Hi Gina,

my suggestion would be to have editable "visual templates" (e.g. in PowerPoint) in use already during negotiation. Depending on the topic, they could be owned by business or legal negotiators. You can use these in presentations and outside of contract documents to facilitate reaching the meeting of the minds about key topics for your relationship/transaction, and modify them collaboratively with the client. At the end, you just add the static version of the diagram (exported e.g. as jpg or png) to the contract, like a snapshop documenting what was agreed together.

In order to minimize effort, create negotiable visualizations only for topics that are crucial and would actually benefit from increased clarity and shared understanding.

If you want an example of such a use case, you may want to have a look at this article that appeared on JSCAN (it is part of your IACCM Membership): journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2055563616669739

Let me know if this helps, and feel free to reach out again!

Stefania

Hi again,
just wondering if you would be willing and able to submit your example on the IACCM Contract Design Pattern Library (even in a partial/edited/anonymized form if you so wish). We have a section on timelines, and your example would be in good company: contract-design.iaccm.com/timeline

Submissions can be made here: contract-design.iaccm.com/contribute

I am available for any question regarding the submission and publishing process. :)

Thanks Stefania, very practical suggestion! I found the article and look forward to reading it.

Hi Janine,

You should contact Rob Waller, he did some great work for us in this vein as well as simplifying complex contract legal language for use in Term Contracts or MSA's.
Regards
Gary


rob.waller@simplificationcentre.org.uk

Thank you, Gary, will do! I did check out the link you provided and definitely liked what I saw. It is exciting to know that there are folks out there who believe in revamping and freshening up the way we do business on paper.

Indeed. For example, there are consultants and researchers working on Contract visualizations. I happened to work on such developments for our company, and found it useful in governing the contractual activities of large and complex infrastructure proejcts.

Thanks, Phyllis, I am glad that you found the webinar helpful; it was certainly a great session to moderate, with some really good questions at the end. I agree - we often don't pay enough attention to the learning style and the impact that has on how information is absorbed. Paul Branch

I believe I found it. www.iaccm.com/resources/

Me too. I would be interested to hear what others have found in selection of a CLM.

Hello,

I am not a buyer of CLM solution but a seller. I work for EY and have developed a easy plug-in and use SharePoint based CLM solution. Would be happy to participate in the RFP/RFI process. My email ID is: Kulbir.kaur@in.ey.com.

As for my tool the below features are available at extremely reasonable pricing and very easy to use format.

Integration with Clients' system
Standardization
Repository of Contracts
Templates uploading and downloading
Version Control
OCR File Scanning
User Levels
Renewals
Amendments
Requesting
Authoring
Negotiations
Approvals
ENoSignatures
Deviation Management
Risk Analysis
Obligation Management
Dashboards and Reports
Alert and Notifications
Multiple Filtering options
Selecting form Templates
Edit Fields
Download Reports/Export meta data to excel
Print
Legal Repository
Reset Passwords
Upload templates to a selected workspace
Create new user accounts
Reset user accounts
Edit access to users
create new workspace
upload templates to a master database
Easily Customizable App UI
Contract Clause Library
Intake form that can integrate with single sign on (SSO)
Family grouping
Compliance with other regulations

Hi Geoff. We found a lot of the systems on the market, whilst all really good, focussed on workflow. Emails and notifications of moments and issues galore. I've always found that you don't need that if you have the right team, this isn't needed. They know what thy have to do, what stage in the process and when. So that for me was a major issue.

The second thing is a lot of them have lots of functionality around the back and forth and negotiation of clauses. I'd suggest again if you have really good templates and good early engagement, you reduce the back and forth required and can get the benefits of quicker turnaround and e-signatures without a bigger system.

I would flag that you should not underestimate the work required to get your current information into the new system. It's probably going to be more than the annual fees to set up. In the RFP / RFI - get them to tell you their plans and costs for getting the records in the system. It's not just the scanning of records, but also the information in the contracts (milestones, conditions) that need to come in.

Finally, I'd really recommend that you bring in as many people as possible into this process, especially in the procurement team. The users and the team are the ones that will have to use this solution going forward and keep your records in that format for all of those wonderful visuals and reports that the new system spits out. I've seen and heard of many instances where the new CLM has failed because the team and users haven't brought into the solution.

We've been lucky with our solution (it's a simple one that we developed in house) because :
(a) it wasn't an all at once deployment. People have had time to think about the system and what it could do
(b) the team have then been able to take the system to an even higher level than anything I had in mind. Templates for contracts, evaluation and issues registers - all really awesome stuff that went way beyond my initial ideas.

I hope this aids your thinking, and if you want to talk further, please message me.

I saw your post this morning and wanted to reach out about your question. I lead the consulting practice at BDO USA LLP that focuses on precisely the scenario you are asking about. We are solution/platform agnostic and seek to ensure the "right" solution - regardless of vendor - is selected so that something that is too big or too complex isn't inadvertently chosen from the many, many good solutions out there. Feel free to give me a call at 703-770-4453 or email at tfuchs@bdo.com. I'd be happy to share my thoughts with you. Thanks! Tom

Our experience is to stay away from the big overnight system implementation but to partner with a super flexible technology so that you can start small and then incrementally digitise the processes the way you want and your staff would like to work. This is a more incremental way and allow for the necessary change management to run parallel.
Flexibility is the key i.e. shape the software around your processes, framework, desired way of working and policies. Do not try to shape your work procedures to fit a certain software. A good example is getnimblex.com/case-studies/yvw-procurement-and-contract-management/