Author: Onit

Does a Legal Hold Automatically Ensure Preservation of Data?

Posted on November 15, 2018 by - Business Process Management

“It’s supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to press this button.”

– John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

 

A legal hold, or legal hold notice, is simply that –  a notification to a company or individual that material or data regarding an active or be anticipated legal proceeding shouldn’t be destroyed. However, it doesn’t guarantee that the material will be preserved. Actual preservation is the responsibility of the notified organization’s leadership and employees involved.

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 37(e) states that when, “electronically stored information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it, and it cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery,” the court may take certain actions.

Usually drafted in the form of an email or paper letter, legal holds are not to taken lightly. Even though the legal hold is “just a notification” doesn’t make it any less crucial in the process of keeping a company safe from costly and time-consuming litigation. Fortunately we now have software to help with the notification process.

The best legal hold solutions help corporate legal departments notify custodians of their duty to preserve information in a timely manner and guarantee compliance with this duty. Highly intuitive, easily mastered “process” platforms allow team members to gain real-time access to the status of collection requests, know when actions were issued, which tasks are in progress and which legal actions require immediate attention. The tool should also create comprehensive dashboard views, so teams can see when a custodian leaves an organization, so they can enable email archiving or suspend the destruction of data.

A powerful legal hold solution offers a quick and highly cost-effective way to supercharge your automated business processes, as well as your bottom line. Reduce the ever-present risk of costly court cases, and let the software shoulder the burden of notification. The rest is up to you.

To learn more about Onit’s legal hold solution, download this white paper.

Onit Ranks #11 on Houston Chronicle’s 2018 Top Workplaces!

Posted on November 5, 2018 by - Company News and Events

Onit is thrilled to announce that we rank #11 on the Houston Chronicle’s Top Workplaces for 2018! We’re even more excited about this achievement since 253 companies with about 139,000 employees participated in the survey, and about 81,000 workers responded.

The Houston Chronicle’s annual Top Work Places ranking showcases regional companies who are the very best at maintaining a desirable working environment. The Houston Chronicle has recognized 150 companies and organizations in Houston as Top Workplaces for 2018. These companies have been recognized based solely on surveys about the workplace completed by their employees.

Top Workplaces is about the companies that manage to overcome these obstacles. It is a celebration of companies that are constantly seeking new ways to keep their employees empowered and engaged. The Houston Chronicle teamed up with Energage to conduct the rankings, which were based on surveys from 80,698 Houston-area employees.

As Houston Chronicle business editor Al Lewis puts it, “Making the Top Workplaces list, at any rank, shows a company cares exceptionally about its people. Congratulations to all the winners.”

See our press release.

See the Top Workplace rankings.

Onit Relocating to Uptown Houston

Posted on October 30, 2018 by - Company News and Events

Onit is pleased to announce that we moved from our current location at 601 Sawyer in the Heights area to 1360 Post Oak Blvd in Houston’s Uptown on the 22nd floor. The recent extraordinary growth that Onit has experienced necessitated the move to larger accommodations.

The new offices will provide Onit staff with more than 20,000 square feet of much-needed space to accommodate its recent astronomical growth. As evidence of our unprecedented growth, we made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies for the past several years, including 2017. In addition, Onit’s CEO was recently a finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year and Onit’s CFO was named a finalist for CFO of the Year.

“We are excited to relocate to our new, larger office in the Galleria,” commented Eric M. Elfman, CEO and founder. “This move represents another significant milestone for our fast-growing software company. The new office space better accommodates our growing team and enables us to hire additional talent to continue to provide industry-leading support and service to our global clients. The additional space will also help drive innovation and provide the opportunity for further expansion into additional markets, product lines and services.”

This new location is in the Great Uptown neighborhood in Houston with nearby parks including Grady Park, Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park and Tanglewood Park. Uptown is an urban community of exceptional beauty, sophistication, style and international prominence in the heart of Houston. It is defined by its unique blend of prestigious business and residential addresses, with the best in shopping, hotels, dining and entertainment.

Read the entire press release.

The Hidden Costs of Legal Spend Management Software

Posted on October 25, 2018 by - Enterprise Legal Management

Legal spend management technology generates savings for in-house teams in many ways. We wrote a blog on six of these ways. The most obvious is cost savings, whether through a greater ability to ensure firms adhere to billing guidelines, have spend visibility, or use data to make future budgeting decisions. Time savings also come through the automation of laborious tasks like invoice review and reporting, which get calculated into monetary amounts.

Using these savings areas, different eBilling software providers will estimate savings from $46,000 to $800,000 per year for a “typical” legal department. However, to truly know the financial impact, consider the investment cost; this is typically less publicized!

Below are some cost considerations to consider when planning your legal spend management project and selecting a vendor.

PRICE OF LEGAL SPEND MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

This is usually a fixed subscription fee per annum and may or may not include hosting, training, and maintenance costs, so look out for these in the proposal. The first year may be higher than subsequent years due to initial set-up costs. Subscription fees may come from a few factors: legal spend, number of users, volume of matters, and number of law firms. Consider the best pricing model for you now but also bear in mind your department might grow; how long is your subscription price fixed for, if at all? If you grow, how does the price increase? Also, consider the cost of additional features not included in standard packages.

LEGAL SPEND MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION FEES

Unlike ongoing subscription fees, these are one-off costs payable to the software vendor and/or consultants you may have involved, usually in the first year, but you may have requirements further down the line that add a cost. These fees cover onboarding internal users and law firms, integrations, and customizations such as reports, data migrations and add-ons outside the basic package. Be sure to find out the charges for these.

INTERNAL COSTS

Most modern solutions are now cloud/SaaS based. Security concerns were the main reason for housing software on-premises when e-billing first launched, but cloud security is far more robust these days. If this is a concern, ensure your vendor has the appropriate certifications, like Onit’s European legal spend management solution BusyLamp eBilling.Space, such as ISO/IEC 27001:2013. SaaS solutions carry a much lower internal IT cost than on-premises solutions. However, you may still have to factor in contractor or project team costs.

TRAINING AND SUPPORT COSTS

A user-friendly, familiar, and easy-to-learn legal spend management interface reduces the training required for your in-house teams and law firms, but it will still be necessary. Consider what level of support and training you need at implementation and beyond, as these range from online help only through to fully managed services and the costs vary considerably.

UPGRADE COSTS

Do you need to pay to upgrade to future versions and updates of the software, or is this included? If the upgrade cost is prohibitive, you could fall behind on the latest legal spend management features. Consider the internal costs and impacts of these upgrades, which are lower with SaaS solutions.

FUTURE COSTS

While you don’t have a crystal ball, anticipate potential integrations or features you might need and ask a) if they’re available and b) what these will cost. You want to avoid migrating to a different legal spend management solution if your current one no longer meets your needs or becomes too expensive to do so, so try your best to predict this; ask the vendor about the typical growth pathways of their other clients. A factor that affects most legal departments is cost increases as you add more users, spend and/or firms. Familiarize yourself with the pricing model to avoid surprises.

BusyLamp Legal Spend Management is cost-effective. Even with these expenditure areas, BusyLamp generates a quick return on investment. You can work out your potential savings with our Guide to Building a Business Case for Legal Spend Management or contact us directly and a team member will be in touch to help you calculate your costs and projected ROI.

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.