Icertis was the first company to recognize the true power of contracts. These documents govern every dollar in and out of a business, and we built the Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform to empower users to turn these powerful documents into strategic advantage and with a vision of transforming the foundation of commerce.
Evolving the contract as a first-class enterprise object (at the level of objects like the customer, supplier, employee, and product), has been a very interesting journey. What this has meant for our customers is that the ICI platform has become central to business processes, integrating with the established systems of record – Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), and Human Capital Management (HCM) systems. This deep connection of contracts to enterprise systems – a first in the history of CLM – has enabled the rules of business, the commitments, risk, and governance to be baked into the business process for a total experience for business users.
Bringing the Total Experience to Commerce
In a commercial setting, few areas of a business can benefit more from total experiences than procurement. Historically, the process of identifying suppliers, getting those suppliers under contract, and receiving and paying for the procured goods, has been highly disjointed. Contracts were often the most disconnected piece of the puzzle—managed manually outside the procurement system, with no insights into the sourcing process that led to the contract, nor supplier performance against the contract after it is signed.
To solve this problem, Icertis began working with SAP Ariba in 2020 as a spotlight partner to combine SAP Ariba’s industry-leading procurement capabilities with the power of the ICI platform. Both companies quickly got a taste of the customer appetite for connected contract data and the value it can deliver in an intelligent procurement setting. Within a year, our solutions were among the top-selling apps in the SAP store earning us the prestigious SAP Pinnacle Award.
Now Icertis and SAP are going even further to deliver a true ‘total experience’ for our joint customers, with an expanded partnership for enhanced contract management across the entire SAP landscape including SAP/ARIBA, SAP S4/HANA, SAP Customer Experience, SAP Field Glass and SAP SuccessFactors to help companies increase efficiency, minimize risk, and realize the full intent of their agreements.
The enhanced Icertis-SAP partnership further leverages each company’s technology, delivering even more value to a growing list of joint customers. Customers can now benefit from ICI capabilities for smart contract creation, online negotiation, AI-assisted risk identification, obligation management and contract-driven insights for decision support while operating their core source-to-pay and lead-to-cash processes within SAP solutions. Our partnership will also lead to a joint product road map and deeper technological integration to deliver enterprise-wide value with multiple touchpoints.
As SpendMatters recently put it, “…Icertis offers a way to both augment and integrate the contract data that is scattered across the SAP ecosystem without SAP having to do all of this data integration work itself. It would provide a truly singular B2B system of record for contract management and broader commercial management — and also be able to sell a solution that both a general counsel will like as well as a smart CIO.”
Icertis and SAP see contract data as the fifth system of record in the enterprise (next to ERP, CRM, SCM, and HCM) and recognize the clear value of connecting contract data to surrounding business systems. These deeper partnerships will allow us to deliver a total experience for our customers.
This partnership brings together two market leaders in their respective categories, which enables businesses to take advantage of market-leading innovations. It combines our mission of becoming the contract intelligence platform of the world with SAP’s vision for the intelligent and networked enterprises of the future.
Unleashing the Power of Contracts
These efforts with SAP fit perfectly with Icertis’ efforts to turn static contracts into real-time, structured data and connect that data to operational systems, so the intent of every contract is correctly memorialized and fully realized.
For Icertis, this integration with SAP is the most significant realization yet of our Contract Intelligence approach—and our ambitious vision to transform the foundation of commerce by harnessing the power of contracts to build trust, strengthen bonds and help create a better world.
To learn more about how Icertis and SAP work better together, visit our SAP page.
