Icertis and Microsoft: Unleashing Contract Data Across the Enterprise
In honor of Icertis winning the 2022 Microsoft US Partner of the Year Award, Paul Gleeson, Senior Vice President, Alliances and Partners, reflects on the value Icertis and Microsoft are delivering to customers today and where the future will take us.
At Icertis, we're creating a new software category: contract intelligence.
This isn't just a fancy name for contract lifecycle management—though we are leaders in the CLM space. Contract intelligence goes beyond contract workflow and storage and unleashes the power of contract data across an enterprise. Our platform extracts the critical business information found in contracts, then structures it and connects it to the systems and processes that contracts power. With contract intelligence, we are creating a fifth system of record, next to HR, finance, sales, and procurement systems.
With ambitions like these, you need great partners. That's why we partner with Microsoft.
Microsoft has been a constant and invaluable ally as we've blazed the contract intelligence trail. Since our founding over a decade ago, we have run on Microsoft Azure, and we have continuously enhanced the Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform with Azure's latest capabilities. We've also worked with Microsoft to create powerful integrations between ICI and the solutions Microsoft users rely on every day, pushing contract data and workflows into Dynamics, Word, and other tools for a seamless experience.
Thanks to this partnership, our joint customers have benefited from cutting-edge AI, unmatched flexibility and scale, and best-in-class user experiences–empowering them to do more with contracts and contract data than they ever thought possible.
Just consider a few of the outcomes documented by our joint customers:
- Best Buy improved rebate turnaround time by 70%
- Accenture unlocked commercial insights across 90,000 customer contracts in just 9 months
- Daimler accelerated vendor onboarding by 83%
Microsoft itself has seen the time it takes to create a contract reduced by half since deploying Icertis within its own operations.
In sum, the 360-degree partnership between Icertis and Microsoft is having a consequential impact on how businesses operate and has made Icertis the de facto standard for enterprise contract intelligence.
What the Future Has in Store
As exciting as this track record is, I'm even more excited for what the future has in store. We are continuously working with Microsoft to expand value for our customers. Let me highlight two important areas of focus here: Industry solutions and ESG.
Industry Solutions
Every industry has unique contracting challenges and opportunities. Given Icertis' unrivaled position in the contract intelligence space, we have extensive experience across verticals. We are accelerating time-to-value by delivering industry-tailored contract management solutions that meet their business needs. For example, we launched the market's first dedicated healthcare payers contract management solution in March. Our expertise is augmented exponentially when paired with Microsoft Industry Cloud, which activates Microsoft's entire partner ecosystem to deliver cloud solutions with last-mile functionality to customers. We are already seeing excellent outcomes through our Microsoft Industry Cloud partnership and expect to experience even more in the future.
ESG
Starting with the famous Business Roundtable memo from 2019 stating that businesses need to serve more than just their shareholders, we have seen a fundamental shift in how companies think about themselves and their impact on the world. Words like "sustainability," "diversity," and "ethical" are no longer platitudes reserved for marketing materials; they are core to how businesses operate. Icertis and Microsoft are teaming up to help companies enlist their contracts in this vital work. Contracts define business rules between suppliers and customers; therefore, they are a critical tool in operationalizing ESG initiatives and in creating purpose-driven business networks. To learn more, access our joint eBook.
Conclusion
Thinking about partnerships, my mind goes to the hit movie of the summer – "Top Gun: Maverick." Every fighter pilot needs a wingman to be successful. As the 2022 US Microsoft Partner of the Year, we at Icertis are proud to support Microsoft on its mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. And we thank them for their support of our mission to be the contract intelligence platform of the world.
To learn more about how Icertis and Microsoft are teaming up to unleash the power of contract, visit our partner page.