Vertiv Upgrades Contract Management System to Power Business Transformation

Business Challenge

When Vertiv was divested from its parent company, Emerson Electric, they seized the opportunity to replace their legacy contract management system, Emptoris. Not only was Emptoris soon to be sunsetted, but Vertiv reported poor visibility into its contracts, not knowing where they were or what they said.

The new system had to be easy to use and needed the capability to manage contracts in eight different languages, including Chinese. The RFP issued for the project included over 250 business requirements. By collecting all contracts in a single repository, the company hoped to create a more structured process around contract authoring, as well as improve control over the entire contract lifecycle.

Solution

The initial roll-out focused on procurement and involved importing a vast library of legacy contracts from Emptoris into the Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform. Vertiv used the divestiture as an opportunity to identify inefficient processes and replace them with new, streamlined workflows.

This would have been impossible without the enhancements provided by the ICI platform. The existing contracts were evaluated to determine which clauses to discard, and which ones to use as templates going forward. The new system simplified contract management from end to end. With the new system in place and running smoothly, the company’s associates had time to focus on strategic initiatives designed to drive growth. As a result, Vertiv can build healthier relationships with both customers and suppliers.

Results

The initial phase was piloted with 750 contracts and was deployed in under six months. In addition to procurement contracts, the solution covers NDAs and real estate and logistical agreements. Contract metadata is automatically updated whenever terms are changed. Just a year later, the system successfully manages over 9,000 contracts in eight languages.

In the future the company plans to leverage its new platform to rollout phase two: a vendor contract management solution for Central and Latin America that will use artificial intelligence to identify metadata in third-party contracts.

This would have been impossible without the enhancements provided by the ICI platform. The existing contracts were evaluated to determine which clauses to discard, and which ones to use as templates going forward. The new system simplified contract management from end to end. With the new system in place and running smoothly, the company’s associates had time to focus on strategic initiatives designed to drive growth. As a result, Vertiv can build healthier relationships with both customers and suppliers.

The new system had to be easy to use and needed the capability to manage contracts in eight different languages, including Chinese. The RFP issued for the project included over 250 business requirements. By collecting all contracts in a single repository, the company hoped to create a more structured process around contract authoring, as well as improve control over the entire contract lifecycle.

The new system had to be easy to use and needed the capability to manage contracts in eight different languages, including Chinese. The RFP issued for the project included over 250 business requirements. By collecting all contracts in a single repository, the company hoped to create a more structured process around contract authoring, as well as improve control over the entire contract lifecycle.