For many small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), hiring a full-time head of marketing or Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is unappealing and simply out of reach.
Many SMBs experiment with hiring a junior level marketing staffer, only to be disappointed by their limited expertise, industry contacts, and pool of resources. These staffers rarely have the experience or vision to provide strategy and results.
Enter the fractional CMO.
As 2021 draws ever nearer, the truth remains that general counsel and paralegals continue to encounter growing contract complexity and volume. An ineffectual legal contract management process makes obstacles for legal departments tough to overcome. Here’s how to leverage seven legal contract management software tools for a streamlined legal contract lifecycle, reduced risk, and minimal contract lifecycle bottlenecks and delays.
Leading legal contract management software enables users to enter legal requests and submit them for request approval easily. Data entry for request records is significantly simplified. Communication bottlenecks are reduced with easy-to-use request intake forms that allow users to collect, store, review, and approve automated requests.
Additionally, teams can remain in sync with approval routing to legal workflows for the main areas of the software. Users can attach virtually unlimited files, and convert contract requests to contract records without data loss or the need for data re-entry. Legal teams are held accountable with integrated document tracking, task assignments, and nearly unlimited notifications.
Optimize contract requests with a unified, standardized process that equips vendors, customers, suppliers, providers, and employees with the ability to request new contracts easily.
Trusted legal document assembly solutions can help organizations to author timely, compliant, and accurate contracts. Using automation to dynamically merge data fields with clauses from a pre-approved clause library, legal teams can manage multiple templates and document versions for rapid contract authoring and exportation into standard file formats. Document templates can be repeatedly used and easily updated.
Please read our blog on contract writing to garner a fuller understanding of legal contract authoring with automation.
Make Your Case for Contract Lifecycle Management
General Counsel, paralegals, and other legal contract stakeholders no longer need to rely upon a contract negotiations process that depends on redlining and back-and-forth communication.
With contract negotiation automation proffered by robust legal contract management software solutions, document collaboration and document version control are simplified with numbered version tracking and a detailed log of document iterations. Collaborative parties can maintain version control with the capability to upload and download up-to-date document versions with ease.
Clause ownership functionality makes it so that organizations can assign clause owners. If a party attempts to edit a clause, advanced contract management software can add that clause’s owner to the approval process. Consequently, only necessary parties are added to the negotiation process, as per rules-based clause ownership.
Contract negotiations between internal negotiating parties, external parties, and employee non-users of software are more efficient when organizations are equipped to configure a rules-based process. A pre-configured workflow permits contract stakeholders to receive a notification that takes them to a contract collaboration portal. There, relevant documents can be accessed for review. A benefit of this process is that external parties and employees without contract management software access can view and edit contracts that are assigned to them but cannot access core system features and contracts that are not pertinent to them. Documents that are needed are isolated so that stakeholders can view or make changes right from the portal. Furthermore, contract parties can engage in approval collaboration in a centralized location and receive alerts about the approval process – in the interest of reducing delays.
With an advantageous contract negotiation portal, legal contract collaboration is efficient and straightforward.
Diligent observance of contract obligation fulfillment is critical for healthy contract lifecycles. Contract workflow automation that leverages automated alerts, notifications, task escalation, and approval routing helps organizations to meet their contractual needs and focus their attention on more strategic aspects of contract management – such as opportunity realization and data analytics.
Obligations workflow can be configured within legal contract management software to trigger when specific criteria are met, before contract execution, after contract execution, or both. Flexible obligations management promotes a culture where the proper alerts, notifications, and approvals are set in place for contracts at the right time.
Advanced compliance reporting and auditing tools give legal teams visibility into contractual relationships across entities and businesses. Legal compliance standards can be easily maintained with robust and user-friendly reporting metrics, key dates, and renewals.
Leading-edge legal contract management software also offers integration with OFAC search data. This helpful compliance tool checks vendor, company, and employee data and compares it to data within OFAC’s (The Office of Foreign Assets Control) sanctions lists – providing crucial risk analysis snapshots.
Ad-hoc reports equip organizations with reports on upcoming tasks, user-defined status reports, reports on financial commitments, and more. Reports can be emailed on a scheduled basis or swiftly exported to spreadsheets to save locally and distribute.
With an online report designer, general counsel and paralegals can use contract management software to establish easily configured and flexible report layouts to display critical contract information. These report designers include many file exportation options, such as PDF, MS Word, spreadsheets, various image formats, rich text, CSV, and more!
Executive graphical dashboards deliver a comprehensive overview of key dates, activities, and contract performance.
With the help of advanced financials tracking, improved searching, and reporting tools, legal teams can track payments, spending, and contract data changes.
Fastidious risk management is paramount for successful legal contract management. AI-based contract management software makes risk assessment, analysis, and mitigation more manageable and efficient.
A risk score can keep your legal contract management team accountable by equipping them with an outline of how well (or how poorly) they are leveraging their risk tools. From there, they can act accordingly to establish the best possible risk management process.
Watch the VISDOM® AI video.
Advanced legal contract management software also provides risk rating and risk mapping features. Risk profile ratings can help legal teams to visualize risk. Based on tracked risk, users are provided with a risk assessment matrix. They can view risk probability patterns for events that may occur within contracts, as well as risk exposure that results from those events.
Awareness of potentially detrimental risk events can help general counsel and paralegals to decide how to move forward with a contract. Risk visualization can help teams make risk management decisions more efficiently and more effectually.
Now you know the cutting-edge legal contract management software tools that can help general counsel and paralegals to implement a workflow process that mitigates risk, reduces bottlenecks, and helps organizations to manage a growing number of increasingly complex contracts for enhanced legal operations. Therefore, it is time to select the legal contract management software solution that best fits your organization’s needs. That solution is CobbleStone Software’s Contract Insight®.
Contract Insight has the tools to help your organization manage the entire legal contract lifecycle. For over 25 years, CobbleStone Software’s legal contract management suite has been lauded and trusted by General Counsel and legal departments. With the help of end-to-end document assembly, legal workflow management, fast implementation, and an easy-to-adopt user interface, CobbleStone Software is the go-to solution for the effective management of contracts and committals.
Stop wasting time and money on disorganized legal contract lifecycle management. Start centralizing documents, streamlining compliance and approvals, increasing your ROI, and more with Contract Insight.
Enjoy a free demo of CobbleStone’s acclaimed contract management software platform today!
This article was previously published on CobbleStone Software’s blog.
CobbleStone Software, a proven leader in contract management software, is pleased to announce additional enhancements to its proprietary PC Helper App for MS Outlook.
The application integrates seamlessly with CobbleStone’s award-winning contract management software suite – Contract Insight®. CobbleStone users can maximize the tool for smarter, faster, and easier contract lifecycle management. The app provides users with an easy-to-use CobbleStone control panel within their MS Outlook application. With it, Contract Insight users can initiate new contract requests and upload files from their emails directly into Contract Insight – simplifying and centralizing the management of contracts, requests, vendor records, employee records, eSourcing records, and purchase orders.
To learn more about CobbleStone’s MS Outlook Plugin with visual details, read this blog.
“We are excited to continue innovating Contract Insight with industry-leading integrations such as our proprietary MS Outlook Plugin,” says Bradford Jones, Director of Sales & Marketing at CobbleStone Software.
“CobbleStone’s PC Helper App for MS Outlook helps our users to further streamline their contract lifecycle management processes by bridging the gap between email and file management – providing a seamless and secure integration for optimized contract administration.”
To see CobbleStone’s PC Helper App for MS Outlook in action, book a free demo with a Contract Insight expert today. For further information on Contract Insight features, industry news, and best practices, read CobbleStone’s Contract Insights blog and subscribe to their YouTube channel.
About CobbleStone Software:
CobbleStone Software has been a leader in providing enterprise contract management, vendor management, and eSourcing software solutions for over 20 years and is trusted by thousands of users. CobbleStone’s Contract Insight contract management suite provides contract and vendor tracking, configurable email alerts, calendar notifications, contract workflow management, robust security options, authoring of contract templates with dynamic clauses, revenue/cost management, full-text indexing and searching, vendor/client ratings, document version control, custom reports, electronic signatures, smarter contracts with artificial intelligence and machine learning, and more.
To learn more about Contract Insight, contact the CobbleStone team at sales@cobblestonesoftware.com or call 866-330-0056.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – February 3, 2021 – Consilio, a global leader in eDiscovery, document review, risk management, and legal consulting services, today announced the launch of a number of key enhancements and innovations to its platform, Consilio Complete, to coincide with Legalweek(year) 2021. The enhancements, Complete Transfer and Contract Analytics, aim to strengthen the client experience, transferring large volumes of matters and efficiently addressing contracts with machine learning and artificial intelligence.
About Complete Transfer
Complete Transfer offers clients a custom-designed and proven solution to seamlessly migrate matters, regardless of stage or complexity, to Consilio’s global, enterprise-grade data processing, hosting, and production infrastructure. Over 300+ terabytes of active client matters have been migrated to Consilio using Complete Transfer in the last 12 months. For more information on Complete Transfer, please visit: consilio.com/transfer.
“Our proven process incorporates a consultative approach to understand our clients’ specific requirements,” said Meredith Kildow, Chief Revenue Officer at Consilio. “Our experts, experienced with complex Complete Transfer migrations, then define, propose, and execute a Complete Transfer that minimizes process and technical risks during a structured transition.”
About Contract Analytics
Contract Analytics, powered by Complete Intelligence, allows clients to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to efficiently identify and act on clauses and data within large volumes of contracts – reducing risk and cost. Contract Analytics use cases include M&A due diligence, identification of risk and obligations during corporate transactions/change in control activities, improving regulator inquiry response such as antitrust, re-papering efforts (i.e., transitioning from LIBOR, incorporating data privacy, process changes due to Brexit or aligning with lease accounting standards). For more information on Contract Analytics, please visit: consilio.com/contract-analytics.
“Corporate and law firm clients are managing larger volumes of contracts with increasing complexity in terms and clauses,” said Kildow. “Contract Analytics utilizes advanced technology, process and our proprietary methodology to reduce risk and cost of these complex transactions.”
Deployed across more than 70 locations in 11 countries, Consilio Complete is trusted by clients in a wide range of industries, averaging over 70+ terabytes of data processed per month, 3,000+ legal review professionals on Secure Virtual Review infrastructure, and significant client- and matter-level growth in Sightline, Consilio’s private-cloud eDiscovery platform.
In addition to the product enhancements, the Complete suite offers eight additional solutions including: Complete Investigations, Complete Data, Complete Review, Complete Intelligence, Complete Consulting, Complete Flex, Complete Audio, and Complete Chat.
Mark your calendars for February 4, 2021, at 1:15 pm EST for this CLE eligible session, It’s A Brave New World—Map Your Course For Managing Discovery With Collaboration Data. We’ve assembled an outstanding panel of experts who will join us to share their insights regarding ediscovery and information governance with data from modern collaboration applications.
Whether we’re ready or not, collaboration platforms and channel-based messaging have arrived in force and are here to stay. As a result, we’re changing how we communicate in ways that are more dynamic, interactive, and friendlier than ever. Collaboration platforms are reducing corporate reliance on email while empowering collaboration, remote work, and innovation—enhancing an organization’s agility during challenging times.
For corporate legal teams, these changes are requiring a whole new way of thinking when it comes to governance, preservation and discovery response. Playbooks designed for a world of static documents and email no longer suffice in the face of multi-channel, multi-modal communications. In other words, it’s a brave new world.
In this CLE session, panelists will explore the challenges posed by collaboration applications, and how corporate legal professionals are developing and implementing forward-thinking strategies to navigate those complexities. Panelists will discuss:
Be sure to visit Hanzo during Legalweek. We’re planning some valuable how-to sessions and technology presentations. If you’d like to schedule a personalized demo, contact us today.
Contract Insight® Enterprise, CobbleStone Software’s user-friendly contract management software, can streamline your organization’s contract management processes by centralizing contracts in a searchable database with integrated AI and machine learning. Watch the video to learn more.
Channel-based communications and collaboration have fueled productivity and have transformed the way we work and communicate. The information on these platforms is mission critical. Problem is, these applications were not designed for discovery, investigations, nor compliance. Collaboration and dynamic data are the new normal. So what are you going to do about it?
BuzzFeed uses the collaboration platform Slack to augment email and its other modes of internal communication. As a result, its legal and IT teams wanted to ensure they were prepared to identify, review, and produce Slack data in response to ediscovery matters and investigations. BuzzFeed needed a tool that could efficiently locate, preserve, and export that data in a review-ready format.
Thanks to Hanzo Hold, BuzzFeed’s legal and IT teams have a tool that they can use to locate all relevant information within their organization’s Slack application in response to any ediscovery or investigation request. Moreover, they can produce that data to outside counsel for further review.
Read the case study to see how BuzzFeed attains greater efficiency and confidence using Hanzo Hold to manage its Slack data for ediscovery.
Zapproved Collaborates with Onna to Empower Corporate Legal Teams To More Effectively Manage Unstructured Data and Make Information More Discoverable
Portland, OR — 3 February 2021: Onna, the world’s first Knowledge Integration Platform on a mission to make enterprise information accessible, useful and private, has collaborated with Zapproved to build a direct integration between its ZDiscovery platform and Onna’s Knowledge Integration Platform. This announcement marks a significant milestone in Onna’s collaboration with leading legal technology companies to drive a better experience for customers.
With the exponential growth in the adoption of cloud tools and increased fragmentation of data, this new integration will allow corporate legal teams to more effectively preserve, collect, process and review all the relevant data in their organization directly from ZDiscovery for sources like Slack, Zoom and Microsoft Teams. By connecting seamlessly to Onna’s API, Zapproved users are able to select which source to create a hold on and which users the hold applies to along with an optional date range.
Onna’s Knowledge Integration Platform is a leading ediscovery solution that is making information across numerous apps less fragmented and more discoverable for legal teams across the globe. Combining the power of both the Onna and Zapproved platforms, allows users to:
“Our collaboration with Zapproved is an important milestone in providing further value to our customers across the full breadth of ediscovery. Allowing them to search both structured and unstructured data and making it more discoverable will be a key factor in legal teams being able to conduct real-time collections.” said Kelly Griswold, COO, Onna.
Rekha Shenoy, CPO, Zapproved commented, “In the past 12 months, we started to notice a trend in the market with customers moving away from managing all their retention policies, preservations and information governance in each individual application they managed. Instead they were moving towards bundling all their data into a single location. We identified Onna to be at the forefront of that movement.” Rekha continues, “Empowering users to be able to preserve and collect data wherever it lives, was a key factor in our collaboration with Onna. Providing our customers with a best-in-class collaboration solution, with tight integration, allows both Zapproved and Onna to play to their strengths.”
About Zapproved
Zapproved’s ZDiscovery platform is designed specifically for corporate legal teams. With this platform, you
can take control of ediscovery from the moment litigation is anticipated until the matter is resolved. Our
powerful yet intuitive system equips teams to reduce reliance on outside providers, dramatically lower costs,
and build a better process. Backed by ironclad security and unrivaled customer support, our enterprise-class
software is trusted by more corporate legal teams than any other. To learn more, visit
http://www.zapproved.com.
About Onna
Onna integrates knowledge from all workplace applications, allowing anyone to unify, protect, search, automate, and build on top of their organization’s proprietary knowledge. With the rise of cloud-based and hosted workplace apps, knowledge is extremely fragmented and difficult to access in most organizations, costing businesses huge amounts of time and money in searching for their own information. Onna’s Machine Learning-based Knowledge Integration Platform can be connected to any cloud or on-premise application, including GSuite, Office 365, Slack, Dropbox, Salesforce, and many more. It supports eDiscovery, information governance, knowledge management, archiving, monitoring for private and sensitive data sharing, and building bespoke internal workflow apps using proprietary information.
With headquarters in New York City and Barcelona and teams in Raleigh, San Francisco, Toulouse, and London, Onna supports some of the world’s leading companies, including Dropbox, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Fitbit, Lyft, NewsCorp, and Slack. Onna has raised $43M from investors, including Atomico, Dawn Capital, Dropbox, and Slack Fund. To learn more, visit www.onna.com.
Media Contact:
melissa.tatham@zapproved.com
Onna Collaborates with Zapproved to Empower Corporate Legal Teams To More Effectively Manage Unstructured Data and Make Information More Discoverable
Onna and Zapproved tackle different sections of the EDRM process and now, working together, are able to give customers an end-to-end solution to manage all unstructured data sources.
New York and Barcelona — 3 February 2021: Onna, the world’s first Knowledge Integration Platform on a mission to make enterprise information accessible, useful and private, has collaborated with Zapproved to build a direct integration between its ZDiscovery platform and Onna’s Knowledge Integration Platform. This announcement marks a significant milestone in Onna’s collaboration with leading legal technology companies to drive a better experience for customers.
With the exponential growth in the adoption of cloud tools and increased fragmentation of data, this new integration will allow corporate legal teams to more effectively preserve, collect, process and review all the relevant data in their organization directly from ZDiscovery for sources like Slack, Zoom and Microsoft Teams. By connecting seamlessly to Onna’s API, Zapproved users are able to select which source to create a hold on and which users the hold applies to along with an optional date range.
Onna’s Knowledge Integration Platform is a leading eDiscovery solution that is making information across numerous apps less fragmented and more discoverable for legal teams across the globe. Combining the power of both the Onna and Zapproved platforms, allows users to:
“Our collaboration with Zapproved is an important milestone in providing further value to our customers across the full breadth of eDiscovery. Allowing them to search both structured and unstructured data and making it more discoverable will be a key factor in legal teams being able to conduct real-time collections.” said Kelly Griswold, COO, Onna.
Rekha Shenoy, CPO, Zapproved commented, “In the past 12 months, we started to notice a trend in the market with customers moving away from managing all their retention policies, preservations and information governance in each individual application they managed. Instead they were moving towards bundling all their data into a single location. We identified Onna to be at the forefront of that movement.” Rekha continues, “Empowering users to be able to preserve and collect data wherever it lives, was a key factor in our collaboration with Onna. Providing our customers with a best-in-class collaboration solution, with tight integration, allows both Zapproved and Onna to play to their strengths.”
About Onna
Onna integrates knowledge from all workplace applications, allowing anyone to unify, protect, search, automate, and build on top of their organization’s proprietary knowledge. With the rise of cloud-based and hosted workplace apps, knowledge is extremely fragmented and difficult to access in most organizations, costing businesses huge amounts of time and money in searching for their own information. Onna’s Machine Learning-based Knowledge Integration Platform can be connected to any cloud or on-premise application, including GSuite, Office 365, Slack, Dropbox, Salesforce, and many more. It supports eDiscovery, information governance, knowledge management, archiving, monitoring for private and sensitive data sharing, and building bespoke internal workflow apps using proprietary information.
With headquarters in New York City and Barcelona and teams in Raleigh, San Francisco, Toulouse, and London, Onna supports some of the world’s leading companies, including Dropbox, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Fitbit, Lyft, NewsCorp, and Slack. Onna has raised $43M from investors, including Atomico, Dawn Capital, Dropbox, and Slack Fund. To learn more, visit www.onna.com.
About Zapproved
Zapproved’s ZDiscovery platform is designed specifically for corporate legal teams. With this platform, you can take control of ediscovery from the moment litigation is anticipated until the matter is resolved. Our powerful yet intuitive system equips teams to reduce reliance on outside providers, dramatically lower costs, and build a better process. Backed by ironclad security and unrivaled customer support, our enterprise-class software is trusted by more corporate legal teams than any other.
Media Contacts:
media@zapproved.com
