Category: Business Process Management

2013 Year in Review

Posted on January 6, 2014 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

It’s been an exciting year at Onit and we appreciate the opportunity to share it with you. We’ve made great progress this year, both from a product and customer perspective, and I wanted to highlight some of our accomplishments.

To begin, we have successfully deployed Apps at numerous Fortune 500 and privately held companies. In addition to seeing unprecedented user adoption rates, our Apps have been deployed globally in more than 175 countries. This has taken off faster than we anticipated.

Second, we have built new Apps on our App Builder platform (as anyone can do) to serve the growing needs of our customers. Some recent Apps that have been deployed include:

And our biggest news of 2013 will be officially released at LegalTech NY 2014. Check back here later this month to see the next way we’re changing how legal departments get work done.

General Counsel: Ask Your Outside Counsel for a “Career Associate” and Lower your Legal Spend

Posted on January 3, 2014 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Imagine seeing this title on your AmLaw 200 law firm bill: career associate. While a bit odd, it may be the latest way large firms are controlling costs and creating a lower threshold for billable hours.

The ABA Journal reports that law firms have been experimenting with different titles that can signify different career paths for outside counsel. For example, the above mentioned “career associate” references a lawyer at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe that works at lower rates and reduced hours and is excluded from the partnership track. The article reports similar trends at Greenberg Traurig and Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.

But are these title changes semantics or substantive?

According to an expert interviewed for the article, the changes reflect the “economic challenges of the past five years” and “lawyers’ changing professional expectations and desires.”

Truth be told, law firms have been juggling titles for quite some time. While this may be just marketing machinations, the fact that some of these new titles charge a lower rate could translate into substantial savings for corporate law departments – who have, for years, pushed for an appropriate and applicable mix of billing levels on outside counsel bills. After all, basic work doesn’t need “drive by” billing from a senior partner. Now, with the advent of these new positions, there is the possibility to move basic work from associates to an even more budget-compliant level of attorney.

So if you happen to see career associate, legal resident or department attorney on your latest bill, give yourself a moment to smile as you (hopefully) savor the spend savings. 

The Misconnection of Enterprise Software

Posted on December 17, 2013 by - Business Process Management

It’s an odd thought that in this world of hyper-communications (hello smart phones, texts, social media), it can still be difficult to meaningfully connect. Sentences can be misread. Calls cut off. Intentions unclear.

Consider your personal life. How often have you run into situations like this? Maybe an autocorrected message from your spouse led you to buy rum instead of milk or Rice Krispies instead of brown rice. Or a terse tweet led to an even terser DM.

Which is why I personally find this video hilarious. An ordinary guy roams the airport cell phone crashing – which is basically sitting next to people and joining their conversation as he hears one side of it. The responses vary, with the “victims” doing everything from shifting uncomfortably to flat-out denial that someone is overhearing his/her conversation.

Now imagine discordance like this but with 20, 30, 100, 500 people on different lines. It’s not a disturbance I’d want to be anywhere around, but strangely, this analogy is reflective of the selection process of enterprise software. There are often multiple decision makers, multiple departments affected, multiple integrations and multiple agendas and expectations involved.

Tony Byrne of Real Story Group hit the nail on the head in his article for Information Week titled “6 More Enduring Truths about Selecting Enterprise Software.” He runs through different aspects of adopting enterprise software that can be evaluation challenges – from determining a vendor’s financial health to the strength of their integrations to deciding if you even have a problem this technology fix.

At Onit, we believe that software should be responsive, adaptive, easy to use and effective. That’s why we offer Smart Process Apps that can deploy in a day, be easily customizable by just about anyone and truly fit with your business. These Apps can handle processes from contract management to employee on-boarding to legal process outsourcing.

I invite you to give us a test drive with this free trial. Then you can see how Smart Process Apps can eliminate the uncertainties of enterprise software selection. 

Shall I Drone On? Amazon Will.

Posted on December 5, 2013 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Doubtless, you’ve heard the story that broke earlier this week. Amazon is proposing to deliver your orders by drones, which has sparked off an immense wave of commentary that includes everything from law enforcement complications to if the octocopters will deliver tacos to an Amazon drone Twitter feed.

The concept of flying machinery darting around the city in order to drop boxes at your doorstep is a complex one to get your head around. After all, there’s nothing quite like that happening now. And there are worries about their level of reliability and public safety as well as privacy concerns.  

But the basic idea of drone delivery is intriguing simply because it takes a complex problem – mass logistics and order fulfillment – and offers a new perspective on it. So much of the fulfillment process is automated. Is it possible to automate the actual delivery itself? How the process be streamlined to significantly cut the time traditionally associated with delivery?

Here at Onit, we took a good long look at processes that bog corporations down – everything from contract review and approval to legal process outsourcing to employee onboarding – and focused on how they could be improved from both a time and cost perspective.  How can we introduce easy collaboration capabilities that are both useful AND used? How can we automate extremely manual tasks such as document routing or review? How can we cut time spent herding cats (because – let’s face it – no matter how important the task sometimes, that can be what you feel like you are doing) in order to complete the project? What can we do to help refocus your time to more strategic contributions?

Well, it starts with a Smart Process App.

Below is a list of resources that speak to the successes our clients have realized with our Smart Process Apps including the challenges they faced and how they overcame them. Feel free to browse through them. If you’d like to bypass that and go immediately to our Smart Process Apps demo, you can request one here.

On-Demand Webinar

White Papers

How a Space Odyssey Becomes a Simple Odyssey

Posted on November 26, 2013 by - Business Process Management

Imagine if a famous movie director asked you to do what you do for a living on camera.  Instead of (for example) ensuring that important contracts are finalized or that an important sales quote is approved, you’d be doing that on an expensive set surrounded by bright lights, a camera crew, a director, other actors and more.

For a majority of us with no professional acting experience, it might take you completely out of your element and bring on a serious case of nerves.

That’s exactly what happened when Stanley Kubrick asked Frank Miller to voice mission control for 2001: A Space Odyssey. The military man and real-life mission controller manifested his nervousness by constantly tapping his foot while reading his lines. That’s not an unreasonable reaction. However, the sound of the shoe’s sole hitting the floor bled through into the sound track like the sound of water dripping from a faucet.

How did Kubrick solve this dilemma? He took a simple course of action and placed a towel under Miller’s feet.

Oftentimes, it is the simplest solution that solves problems. Consider, for example, the tasks you face at work. Getting dozens of contracts approved worth millions of dollars is a time-consuming, arduous process often taxed with multiple reviewers and even more edits.

Sure, there are options.

You could handle the whole process manually with spreadsheets, emails and documents. But that can lead to long hours, multiple versions of important information and documents being capture across multiple, disparate silos.

You could also rely on enterprise software to help shepherd the process to completion. But that means you’re typically working with an expensive solution that is hard to customize and use.

So what’s the simple solution? Smart Process Apps from Onit. You can create and deploy them in hours. They are extremely user friendly and offer a unified repository for information. And they can significantly reduce the time and effort expended by professionals to complete standard processes necessary to a business’ health.

With this in mind, we created our own tribute to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Take a look at it here and let us know what you think.

Work Five Extra Hours a Week and Earn More Each Year

Posted on November 15, 2013 by - Business Process Management

No, this is not one of those spam-filled blog posts that touts mysterious “work from home” measures to earn more. This is actually about a study.

That’s right – a recent study revealed a correlation between an increase in work hours and pay hikes.  As the Harvard Business Review summarizes it:

For young, highly educated workers who usually put in long hours, working 5 extra hours per week is linked to a 1% increase in annual wage growth, according to a study of thousands of U.S. workers by Dora Gicheva of the University of North Carolina.  

Work SmarterIt seems to make sense, doesn’t it? Working more equals making more money. However, what sort of work is performed during that time? Is it composed of valuable projects that address critical business objectives and priorities? Or is it time bogged down with inefficient activities such as paper pushing or tracking someone down for a status update?

At Onit, we believe in working smarter, not harder.

For example, take this Fortune 100 global industrial company. An internal audit revealed process weaknesses around sales activities. Although the design of these processes was effective and compliant, the execution of these processes suffered due to user inconsistencies and a lack of transparency of the overall progress toward goals. People were often over-included or the process could take an inordinate amount of time to complete.  

This probably wouldn’t be so a large inconvenience for a smaller company. But for a company that deals with multi-million dollar sales quotations and deals on a regular basis, it was vital to quickly and consistently produce, review and finalize quotations and contracts in order to increase profits. 

The company introduced a mass amount of efficiency into its sales quotes and approval activities by introducing Smart Process Apps from Onit. It eliminated the need for manual tools that stored information across multiple databases of information – think documents, spreadsheets and emails. Its flexible workflow automated the review and approval process as well as provided a valuable platform for time-saving collaboration.

The adoption of Smart Process Apps from Onit greatly increased the transparency and speed of the quotation review process. It has now been deployed to the company’s worldwide sales force and has significantly accelerated the quotation review process.  To date, quotations worth billions of dollars have passed through the app for review at a far quicker pace than email review.

With this in mind, perhaps future studies will record how much more money individuals can make with working smarter, not harder.

 

 

Image courtesy of KROMKRATHOG at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Here’s One Way to Reduce Legal Spend by 30 Percent

Posted on November 8, 2013 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

According to a recent survey of 71 law departments, legal spend is expected to increase, the use of alternative fee arrangements will continue to grow and ethics and compliance is now rated as the highest priority in 2013.

The crux of the survey examines how law departments combine numerous processes, practices and technologies in order to create a smarter working environment (along with smarter results.) Positioned by Huron Legal as “a comprehensive management program,” successful corporate law departments leverage a mixture of the following items to nurture more efficient (and cost-saving) operations:

  • Defined panels and/or pre-approved lists for sourcing
  • Regular budget reviews
  • Matter-level budgets
  • Alternative fee arrangements
  • Matter management and e-billing technology

According to the survey results, law departments that used this mix realized 30 percent lower total legal spend as a percent of company revenue.

The surveyed law departments hailed from companies with revenues from $5 million to $89 billion. Operations on that size are consistently challenged with complex processes that need proper technological support. Even a “simple” process such as finalizing a contract can turn into a nightmare when you factor in reviewers from multiple organizations or departments, numerous versions of the contract and several review cycles – all which normally relies on tools such as Outlook or Excel to track it.

The right technology, such as a flexible, scalable, light-weight Smart Process App, can more easily support a law department’s path to more efficient and budget-compliant operations than enterprise-level software implementations.

Do You Outsource Legal Work? If Not, You May Be in the Minority.

Posted on October 31, 2013 by - Business Process Management

Legal Process OutsourcingWhen compared to a majority of business professionals, lawyers aren’t lemmings. While many professionals may chase the shiniest new trends or toys, risk-adverse lawyers prefer to thoroughly evaluate options.

According to a new survey, after years of talking about legal process outsourcing, in-house lawyers are now actually embracing it. The LPO study, conducted by Corporate Counsel, discovered that more than half of the respondents 1.) have outsourced legal work and 2.) been satisfied with the results.

The adoption makes sense. Legal departments face shrinking budgets and further demands for cost reductions from the C-suite as their units transform from the traditional model of unforeseen costs to controlled environments of expenditures. Plus, today’s typical legal department faces a marked increase in workloads as well as a growing need to quickly produce results for their clients.

Likewise, the resistance to adopting this trend that has been around for decades is also understandable as in-house lawyers question if their work will remain secure, if quality will suffer and if it is even worth the trouble. In fact, the top two reasons for avoiding LPO stemmed directly from quality concerns and value in terms of time vs. savings.

One forward-thinking organization quoted in the article stated that they improved LPO and by hiring a project manager who worked hand-in-hand with the LPO attorneys in India. This makes sense, as a majority of the “pain” surrounding LPO often relates directly back to the tools used to manage it – spreadsheets, documents and emails which limit visibility and impair results.

Imagine if you had technology to act as your project manager. Gone would be the endless emails, the outdated information on spreadsheets, calls from clients asking for updates and time-consuming searches for information and statuses.

Companies have done this – and greatly increased the results of their LPO initiatives – by adopting Smart Process Apps. Not only did they increase the efficiency of LPOs, but they also wrangled large savings with a small App. You don’t have to believe me. Take a look at the LPO eBook on legal process outsourcing and read about the success legal departments achieved.

 

Image provided by sheelamohan and freedigitalphotos.net

Performance Pains, Smart Process Apps and Austin

Posted on October 15, 2013 by - Business Process Management

Corporate growth is good – great in most cases. But with growth comes an unrelenting demand for urgent legal services and an ongoing challenge to provide improved and expanded legal services.

In other words, you can’t rest on your laurels if you’re working in the legal department of a rapidly evolving and expanding corporation.

For what seems like generations (but really is probably only about two to three decades), legal departments have relied on enterprise software to handle important process such as matter and legal spend management. However, the one weakness of these solutions is the fact that most of the important processes that fuel this software’s purpose rely on tools outside of the solution.

How can you bridge this gap to optimize your software investment?

Our customer development executive Paul Zengilowski will tackle this question and more as he presents in Austin on Oct. 15 at Mitratech’s annual users’ conference. The conference welcomes hundreds of Mitratech clients and partners and provides a peer-driven forum based on practical strategies for legal, compliance and risk for corporations and government agencies.

Zengilowski will partner with Rich Seleznov of 3rd Street Consulting LLC to share “A New Era: Smart Process Apps are Re-inventing How Law Departments Operate.” This discussion will include an overview into Smart Process Apps and how corporate legal departments have used them to cultivate significant improvements in operational processes and cost reductions.

We hope to see you there and invite you to learn more about the session and Mitratech Interact 2013 by visiting http://www.mitratech.com/community/interact-2013/interact-agenda/?subject=show_details&_year=2013-interact&sid=35#35.

 

Systems of Engagement: Putting People at the Center of Your Process

Posted on October 11, 2013 by - Business Process Management

In his 2010 report on Systems of Engagement, Geoffrey Moore posed the question:

“Why aren’t the applications that are critical to any organization as easy to implement as an app on an Android device or the iPhone?”

Even in today’s enterprises, this question remains relevant. Often coinciding with the trend of difficulties in increasing employee adoption – both from old and new employees – for systems of record. The effort to update a record, without passing on any context, does not provide enough benefit in the modern workplace.

So, when a Fortune® 500 company needed to improve compliance with the complex process of managing the Microsoft T-36 program – a 3-year, complex, contractual customer service process that can yield millions in profit margin dollars when executed properly – it knew it needed to turn towards a more engagement-oriented solution.

The Engagement Layer – Smart Process Apps

Process ConfusionHaving a documented process is not the same thing as actually updating the current status, knowing who is responsible for the next step, and when each task will be completed. This kind of information is usually handled outside the system, most often through email, typically initiated by the task or process owner as he/she tries to chase the task down at each step in the workflow.

At this Fortune 500 company, they discovered only a 40% compliance rate for the documented process within their CRM to manage the Microsoft T-36 program, resulting in fewer successful resolutions and leaving money on the table.

Smart Process Apps are changing the way companies think about workflow. Apps provide the advantage of focus. They can be constructed to deal with a single process – like T-36 task creation – and provide an online, collaborative workspace that provides workflow automation and visibility to all stakeholders.

Apps are built around how users work. The interface is direct and focused on the needs of a single process. Without an extensive training program, anyone can start generating data about their process using an App. Now, when a change is made, it can be noted within that workspace and be immediately available to everyone – no forwarding of email necessary. When one person completes a step, the next person is automatically notified, and everyone can see who is the active stakeholder at any given time.

Using Smart Process Apps as the front-end System of Engagement through which their employees will interact and make updates, the company expects to raise compliance rates from 40% to 70% within 6 months. This type of immediate ROI cannot be had from typical enterprise software.

Data Integration – Connecting Smart Process Apps to your Business

While the end-users benefit from the focus and simplicity, the data generated from the process can be used to update other systems.

This was another critical factor for our Fortune 500 client – the data created through the Onit App needed to be pushed into its system of record to maintain the integrity of the data and track outcomes of the processes. As systems of record are often used to kick-off other processes, this synchronization from Apps will ensure that all the pieces keep moving for critical processes.

In addition to systems of record, Apps can be connected with many other systems. This Fortune 500 company sends data to their CRM tool to enable sales pipeline development and to Microsoft Outlook to synchronize tasks for key stakeholders. We will explore these two critical tasks in more depth in our next post.

Microsoft Tu002D36 Lifecycle

Image courtesy of sheelamohan and freedigitalpictures.net