Medtronic Streamlines Legal Ops with Onit’s ELM and CLM Ecosystem

Medtronic, a global leader in healthcare technology, needed to retire from legacy legal and contract management systems that had become outdated and difficult to maintain. Their long-standing partners no longer met the organization’s growing operational needs, which introduced inefficiencies, risk, and technical debt without a notable return on investment.

With mounting pressure to modernize quickly and manage spend, the Medtronic legal team needed a flexible, cost-effective platform that could support both Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) and Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) while enabling their teams to stabilize current workflows and scale for future innovation.

“We were replacing long-standing existing systems that were basically in a state of disrepair. The blessing was getting modern technology (to replace them) …the curse was you’re really kind of starting at a lower point (in retiring technology debt first).” – Senior Director, Legal Operations, Medtronic

Medtronic conducted extensive market research, benchmarked competing legal solutions and ultimately selected Onit as its enterprise partner for its transformation, launching dual implementations of both CLM and ELM on separate, dedicated instances. The decision was driven by Onit’s modern architecture, configurable platform, and ability to unify previously siloed capabilities under a unified technology ecosystem spanning dedicated ELM and CLM instances, enabling consistent user experience, consolidated vendor management, and integrated reporting capabilities. Onit differentiated from its competitors on capabilities, licensing, and overall cost to implement. 

With aggressive timelines to retire failing legacy systems, the team made a deliberate decision to deploy ELM and CLM on separate Onit instances rather than pursuing a fully unified single-instance approach. This allowed parallel deployment teams to move independently, reducing complexity and accelerating value delivery. 

The implementation was grounded in a minimum viable product (MVP) approach: prioritize retiring legacy systems, implement core functionality, stabilize users, and create a strong foundation for future use and internal expansion.

Key components included:

• Modular Platform Architecture: Onit’s support for secure protocols such as SCIM aligned with Medtronic’s enterprise security requirements while offering flexibility for future configuration.
• Cost Efficiency: The switch to Onit delivered measurable cost savings compared to legacy tools, freeing resources for innovation and flexibility for ongoing adoption and management of the tool.
• Unified Ecosystem: ELM and CLM were deployed across dedicated instances within Onit’s platform ecosystem, reducing vendor complexity and allowing consistent design approaches.
• Empowered Teams: Post-implementation, Medtronic’s legal operations team gained the autonomy to configure and iterate workflows, reducing the IT burden and accelerating time to value.

“We appreciate having all capabilities integrated into a single, cohesive platform, which provides a streamlined and comprehensive solution. Additionally, the flexibility to make configuration changes post-implementation and adapt as needed has proved highly valuable for our team.” – Senior Principal IT Project Lead, Medtronic