When trying to get an organization to adopt new technology, managers should expect to encounter users who aren’t naturally technology savvy or are instantly distrustful of new ways to do things. The obvious problem with non-adoption: companies don’t get maximum benefit from new technology since more often than not their ...
Read More
Preventing reputational and brand damage caused by poor supplier practices should be first on the executive agenda, according to Pierre-Francois Thaler, co-founder and co-CEO of EcoVadis. “Our world is more connected and social than ever. Today’s environment puts a laser focus on not just your own actions, but on the ...
Read More
Last week, Icertis opened our new support center in Sofia, Bulgaria, marking a major milestone in our rapid growth in the European market. Demand for our enterprise-wide approach to contract management has dramatically accelerated in Europe in the last year as evidenced by multiple customer wins – including prominent companies ...
Read More
“We had no idea where our contracts were, what they said, or who had them.” That’s how Ken Baughman, associate general counsel for global manufacturer Vertiv, describes his company’s contract management situation before it adopted Icertis. Sound familiar? Manual contract management often leads to contracts becoming siloed by department or ...
Read More
In today’s fast, competitive business environment, every organization wants their sales team focused on one thing: generating revenue for the company. Sales teams that are slow in responding to opportunities, or that can’t quickly and nimbly respond to customer demands, won’t last long. On the other hand, an enterprise must ...
Read More
Change is afoot in the pharmaceutical industry. Merger-and-acquisition activity is high; regulations are becoming ever more stringent; companies are focusing on cost; and outsourcing is rising. And this just scratches the surface. Forward looking pharma leaders are exploring how the digital transformation of their processes can help meet these challenges ...
Read More
The accelerating pace of business has created many new opportunities for today’s enterprises, and with it new and heightened risks for them to navigate. To help them succeed in such an environment, companies are relying on their general counsel to play an increasingly strategic role in determining a path to ...
Read More
Icertis has been named Partner of the Year for 2018 by Microsoft for the US, recognizing our efforts to combine the Icertis Contract Management (ICM) platform with Microsoft technology to help enterprises successfully transform their commercial foundation. The award names Icertis as Microsoft's top partner in the US, the company's ...
Read More
Is your sales organization spinning up a contract management RFP? When an executive team comes together to pick an enterprise contract management vendor, each will bring a unique set of needs to the table. Here is a roster of who should be involved in the selection process, and what they ...
Read More
“When we started the selection process, we thought we needed to a new contract management application. What we got was an entire platform.” That’s how Scott Moore, Vice President of Contracts for Vallen Distribution, sums up his experience after choosing to upgrade to the Icertis Contract Management (ICM) platform. ...
Read More
When organizations that deal with complex sell-side contracts decide it’s time to abandon their manual contract management process for something more sophisticated, they have a wide variety of solutions to choose from. Options range from those offered by software suites they already use, to those housed within the CRM or CPQ ...
Read More
Third-party contracts—contracts that are authored by a counterparty rather than in house—are an inevitable part of doing business: Even the largest enterprises will at times enter into contracts that were written outside their own legal department, and for some businesses, they represent a major part of all contracting. Necessary though ...
Read More
Legacy contracts represent a major challenge for every enterprise. They are scattered everywhere–across geographies, across multiple repositories including shared folders and SharePoint, and in many different formats. They are hard (impossible sometimes) to search, and the risks and obligations are buried deep within dense clauses (till they awaken to bite!) ...
Read More
At this year’s Build developer conference, Microsoft unveiled major enhancements to its Cognitive Services offerings on Azure, and introduced Cognitive Search, an AI-first approach to content understanding. Icertis, who has been working closely with Microsoft on the latest Azure technologies, was invited to demonstrate how developers can use the tools ...
Read More
Roche Diagnostics has grown steadily since it was founded in Switzerland in 1896. Their global expansion was accompanied by a steady rise in the number and complexity of contracts. Every year, thousands of new agreements were created using disconnected applications and manual processes. With multiple stakeholders located in many countries, ...
Read More
Every year, Microsoft brings together thousands of developers for its Build conference, where people who are working on tomorrow's technologies can share insights with attendees. At this year’s conference, held in Seattle, Icertis was privileged to be selected to showcase several aspects of the Icertis Contract Management (ICM) platform, which ...
Read More
Spend Matters, a global content community dedicated to examining procurement and supply chain issues, has named Icertis as a 2018 Provider to Know—one of just 50 solution providers to earn the honor. The Spend Matters 50 Providers to Know/Watch lists recognize both the best-in-class providers and exciting innovators in the ...
Read More
When choosing an enterprise business solution, getting input from industry analysts as well as customers is a well-known best practice. These independent viewpoints can help clarify which solution is the right fit for you and your business. Below is a sampling of what leading industry analysts and verified customers have ...
Read More
Smart contracts are an emerging technology that could conceivably up-end contract management in the very near future. But what are they? First proposed by Nick Szabo in 1994, smart contracts are self-executing documents with the terms of the agreement written directly into lines of code. These contracts render transactions traceable, transparent, verifiable ...
Read More
For the first time in the history of commerce, contracts are being completely digitized. This development, combined with the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), has business leaders entirely rethinking the role contracts can play in their enterprise. Contracts touch every facet of a business, including sales, procurement, and human ...
Read More
More than 2,000 attendees and 750 organizations turned out to the third annual Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) US Institute, held last week in Las Vegas. Attendance at the conference, which brings together the world’s top legal operations professionals, has quadrupled since the inaugural event was held in 2016. This ...
Read More
Is your contract management software difficult to use, unable to provide valuable insights, and underutilized? If so, your organization could be missing out on revenue opportunities and susceptible to non-compliance risk. Consider these features if you're thinking about an upgrade: 1. Personalized Dashboard Contract management software shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all, and ...
Read More
As global supply chains become more complex, ensuring that contractual commitments around sustainability and ethical practices are met at each stage of the supply chain has become extremely challenging. Along with this increased supply-chain complexity, the economic and reputational cost of a lapse in compliance is increasing as well. Companies ...
Read More
For the first time in the history of commerce, contracts are being completely digitized. This development has major implications for every industry—even professional football. Consider the recent report from ESPN that veteran NFL quarterback Josh McCown signed a new contract with the New York Jets while sitting at a Chick-fil-A ...
Read More
The pace of commerce is accelerating, and today’s organizations face ever-growing demands to deliver faster time to revenue—the length of time from when contract negotiation starts to when it begins to generate income for the business. If a business deal takes twice as long to complete because of a suboptimal ...
Read More
It’s not often that contract clause language makes it into an Oscar speech, but that’s what happened this year when Best Actress winner Frances McDormand used her acceptance to beseech the stars in the audience to demand “inclusion riders” in their contracts. Her comment led many to look up what ...
Read More
No two technology asset classes follow the same path through the market. Some quickly ascend to must-have elements for almost every business, with lots of vendors competing for market share; others remain fairly niche solutions throughout their lifecycles. That said, nearly all technologies follow a predicable arc, going from emerging, ...
Read More
In 2017, 45 new Foreign Corrupt Practices Act-related investigations were publicly disclosed, according to a tally just published by FCPA Blog, which monitors enforcement of the U.S. law. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is: The investigations made for the most active year for new FCPA-related investigations ...
Read More
Health insurance companies and other healthcare payors like PPOs and HMOs face serious challenges to containing costs for their clients while staying in compliance with government regulations. Better contract management can help payors face these challenges in many important ways, including by improving the process of provider contracting, in which ...
Read More
Sourcing and procurement departments play a strategic role in controlling spending and managing risks. They must think creatively to increase savings and draw insights from suppliers in an increasingly complex supply chain. Strategic sourcing processes that improve compliance, reduce risk and strengthen supplier collaboration result in increased sourcing performance and ...
Read More
The healthcare and life sciences industry stands at a pivotal moment. Nearly every week, the marketplace is disrupted by news of acquisitions, mergers and emerging players—as in the case of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and J.P. Morgan’s announcement they would be teaming up to form a new healthcare company. At the ...
Read More
Enforcement of the European Union’s sweeping privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) begins May 25. Unfortunately, many companies remain unprepared. Gartner estimates that 50 percent of companies affected by GDPR will not be in full compliance with its requirements on the date of implementation. Organizations need to move quickly ...
Read More
Today we are very excited to share that Icertis has secured $50 million in Series D funding led by Meritech Capital Partners, with additional investments by PSP Growth and Cross Creek Advisors, some of the top technology investment companies in the world. As a further validation of our strategy, all ...
Read More
As anyone who has a banking app on their phone can tell you, the digital transformation is well under way in the financial industry. Breakthroughs in financial technology have made it possible for bank customers to deposit a check, apply for loans, and transfer funds with little more than a ...
Read More
The term “programmable economy” was first coined in 2014 by the research firm Gartner Inc. to describe the radical changes occurring in the global economy due to technological innovations. In 2018, the programmable economy will be powered by disruptive technologies including blockchains, distributed ledgers, and smart contracts. These technologies will ...
Read More
Manual contract creation, review, and approval often results in missed commitments, compliance mandates, possible discounts, and other milestones. This puts the business at risk. The contract management process changes for the better when buy-side, sell-side, and corporate contracts and workflows are aligned. Contract lifecycle management (CLM) addresses the critical issues ...
Read More
According to the American Psychological Association, multitasking—when someone tries to perform two or more tasks at the same time or in rapid succession—can diminish a worker's productivity by as much as 40 percent. For business decision makers, this means that enterprise software can’t just be judged on its functionality, but ...
Read More
The issue of vendor risk assessment by banks has gained more attention in recent years as the U.S. federal government tightens the rules around what a bank must due to ensure critical vendors don’t pose a serious risk to their operations. In 2013, the Office of the Comptroller of the ...
Read More
Contracts are critical business assets. The importance of an effective contract management system cannot be overstated, as poor contract management can quickly undermine even the strongest organization. Spanning three key dimensions of the enterprise, contracts: Govern every dollar that goes in and out of an organization. Given this critical function, ...
Read More
Ineffective contract management processes consume valuable time and resources and increase business risk. If contracting is holding back your business performance due to a lack of standardization, controls, or access, you may need rethink your current contract management process. Optimizing contract lifecycle management improves efficiency, visibility, and profitability. It also ...
Read More
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the average Fortune 2000 company now holds 20,000-40,000 active contracts. Global supply chains, multi-jurisdictional businesses, and changing regulations have also made contract management more complex. Unfortunately for legal teams, contract management processes have not kept pace with marketplace changes. Manual contract management is still a common practice, ...
Read More
The financial services industry today faces unprecedented regulatory scrutiny. With the heavy fines and bad PR that come with findings of non-compliance, following strict standards is not simply a goal for banks, but a core requirement. Contracts, which form the foundation of a bank’s relationship with customers, employees, and vendors, ...
Read More
The value of specific contracts vary significantly throughout a company. One contract may not have as much meaning to one person as it does to the next. Regardless, meeting contract obligations and taking advantage of entitlements will ultimately result in increased revenue and decreased expenses for the entire company. Proactively ...
Read More
Digital transformation has quickly become the enterprise buzz word of the year – and for good reason. The pace of business is accelerating and organizations are facing pressure to increase their speed of operations while improving their ability to respond to changing market dynamics. In short, they face tough decisions ...
Read More
An enterprise organization may have several thousand active contracts at any given time, and each one carries a potential risk of regulatory non-compliance, supply chain disruptions, and public relations disasters. Without a proper system for managing contract obligations and commitments, these risks remain hidden, which can cost the enterprise millions ...
Read More
Procurement leaders have a lot to consider in the coming year – they are under pressure to deliver savings while reducing risk and accomplish more with less. But, the solution won’t come from applying more resources to the problem. Transforming procurement demands a completely new approach, one that places contract ...
Read More
A contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform must do far more than streamline contract authoring and ensuring compliance. With contract analytics, a CLM platform can leverage data from enterprise systems to give you a holistic view of contract performance. Contract analytics has helped professionals in many industries to assess the value ...
Read More
It's every CIO's dream: a rapid and successful digital transformation. Fortunately, it isn't just a dream, but a reality for some companies. Consider the recent examples of auto giant, Daimler AG, and World Wide Technology (WWT). Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes Benz, went live with the Icertis Contract Management ...
Read More
Capturing the potential value in a third-party contract is an on-going challenge – especially for a global enterprise. Can your contract management system manage a third-party contract as well as the ones native to your organization? A recent study by PwC highlights the impact of not capturing the full value ...
Read More
Creating, reviewing, and approving a contract can be a slow process. Automating this process helps organizations accelerate negotiations, improve governance, and enable more efficient authoring. But the real benefits of an enterprise contract management platform come after the contract is created. If contracts aren’t carefully tracked across the entire enterprise ...
Read More
For sales teams, the pressure to meet revenue targets never relents. At the same time, contracts have become more complex. With multiple stakeholders connected by an intricate web of interdependencies, contracts often harbor a great deal of hidden risk. How can an organization meet sales goals without increasing that risk, ...
Read More
A recent survey from EY revealed that many companies are facing difficulties with their ASC 606/IFRS 15 compliance programs. According to the report, 71% of CFOs say their revenue recognition programs are not yet complete and 45% are having difficulties implementing or upgrading to a new system and may miss ...
Read More
As business competition increases, Deloitte’s 2017 Global Chief Procurement Officer Survey notes that procurement “has an invitation to create a strategic advantage for the businesses they serve.” CPOs who participated in the survey overwhelmingly believe analytics will have the greatest impact on procurement over the next two years. Even though ...
Read More
The average Fortune 2000 company has between 20,000 and 40,000 active contracts at any given time. It is understandably difficult to manage that much information using a manual process. Yet failing to effectively manage contract risk can force an organization to forego millions of dollars in revenue, creating unnecessary risks, ...
Read More
Managing supplier relationships, obligations and risks in the source-to-contract and the procure-to-pay processes is a significant challenge for procurement organizations. The source-to-contract process begins with the analysis of required products or services and development of a sourcing strategy to acquire those products or services. RFx creation, supplier selection, proposal or ...
Read More
Today’s enterprises compete in a global marketplace characterized by uncertainty, complex supply chains, and stringent regulatory requirements. In this kind of business environment, compliance can be difficult to achieve on a consistent basis. “The corporate legal landscape is fraught with an increasingly complex regulatory environment, a never-ending balancing act between ...
Read More
The Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply's (CIPS) Risk Index retreated from its record high in the first quarter of 2017 but potentially disruptive supply chain risks remain. The index saw its first improvement in six quarters, declining from 82.6 to 81.9. "The growth outlook is brightening, headwinds are diminishing, ...
Read More
When you hear the word ‘contracts’, what do you think of? Closing deals? Generating revenue? Committing to obligations? Managing risk? Contracts are involved in nearly every aspect of operating a global business, and can nurture or degrade critical supplier relationships. Supplier relationships require clear communication and trust – but they ...
Read More
Effectively managing contract renewals is essential for healthy supply chain performance. If a contract expires without notice, negative consequences may soon follow. Lapsed contracts can leave procurement teams scrambling to find new suppliers in order to meet customer demands. While timely contract renewals are critical for maintaining efficiency, organizations often ...
Read More
Contract compliance and management have become a critical focus for executives in organizations across the business spectrum. According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers State of Compliance Study 2016, 98% of responding executives said that senior leadership is committed to compliance and ethics, and 89% said that compliance monitoring is a primary area ...
Read More
Managing the complexity of third-party contracts is an on-going challenge – especially for a global enterprise. Can your contract management system manage a third-party contract as well as the ones native to your organization? A recent study by PwC highlights the impact of not capturing the full value of third-party ...
Read More
Several teams within every large organization handle contracts. But they approach enterprise contract management and creation from different perspectives and with different priorities: Procurement is focused on supplier and supply chain performance, creating efficiencies and maximizing economies of scale where possible. The legal team seeks consistency of contract terms, formats, ...
Read More
What’s it worth for your company to stay off the front page of the Wall Street Journal? We’re not talking about positive press here, but rather the negative press that comes with big supply chain disruptions and compliance lapses. The type of events that not only cost tens or hundreds ...
Read More
A report from The International Association for Contract and Commercial Management revealed a startling statistic: sell-side contracts consume more than 76% of contracting resources. For half of these contracts, the cycle time from bid to execution can take 21 weeks or longer. When a global organization devotes that many resources ...
Read More
The Three Keys to Improving Buy-side Contracting Velocity For a global enterprise, negotiating a major new contract with a supplier can take months. The glacial speed of a manual contracting process can strain relationships and derail a supplier agreement and potentially sales. Many procurement organizations that Icertis has worked with ...
Read More
In a world where your pizza chain can tell you exactly where your pizza is and when it will arrive, why can't large companies keep track of their contracts, including critical obligations and renewals? PwC estimates the average Fortune 2000 company has between 20,000 and 40,000 active contracts. When these ...
Read More
Today we announced that Wipro has chosen the Icertis Contract Management (ICM) platform to accelerate the contract creation process and better manage risk. A key reason they selected Icertis was our ability to streamline back-to-back contracting. Back-to-back contracting involves linking the terms and obligations in your customer contracts with the ...
Read More
Contracts with tech service providers fail to adequately address hacking and system recovery risks. The FDIC's Office of Inspector General released a report earlier this year that found major gaps in how financial institutions (FI) are addressing business continuity issues, including cybersecurity, in their contracts with technology service providers (TSPs). ...
Read More
Is Your Contract Management System Helping You to Get Ready? According to the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply’s Risk Index, supply chain risk is near an all-time high. The index continued its worsening trend in Q4 according to the report’s analysts. Forces of deglobalisation are threatening supply chains in ...
Read More
Legacy vendors in the $36-billion-dollar* Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) market are under pressure from agile, cloud-based providers like Icertis. We've seen an increasing number of customers ditching the built in functionality in their ERP suites to adopt solutions like ours. According to a December 2016 report by Gartner, "Market Opportunity ...
Read More
More than 10,000 lawyers attended ALM’s Legaltech event. Part of the Legalweek Experience, the conference brought legal experts together with technology leaders in three days of lively discussions. The consensus? Driven by pressure to cut costs and improve efficiencies, legal departments across all industries are experiencing transformational changes. What role ...
Read More
There was $3.7 trillion in merger and acquisition activity in 2016 according to the Wall Street Journal – the third highest year in terms of deal value. Peter Weinberg, adviser on two of the largest transactions, remarked, "I haven’t seen a set of factors that’s been more bullish for M&A ...
Read More
In today’s world we are increasingly accustomed to knowing "where things are" from both a physical and service standpoint. Ecommerce sites can tell you where your order is, when it leaves the warehouse and estimate when it will arrive at your house. You can find out where a flight is ...
Read More
Yesterday, the 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to two economists for their contributions in the field of "Contract Theory". Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom are being recognized for creating frameworks to write contracts – improving both the design of contracts and shedding light on how contracts help us ...
Read More
In May 2014, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) released new guidelines for recognizing revenue in contracts with customers. It signifies the biggest accounting standard change in the last decade and will be effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after December ...
Read More
According to a recent Gartner study, the demand for Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software will steadily increase for the foreseeable future. Shortened time-to-market cycles, increased M&A activity and the ever-present challenges of governance, risk and compliance all put pressure on an organization to exercise greater control over their contracting process. ...
Read More
Britain's vote to leave the EU stunned the world and sent shockwaves through the global financial markets. While the initial shock has faded, it’s still unclear the impact Brexit will have on global commerce. The decision - the first of its kind - calls for Britain to renegotiate all new ...
Read More
In our last blog, we explored why in today’s data centric, fragmented and siloed business world, contracts are an enterprise’s “single source of truth”. Traditional data management systems make it difficult to aggregate data and gain meaningful insight from contracts, but by deploying a cloud-based Contract Life-cycle Management (CLM) solution ...
Read More
Contracts are the central nervous system of your enterprise, communicating a vast amount of information that defines the scope of your operations. The importance of contracts can't be overstated: in fact, more than 80% of a company's transactions are tied to contracts. In a perfect world, your contract portfolio provides ...
Read More
Icertis is proud to be named a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Contract Life-Cycle Management (CLM) report. Icertis is the only vendor to receive a 5.0 in the product strategy criterion across all three contract scenarios; sell-side, buy-side and all contracts. Icertis also received a 5.0 for customer references around ...
Read More
There's no question that the enterprise software of the past caused significant angst for end users. Clunky, hard to implement and difficult to use, these “solutions” were often enterprise-wide headaches. Today, thanks to parallel advances in consumer technology and Cloud computing, enterprise software products can offer the same user-centric, smart, ...
Read More
Businesses today need a better way to manage their contracts - after all, enterprises typically have thousands of contracts in force at any given time, and the ability to proactively manage them is pivotal to a company's success. As the leading provider of contract lifecycle management in the cloud, we've ...
Read More
The most important part of managing contracts at Fortune 500 companies is not what you know about them—it's what you don't know that can cost you. The risk is real. Without an enterprise approach to contract lifecycle management, your organization runs the risk of taking a hit to the bottom ...
Read More