In a recent post on his blog, Commitment Matters, Tim Cummins of IACCM observes that, while the usage of contract management (CM) software has increased substantially in recent years, it hasn’t quite lived up to the original hype. As a CM software company, we agree that many vendors and companies alike have been slow to recognize the full range of potential benefits from CM. Instead, vendors have specialized on one or two dimensions of CM – such as centralized storage or speedy drafting – while neglecting other parts of the contract lifecycle. The degree of customization thought necessary to meet individual corporation’s unique needs has often led to a cumbersome end-user experience, which discourages use, thus undercutting the inherent value of the solution.
Law firms use ridiculous amounts of paper. A study from a few years ago estimated that a single attorney in the U.S. will use up to 100,000 sheets per year – that’s nearly 400 pages per workday. And that’s crazy.
You’re ready to implement a contract lifecycle management tool. Your company cannot maintain its place in the competitive market unless it adopts a comprehensive, streamlined system for managing the lifecycle of its contracts, from creation to archiving and everything in between. You need meaningful, complete insight into contract data; you need libraries of best-practice clauses to be shared among attorneys; you need to be able to create contracts with far more speed and accuracy; you need to you need to be able to store and locate your existing contracts; and, most importantly, you need it to be intuitive enough that your team will want to use it.
Contracts contain a wealth of information that tell you what is going on in your business. When properly drafted, negotiated and managed, they also defend your business against risks such as liability, being underpaid or overcharged, and a wide variety of the unknown and unforeseen. In short, contracts protect against risk by giving you the information you need both on an everyday basis and in times of crisis, when speed, decisiveness and certainty are key.
The legal profession is steeped in tradition and history. In fact, the law itself tends to respond to contemporary problems by looking back, and legal professionals are no different. If we should believe stereotype – and many firsthand accounts – lawyers tend to resist change tooth and nail. After all, they were bred – and are handsomely remunerated – in an age-old institution that lauds ethics and intellect, not innovation and reinvention.
We take pride in Exari’s reputation for being responsive to the ongoing feedback we get from our clients. One of the newest features of our Intelligent Contract Management software, the Negotiator Ribbon, is the direct result of this input and represents yet another step in our mission to help organizations streamline, manage and track the lifecycle of their contracts.
Scientia potentia est – Knowledge is power – it’s a trusted truism dating back thousands of years. In the business realm, knowledge means not merely understanding the demands of your industry and clients – it means knowing how to use the information you have to improve the overall health of your business.
Exari is launching a competition for practitioners of the London Insurance Market and their overseas colleagues. We are looking for suggestions of widely used documents that would benefit the market most if automated.
Neuroplasticity is a relatively new term that describes the way our brains are capable of continually adapting and changing in ways that are both surprising and amazing. It turns out that we form new neural connections throughout our lives in response to new situations or changes in our environment.
On 7 January 2014, Exari, along with its partner Tier 2, will present an overview of the SmartForms project at the first Lloyd’s Technology Thought Leadership Session of 2014. During this event, Martin Kett, VP, Insurance Client Development at Exari, will show how complex MRCs can be created efficiently and accurately using Exari’s web-based questionnaire, capturing risk data as a by-product of the process without any additional effort. The 25-30 minute presentation will be followed by a 10-15 minute Q&A session and will take place at the Old Library at Lloyd’s in London.
