Author: Onit

Meet the Hackers Who Are Reengineering Legal Operations Technology

Posted on October 26, 2020 by - Company News and Events

Are you ready for a friendly legal operations technology competition? These legal leaders raised their hands and said, “Hack, yeah!”

Two weeks ago, we announced our new hackathon: Hack the House.

The competition unites Onit customers, partners and staff to re-imagine legal operations technology. With the no-code Onit Apptitude platform, they’re creating Apps to address real challenges faced by corporate legal departments.

The competition, held in conjunction with Cosmonauts, welcomes five teams, including Team IP, Team HR, Team Europe, Team Diversity and Team Pro Bono. Each team has three weeks to identify a problem, define requirements and build the solution.

Winners will be determined by public voting (sign up here to get the notices) and a judging panel of in-house legal leaders that features:

  • Kristi Anne Gedid, Sr. Director Global Legal Operations, Mylan
  • Mary Shirley, Head of Culture of Integrity and Compliance Education, Fresenius
  • Maria Anassutzi, Legal IP Counsel EMEA, Canon Europe
  • William Hayes, Senior Lawyer, BBC
  • Jonathan Powers, Director of Learning and Development, Onit

Voting opens in December, with winners announced before the end of the year.

Ready to meet the legal and business experts, certified App Builders and project managers blazing a new trail for legal operations technology? Let’s do it.

Team Europe

Our team overseas is packed with talent. Led by Robert Johnson, Onit’s managing director (you may have seen his spirited series on Legaltech101), the team also has:

  • Ed (Eduardo) Rastelli, Legal Consultant at Standard Chartered Bank
  • Lee Harrison, Senior Developer – Legal Systems at BT Group
  • Alyssa Kokilah, Legal Consultant at Cognia Law
  • Claire Banham, Associate Director Sales Engineer at Onit
  • Tyler Reno, Sales Engineer at Onit

Team IP

Team IP brings some real heavy hitters together to combat legal operations inefficiencies for intellectual property. It includes:

  • Matt (Matthew) Burdman, Global Legal Organization and finance manager at Colgate-Palmolive
  • Ken Capece, Manager, Patent and GLO Operations at Colgate-Palmolive
  • Larry (Lawrence) Gianneschi, Director, Legal Technology at Colgate-Palmolive
  • Nadine Stuttle, Managing Director at Duff & Phelps
  • Rebecca Cotton, Analyst at Duff & Phelps
  • Atlantis Langowski, Account Manager at Onit
  • Josie Johnson, Marketing Director at Onit

Team HR

HR and legal go together like Jobs and Wozniak (well, in the early days). This team of pros will identify a critical HR/legal challenge and take it down with technology. Members include:

  • Curtis Batterton, Legal Operations & Global Technology Manager at McDonald’s Corporation
  • Chris Hultgren, Business Analyst – Global IT HR at Deere & Company
  • Weston Wicks, Director of Legal Technology Implementations at Morae Global
  • Brett Baccus, Managing Director at Morae Global
  • Dipesh Parmar, Sr. Associate at Morae Global
  • David Duffey, Account Manager at Onit

Team Diversity

From CEOs to GC, businesses are prioritizing diversity. This team of legal ops leaders will streamline and automate a critical diversity-related process to further this initiative. Working on this team are:

  • Eric Kabot, Director, Senior Associate Counsel at Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
  • Michele Compasso, Legal Ops Consultant at Corteva Agriscience™
  • Gregg McConnell, Legal Operations Leader at Corteva Agriscience™
  • Sam Lu Consilio, Lisa Morris and Debby Young for Consilio
  • Jesse Viani, Regional Sales Director and Senior Account Manager at Onit
  • Rhonda Oliver, Account Manager at Onit

Team Pro Bono

And finally, our final team includes these talented individuals working on a solution to track an organization’s pro bono legal efforts:

  • Nick Panagoplos, Manager at Chubb
  • Kim Takacs, VP of Corporate Real Estate at Chubb
  • Massimo Penzo, Sr. Consultant at Morae
  • Paige Edwards, Director of Customer Experience at Onit

We’ll have more updates as Hack the House continues. Sign up for the latest news on these teams’ progress. Good luck to everyone!

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.

4 Core Benefits of the Leading Enterprise Legal Management Solutions

Posted on October 20, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

In today’s fast-paced and quickly evolving business environment, corporate counsel and legal department professionals want to work faster, smarter and more efficiently. One of the best ways to do this is by automating manual processes with enterprise legal management solutions.

Manual processes are sneaky. They manage to irritate most knowledge workers but don’t always provoke a full-fledged resistance. The work has to get done, so the processes – which often include manual components – have to be completed as well.

However, the time spent on manual process accumulates drastically during a week. According to this survey, over 40% of workers spend at least 25% of their week on repetitive tasks and nearly 60% say they could save six or more hours a week with automation.

A Modern Approach to Enterprise Legal Management

Modern enterprise legal management solutions are systems of engagement, built on a platform that can easily accommodate new Apps and solutions to handle evolving business process needs. They employ automation, such as the review of documents and assigning tasks, to help law departments better serve their businesses while improving operational efficiency. While they provide valuable matter management and legal spend management, they aren’t limited to those solutions. The one-two punch of a platform combined with automation offers a  foundation for current and future needs, accommodating solutions such as contract lifecycle management, legal holds, Apps and more.

With this in mind, here are four simple, core benefits that an enterprise legal management solution can provide.

  1. Maximize Savings

Process automation with an enterprise legal management solution can cut operating costs by up to 90%, while at least 45% of current paid activities can be automated. It allows you to easily manage, track and analyze legal spend to minimize company risk and exposure. With these tools, legal departments can create visibility into spend and a strategy to manage it going forward.

  1. Increase Efficiency

An enterprise legal management solution drives process improvements in all areas of legal operations. It helps corporate legal realize more efficiency with reduced billing error fees, increases productivity and reduces time spent on matter management. Optimal enterprise legal management solutions are simple to configure, easy to deploy and address complex everyday problems.

  1. Enhance Collaboration

Collaborative tools are proven to have a high impact on businesses, regardless of department size or geographic location – especially now with a rise in remote working. A solution that supports and tracks the multiple contributions often associated with each piece of legal work improves collaboration between internal and external stakeholders. It also encourages greater collaboration across the enterprise, as corporate legal departments automate intake and speed response times with HR, procurement, compliance, marketing and more. Two items offered by modern enterprise legal management solutions enable all of this. First, they provide a consistent and familiar App-based interface, thanks to the platform. Second, a platform that allows unlimited users encourages higher usage and adoption in-house, across departments and with outside counsel.

  1. Simplify Work

With automation, enterprise legal management software streamlines the way lawyers and their legal staff work and get work into the department. It integrates data-driven decision making into standard work processes. It also offers an App-based approach to legal operations that breaks complex tasks into individual, task-based solutions and processes. Both elements simplify work drastically.

If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits of enterprise legal management solutions, here are some helpful resources:

How DaVita’s Corporate Legal Department Stays Synced with Evolving Business Needs

Posted on October 15, 2020 by - Business Process Management

In its 23rd annual CEO survey, PwC found 83% of U.S. CEOs prioritize operational efficiencies to drive growth over the next 12 months. The pandemic has forced many businesses to reassess and pivot quickly – meaning that corporate legal departments have had to do the same to stay aligned with strategic initiatives. At the same time, they want to enact change and accommodate new workflows efficiently.

How can a corporate legal department enhance efficiency while quickly adapting to changing business needs? According to Daniel Lee, Director of Legal Operations – Technology & Analytics at DaVita, you need Apps. In this on-demand webinar, he shares how DaVita has invested in building apps to support what he calls “the other lanes” in the corporate legal department. As a result, they’ve streamlined workflows and accelerated change management for areas such as marketing intake and conflict waiver tracking.

Before and After Apps

For example, he describes the “before and after” of their process for reviewing marketing materials. Before, the legal team created and worked from color-coded spreadsheets and email tags – a process that demanded a lot of valuable time to maintain. The company’s legal operations team saw an opportunity to increase efficiency. Working with Onit’s workflow and business process automation platform as the foundation, they built a marketing intake process App. Marketers can request legal review online, uploading information needed for review. Then, the App automated the process, capturing work product, redlines and more. It also gave them weekly reports that help them calculate the type of work associated with these projects.

As a result, Daniel reported that they expect enhanced task management and collaboration, knowledge is stored in a system instead of shared mailboxes, metric generation is simplified and distribution automated.

A Platform Advantage

This is one example of how DaVita has increased efficiency. With Onit Apptitude as its technology platform, the corporate legal department has combined the power of an enterprise legal management solution with the ability to launch Apps to solve critical business challenges quickly. As a result, they can configure their workflows to their specific needs and data and reports are consolidated in one place to make reporting easier and more meaningful.

Apptitude minimizes the need for technical resources. It bridges the gap between technical and business users, providing a no-code platform and a visual drag-and-drop workflow builder with an intuitive visual interface for building and managing workflows. Plus, it allows an unlimited number of users, meaning other departments and contacts can use any Apptitude-powered app without having to incur costs.

In this recorded webinar, you can hear Daniel share the corporate legal department’s vision for enterprise legal management and how they use a platform and apps to supercharge efficiency.

Lean Into LegalOps

The DaVita webinar is one in a series of virtual learning and networking titled Lean Into LegalOps. The program, available in both the U.S. and Europe, brings Onit customers and the greater in-house legal community together to share experiences, lessons and successes through formal webinars, virtual discussions, customer demonstrations and more informal check-in calls. Join Lean Into LegalOps today to get periodic updates on upcoming events and new content, as well as invitations to the virtual events and bi-monthly check-in calls.

 

Are Legal Operations Professionals Ready to Hack the House? Hack, Yeah!

Posted on October 13, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

The next time you’re tapping your iPhone or reviewing a contract on your MacBook Pro, you might want to thank hackathons.

In 1975, the Homebrew Computer Club met for the first time in Menlo Park, California. The group of technology enthusiasts – a group credited as the originator of hackathons – united to talk shop and Altair 8800, swap parts and share information on how to DIY computers. Members influenced by the club included … wait for it … Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who credited the organization with inspiring Apple’s founding.

Hackathons organized more concretely in 1999, with groups collaborating on cryptographic software and a program for Palm Vs. Throughout the years, hackathons have grown in size and frequency, creating companies including GroupMe and Zapier and finding new ways to solve problems. For example, one hackathon focused on discovering how digital technologies can support the epilepsy community. There’s even a company that operates a league for student hackathons.

What’s a Hackathon?

We hear the word a lot. While some may be quite familiar with it, others may not. So let’s define it. Hackathon is a meshing of “hack” and “marathon.” In a general sense, it’s a collaborative group that works together to solve problems using technology.  For example, Onit united with Consilio and Adobe earlier this year to create the Evergreen Donation Emergency Network (EDEN) for a hackathon to solve complex COVID-19 problems. The app, built on Onit Apptitude (a workflow and business process automation platform), connects donors with excess supplies to organizations in need. You can view the EDEN demo here.

Who can Participate?

Hackathons aren’t just for coders. The best results come when people with different strengths and backgrounds are involved. They bring their perspective to the project, which creates stronger results. For example, coders can build a workflow to solve a problem. Still, you need people with intimate knowledge of (for example) the corporate legal operations or process experts to ensure you get the best outcome.

Hack the House

Now, Onit continues to foster innovation with the launch of a new hackathon: Hack the House.

Sign up for Hack the House updatesHack the House, a collaboration with Cosmonauts, is a friendly competition between Onit customers, partners and staff to see who can build the most useful and compelling workflow and collaboration solution using Onit Apptitude.

Each team consists of legal and business experts, certified App Builders and project managers. The teams will have three weeks of virtual hackathon time to identify a challenge to solve, define requirements and build the solution.

Hack the House has of five teams, with each one focused on a particular challenge theme: Team IP, Team HR, Team Europe, Team Diversity and Team Pro Bono.

Once each team builds its solution, the Onit sales engineering team will help them put together a demo story and short video to highlight the solution’s strengths. A judging panel of in-house legal leaders and a public vote open to everyone will determine the winner.

That’s right – you can vote on which team should win. To keep tabs on the hackathon’s project, sign up for updates here. You’ll want to sign up soon because the team members will be released next week.

We’ll announce the winner in early December. Good luck to all the teams!

Workflow and Business Process Automation for Corporate Legal Operations

Corporate legal departments have used Onit Apptitude for years to build innovative solutions to solve enterprise challenges. More than 5,500 apps and 130 solutions have been built on Apptitude, with varying uses such as enterprise legal management, automating the TREAD reporting process and managing the necessary business processes, reviews and approvals for the transfer of assets between portfolio companies. You can read about all the different ways corporate legal has leaned on Apptitude here.

Remember, sign up for Hack the House updates. You’ll be hearing more soon!

The Women, Influence & Power Summit: Furthering Diversity in the Legal Community

Posted on October 9, 2020 by - Company News and Events

General counsel want diversity from their law firms – and they’ll prioritize business based on that.

More than 170 general counsel and corporate legal executives from companies such as Google Fiber, Lyft and Heineken USA signed an open letter stating this in 2019. An excerpt reads:

“We expect the outside law firms we retain to reflect the diversity of the legal community and the companies and the customers we serve.” 

The statement validated the work of law firms focused on providing actionable results in support of diversity. It also served as a warning to those law firms slow to respond.

In December of 2019, the Vault/Minority Corporate Counsel Association Law Firm Diversity Survey results found that:

“Law firm populations are slowly becoming more diverse, although demographic changes have been slow to trickle upward, and firms continue to struggle with retention of diverse attorneys, particularly people of color. More women serve as partners and law firm leaders than in the past, although they have yet to achieve gender parity, and women of color enjoy fewer of these successes than their white colleagues.”

Diversity is a top priority for corporate legal, both for their departments and their outside counsel. The commitment started well before 2019 and will continue going forward as the legal community collaborates to build more diverse law firms and corporate legal departments.

Women, Influence & Power in Law

The annual summit Women, Influence & Power in Law (WIPL) has continually propelled awareness, interest and action to support diversity. For more than a decade, the conference has united prominent women in law to drive meaningful conversations and actionable solutions surrounding diversity, equality, and inclusion within the legal community. This year’s virtual gathering, scheduled for October 26-30, will be no exception, with keynotes from luminaries Tina Chen, President and CEO of the “Time’s Up” Legal Defense Fund and former chief of staff to Michelle Obama and Paula Boggs, founder of Boggs Media, LLC and executive vice president, general counsel and secretary, law and corporate affairs at Starbucks Corporation from 2002 to 2012.

Onit is proud to sponsor and participate in this year’s event.

Stasha Jain, vice president of legal and compliance for Onit, will host a roundtable session titled “Beyond Artificial Intelligence: The Future Of In House Legal Teams” on October 27 from 1:00-2:00 p.m. EST. Stasha has practiced law for more than 15 years, with in-house counsel experience at Onit, ZS Associates, Inc. and Hewitt Associates. The session will take a candid look at how in-house teams will transform in the near future and how technology can influence that change.

WIPL is free for in-house counsel and open to legal professionals who support diversity in the legal community. Visit here to register.

While you’re at the event, be sure to “stop by” to say hello to Onit via the Exhibitor Directory. If you join us for a demo, we’ll buy you lunch – or rather, a DoorDash gift card that you can use to treat yourself at your favorite restaurant. Even better: In addition to the gift card, those that watch a demo will have a chance to win a unique virtual foodie experience. We’re waiting until the conference to share more details. But trust us – this is worth it!

Continue the Diversity Discussion

Onit’s Lean Into LegalOps program hosts roundtable discussions every other week for legal operations professionals. One recurring topic will be diversity. If you’d like to join these roundtable calls and continue the diversity discussion, sign up for Lean Into LegalOps and you’ll get notifications of new events.

Houston Business Journal Names Onit to the Fast 100 and Inaugural Middle Market 50

Posted on October 6, 2020 by - Company News and Events

Once more, Onit is excited to announce that it has been recognized for its rapid revenue growth – this time (or rather, these two times) by the Houston Business Journal.

Onit grew its revenue by 271.51% from 2017-2019, earning a spot on the Houston Business Journal’s Fast 100 and Middle Market 50. This wouldn’t be possible without our outstanding customers as well as our employees’ dedication to innovation and excellent customer experiences.

We landed at #9 on the Fast 100 list, which ranks the fastest-growing companies in the Greater Houston area. This is the fourth year Onit has appeared on this list.

For the inaugural Middle Market 50 awards, Onit ranked #3. The list highlights the fastest-growing, top-50 for-profit public and private midmarket companies based in Houston.

The Houston Business Journal interviewed CEO Eric M. Elfman about the company’s rapid growth, which he attributed to many things including:

2020 Awards for Onit

This has been an active year for Onit awards. We’ve won more than 10 so far this year in addition to the Fast 100 and Middle Market 50. Many of these awards are linked to the company’s cumulative growth and increased revenue over multiple years. Inc. included Onit on its Inc. 5000 (#737) and 250 Fastest Growing Companies in Texas (#70) as well as its Private Titans list, which names the 1,000 largest iconic private companies in America. The Financial Times placed Onit as #153 on its 500 Fastest-Growing Companies in the Americas award and Growjo ranked it as #16 on its 10K Fastest-Growing Companies in Texas.

Again, thank you to our customers and employees who made this recognition possible.

Onit Unites with Legal Operations Leaders for Two Presentations at the HPC Global Summit

Posted on October 1, 2020 by - Company News and Events

Are you interested in networking with some of the most intriguing legal operations leaders? Next week, you’ll have a chance to at the High Performance Counsel Global Summit. The virtual event, scheduled for October 6-8, serves as one of the leading forums for general counsel and chief legal officers in the modern legal industry.

This year, the event showcases legal operations leaders from companies including AccuWeather, Fujitsu, Federal Express and HSBC.

Onit will be participating in two sessions.

First, Robert Johnson, managing director of Onit, will moderate a panel titled “What are the Legal Ops & Analytics Imperatives for GCs and CLOs Moving Forward?” Panelists for the session, including Natalie Salunke, head of legal for RVU and Robert Mignanelli, SVP & COO, legal and associate general counsel technology and operations for Pearson, will address the following questions:

  • As the marketplace gets crowded with technology offerings, what’s the endgame for GCs?
  • What are the real priorities?
  • What would be truly game-changing for today’s leadership?
  • Are vendors listening and responding? What more could they be doing for greater alignment?
  • Is data a blessing or a curse? Is it driving real efficiency or just more reporting?

The session starts on October 7 at 1:45 p.m. EST.

Bonus: To hear how Pearson improved contract turnaround time with a transformational shared service center for more than 10,000 users, visit here. The company has already won three awards for this project, including the prestigious Association of Corporate Counsel Value Champions Award.

The second Onit session begins on October 8 at 1:00 p.m. EST. Graeme Scott, client delivery manager at Onit, will discuss “Flexibility on Solutions, Predictability on Cost.” He’ll explore managed services and how legal operations leaders can gain access to expertise that is often difficult for in-house legal to obtain. He will also dive into how managed services partnerships help software adapt to changing needs and continuously improve.

Click here to get tickets to the virtual HPC Global Summit.

We also encourage you to learn more about Onit’s Lean into LegalOps Europe program. The initiative, which connects legal operations professionals for unique learning opportunities, has partnered with The Lawyer’s Virtual GC Strategy Summit to present a panel discussion on automating processes to connect legal and the business (October 2 at 9:50 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. BST). The session is open to GCs, AGCs or director level in-house legal professionals and you can request a complimentary pass here.

Three Challenges to Anticipate – and Avoid – During Your Contract Lifecycle Management Technology Implementation

Posted on September 29, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Today, Onit welcomes Michael Stevens, managing director of Duff & Phelps, as a guest contributor and an expert in contract lifecycle management technology implementations. We announced last week that Duff & Phelps reached the Premier status of the Onit Strategic Alliances program. Duff & Phelps has been a trusted Onit partner since 2017, having worked on more than 20 projects in the U.S. and Europe across various industries such as pharmaceuticals, insurance, high-tech, oil and gas, manufacturing and more.

Managing contracts is a complicated business. The process for even just one contract may often spread across multiple companies, departments, stakeholders, versions and systems. Tracking progress and capturing feedback in spreadsheets and emails rely on manual updates.

And that’s just to get a contract signed.

The management must continue beyond execution to maintenance and renewal. If businesses are not diligent about receiving or delivering everything agreed upon, the advantages gained through negotiations will be forfeited.

More corporate legal departments are adopting contract lifecycle management technology, as evidenced by data and – in my case – experience in the industry. First, workloads are increasing. I’ve heard and seen this during my corporate legal work, but numerous surveys have verified this trend. Second, COVID-19 has impacted general counsel, with this report showing that 67% of general counsel participants consider contracts as a top legal risk in the wake of the pandemic. Finally, let’s look at the numbers. Analysts anticipate that the global software market for contract lifecycle management software will reach $2.4 billion by 2024, growing at a rough rate of 14%.

Altogether, these statistics and trends set the stage for large-scale adoption of contract lifecycle management solutions.

I’ve worked with corporate legal departments on technology implementations for more than 30 years and on over 50 contract lifecycle management technology implementations. My colleagues at Duff & Phelps and I have compiled some of the top challenges to implementation and how to address them.

  1. Legacy Data Migration

There are significant benefits in migrating at least the current active contracts into a contract lifecycle management software and removing them from existing repositories. First, it creates a one-stop shop for users to find existing contracts and request new ones. Second, when doing a new amendment, it is essential to have the original contract and all existing amendments readily available to be able to file the new amendment appropriately. Identifying all existing repositories of contracts is a critical step.

  1. Integrations with Other Business Systems

Every contract documents a business transaction that is being executed by one or more business groups. Those business transactions are often managed in one or more business systems. For example, a sales opportunity may start in the customer relationship management (CRM) system, which leads to the need for a contract. Once the sales contract is signed, order processing and fulfillment may be managed in different systems. For a sales contract, you may wish to integrate with both the upstream CRM system and the downstream order management and/or ERP systems. It is crucial to define all the contract types you wish to automate in the contract lifecycle management software and the corresponding business systems that govern those transactions.

  1. Counterparty Source of Truth (Master Data)

To integrate with other business applications or share useful data with the rest of the company, it is beneficial to integrate with a company-designated source of truth for counterparties. This is a directory of customers, vendors, suppliers and other companies that the target company does business with. Here are the key questions when exploring whether your company has a single source of truth for counterparty and whether it will be useful for contract management.

  • Is there a single source of truth for ALL counterparties or separate sources for customers vs. vendors/suppliers vs. partners/other types of counterparties? Some companies maintain different directories for customers and venders/suppliers. The challenge with separate sources of truth by counterparty type is that sometimes the same company is both a vendor and a customer, thus creating duplication.
  • Do all geographies/business units share the same source(s) of truth? If not, this creates the same duplication problem as above.
  • Does the source of truth contain prospective counterparties and not just approved/active customers and vendors? If it does not contain prospective counterparties, this is problematic for contract lifecycle management software because you need to be able to enter into NDAs and start contract negotiations for other types of contracts with prospective counterparties.
  • Does the source of truth use counterparty legal entity as the foundational data element, and does it capture the relationship between parent and subsidiary legal entities of the counterparty? This is important because contracts are with legal entities of counterparties, not bill-to or ship-to addresses, which are secondary attributes of legal entities. Also, knowledge of the counterparty’s legal entity structure is useful because contracts are often written to allow subsidiaries to operate under the contract with the parent company.
  • How good is the data in the source of truth, and is there a data governance protocol?

Visit here to learn how Duff & Phelps can analyze and enhance how your company manages contracts throughout a lifecycle.

To learn more about reducing costs and increasing profits by automation the contract lifecycle, visit Onit Contract Lifecycle Management. 

About our Guest Author 

Michael Stevens is a managing director of Duff & Phelps and has been helping global companies improve contracting processes and systems for the majority of his career. Stevens is a part of the Duff & Phelps practice group that helps clients with a range of operational improvement and compliance initiatives including contract management, information/document management and governance, legal department operations, intellectual property and merger and acquisition integration.

The Global Spread of Data Privacy Regulations and Their Potential Effect on Legal e-Billing

Posted on September 24, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Gartner estimates that 50% of the world’s population will have personal information covered under local privacy regulations similar to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) within two years. Indeed, governments worldwide, including Australia, Canada and Brazil, are creating new privacy laws or updating existing ones. States in the U.S. are actively legislating in favor of this, with California, Maine and Nevada enacting comprehensive privacy laws.

While this represents a positive to individuals’ data protection, it adds a layer of complexity for companies working across states and countries. Jane A. Bennitt, founder of Global Legal Ebilling and president of the LEDES Oversight Committee for 14 years, talks with us about a development in European Data Privacy that directly impacts legal e-billing.

Q: Tell us about your e-billing and technology experience.

Bennitt: I have nearly a quarter-century of hands-on experience in implementing legal technology, and my specialty is global e-billing. Regularly I work with law departments, insurance claims organizations, law firms and vendors needing assistance with workflows, compliance, automation and metrics. With the nature of my job, I research rules and regulations which apply to electronic invoicing for my clients.

Q: What did you discover recently when looking into EU data privacy laws?

Bennitt: The U.S. government routinely requests information on users from large corporations like Google, Facebook and others. Based on a case out of Ireland, the European court has invalidated the data privacy shield that allows the transfer of personal information on EU citizens to U.S.-based servers. Contractual-based data transfer from the EU to U.S.-based servers is still allowed, which is fortunate because that is the basis for data transfer in legal e-billing. But that also may be challenged in courts.

Q:  What are the implications for corporate legal departments?

Bennitt: Data privacy litigation is hot across the globe. More countries are considering and enacting stricter data privacy regulations, and it is not limited to the EU. I predict there will be a time when there are similar requirements all over the world. The California Consumer Protection Act, which went into effect on 1 Jan 2020, offers protections modeled on GDPR, for example. These regulations provide more comprehensive protections than seen previously,  especially with GDPR. We’ve seen companies hit with massive fines for non-compliance with GDPR and we will see more in the near future.

If your corporate legal department is involved in e-billing and cross-border operations, find out where your e-billing data is hosted. You may need to consider storing e-billing data on multiple global servers in jurisdictions with stringent data privacy regulations. If you’re based in Europe, have a server in Europe. If you’re in Brazil, have your data stored in Brazil or South America.

Q: What advice do you have for corporate legal departments?

Bennitt: I’m not a lawyer, but here are common-sense steps to take to protect your e-billing and its data:

  • Talk with your e-billing vendor and find out the steps they have taken or are considering regarding compliance to regulations such as the GDPR.
  • Reach out to corporate counsel and look at your contracts. Make sure you have covered all the bases for contractual-based data exchange with your e-billing vendor. Also, consider your employee contracts to ensure they allow for the collection of this type of information that may survive their employment tenure.
  • Contracts between legal e-billing vendors and their clients should identify the type of personal data collected and include a clause allowing data transfer.
  • Outside Counsel Guidelines should similarly identify the personal data collected and grant permission for this collection.
  • Companies should proactively explore options if contractual-based data transfers are invalidated. Better yet, work with your e-billing vendors. It’s better to work proactively.

Thanks so much to Jane for sharing her insights into e-billing and regulation trends. If you’d like to contact her, you can reach out via LinkedIn or email.

To learn more about legal e-billing and legal spend management from Onit, visit here.