Challenge
Icertis’ procurement function ran on a process that is familiar to virtually every enterprise buyer: robust and audit-proven, but fragmented and difficult to measure. Contracting with suppliers was effective and got the job done but required intensive manual efforts with offline Word markups for NDAs, MSAs, SoWs and order forms, with email-based exchanges between procurement, internal stakeholders, external counsel and the vendor. This resulted in:
- Risky language slipping through. There was no consistent way to catch non-market or non-favorable clauses early, exposing the business to leakage and avoidable outside-counsel spend.
- No established playbooks. This led to inconsistent application of organizational policies during risk review and redlining.
- Uncaptured obligations. The legacy process could not systematically capture SLAs or post-execution commitments, making proactive obligation tracking effectively impossible.
- Missing data. Cycle time, deviation rates, and review hours were never instrumented — the team managed negotiations on instinct, not data.
Solution
Standardizing contract reviews through playbooks, AI recommendations, and human-led decision-making.
To address these challenges fast, Icertis Procurement adopted Vera Engage and put it to work on live vendor negotiations.
The first step was codifying the team’s negotiation know-how and best practices into playbooks, with Vera Engage creating playbooks using previously negotiated positions from historical documents. With playbooks in place, the team rewired the daily workflow around them:
- Playbook-driven review. Third-party MSAs were run through the Vera Engage Microsoft Word add-in against a purpose-built MSA playbook; flagged risks were resolved directly against suggested positions.
- One motion across every contract type. The same review-compare-redline motion was applied across NDAs, MSAs, SOWs, Order Forms, DPAs, and amendments.
- Human at the center. Vera Engage prepared positions and surfaced deviations, but it was procurement and legal professionals who made the decisions — pairing the output with established negotiation frameworks.
- Straight into the system of record. Final negotiated documents flow into the Icertis platform as the authoritative agreement record, with metadata, pricing, and commercial terms captured for reporting.
"A contract is negotiated twice: once at the table, and once in the redlines. Vera Engage makes sure we win both."
Shailesh Atre · AVP and Head of Global Procurement, Icertis
Benefits
Delivering measurable gains in negotiation speed, legal efficiency, and operational scale.
Icertis Procurement moved to a live, AI-native contracting operation — with results that are both measured and repeatable:
- 30% reduction in legal spend through playbook-driven contract reviews.
- 20% faster contract negotiations by reducing manual review and redlining effort.
- 85% contract types standardized using AI-assisted playbooks and review workflows.
- 90% metadata attributes captured in Icertis for reporting and downstream contract management.
