The world’s largest educational event for in-house legal counsel, the ACC Annual Meeting includes two-and-a-half days of unsurpassed networking opportunities and advanced education seminars focused on leading topics of interest to the in-house counsel professional.

Attendees will learn from and network with in-house lawyers on complex legal and regulatory challenges, constant geopolitical change, cyber risk, and the need to help drive business strategy.

Last year, Onit and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) were honored as Value Champions for making a difference, not only in their organization through creativity and value-based legal management skills, but also for affecting change within the legal industry.

ADM leveraged technology (from Onit) and their new platform solution to reach all corners of the law department beyond legal and spend management. The astounding results that ADM achieved from this major makeover speak for themselves. Their reduction of legal costs alone is enough to make one catch their breath.

As if remarkable reduction of legal spend weren’t enough, ADM also implemented an extraordinary series of predictive metrics and reporting to give better insight and guidance to lawyers and business folks who manage risk for the company.

Other Onit customers honored with the prestigious ACC Value Champion awards were AIG in 2015 and ZS Associates in 2014.

If you are attending the ACC Annual Meeting in two weeks and have any projects around contract management, e-billing, matter management, legal service requests, or legal holds in 2019, we’d love to talk to you. Simply email us and we’ll schedule a demo at the show at your convenience.

You can also stop by our booth (#224) to learn more.

Committed to Our Customer’s Success: Learn More on Our Latest Podcast

Posted on October 11, 2018 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

We’re excited to announce our latest podcast! In this episode, customer success team members Tawnya Thorman and Stephanie Bullard discuss what their team is all about. Tawnya and Stephanie start by giving a little background about their previous work with different companies. They then share their thoughts about what the customer success team does, including creating value for customers, ensuring user adoption and other business needs, customer service, and making sure everything works as it should. They also quickly highlight their roles as advocates and consultants.

Tawnya and Stephanie go on to relate a few customer success stories, and also offer logical and practical reasons to embrace technology; especially for those who fear or don’t like change. As a parting word they explain their team’s pivotal role in helping to “free” customers to do the work they love, rather than the work they hate (which Onit’s automation takes care of).

Listen to this podcast.

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.