Icertis and SAP Are Bringing Contract Intelligence to the Intelligent Enterprise

At Icertis, our vision is to transform the foundation of commerce through contract intelligence.

We define contract intelligence very precisely: Contracts define commercial relationships. Contract intelligence is the ability to leverage technology to ensure the intent of those relationships is correctly memorialized in the contract and fully realized in practice.

The Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform is native to the cloud and developed to easily integrate into enterprise systems of record. Enterprise integrations have been central to our strategy from Day 1—only by connecting contract data with operational data can organizations ensure that contractual obligations and entitlements are being tracked and fulfilled.

Now we’re taking this transformative approach to contracts to the next level with our new Endorsed App - ICI for SAP S/4HANA (Buy Side).

SAP S/4HANA is widely recognized as the leading ERP system on the market. S4/HANA delivers significant strategic advantage by optimizing business processes and providing decision-makers with a unified view of enterprise operations, such as procurement and finance, and automates many of the manual tasks historically associated with gaining an understanding of what resources are entering and exiting a business.

A recent study by Aberdeen showed that best-in-class companies—as defined by productivity, profitability, and other measures—were nearly 40% more likely to have deployed a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform than their lower-performing peers (50% vs. 36%).

“The demand for timely and accurate information to enable insightful business decisions has been a constant pressure given the uncertain business climate, which has moved from one crisis to the next,” the report authors note. “…It requires strong data management capabilities and processes as the foundation to build on for the information and insights that management needs.”

Yet for all the benefits that cloud-based ERP systems deliver, without contract data, business leaders are missing the whole picture.

While ERP systems can tell business leaders what is happening in the business, comparing that data to what was agreed to by the business (in its contracts) has been a gap with material impact on outcomes: World Commerce & Contracting has estimated that, on average, 9.2% of a contract’s value is lost due to terms not being fulfilled. These missed benefits often pass unnoticed in the enterprise because contract data is siloed in static documents.

With our new Endorsed App – ICI for S/4HANA (Buy Side) combined with our previously announced Endorsed App – ICI for SAP CPQ with S/4 HANA (Sell Side), we are shattering this potential-limiting paradigm.

These integrations allow contract data to flow directly into S/4HANA and the ICI platform so decision-makers can gain real-time insights into enterprise obligations and entitlements. The integrations also allow organizations to automate contract-powered financial and compliance processes that directly impact profit and risk. The joint solution provides leaders with a new depth of understanding of what’s driving the business—and powerful new levers to steer toward future success.

Because contracts are ubiquitous and often untracked, Icertis and SAP's joint solutions allow organizations to continue to run core business processes while leveraging Icertis'  deep AI capabilities with contracting. In addition to SAP S/4HANA, SAP and Icertis have jointly developed several solutions including ICI for SAP Ariba and ICI for SAP Fieldglass, all of which are available on the SAP Store. Together, SAP and Icertis accelerate digital transformation by addressing several critical workflows in a single deployment.

Enterprise integration of contract data delivers value across a company’s value chain, from buy-side to sell-side and the to finance and legal teams that sit between them. These use cases are just a small sample of the digital transformation that can be delivered by Icertis + SAP:

Buy-side:

Sourcing leaders, strategic buyers, and tactical buyers need full visibility into the source-to-contract lifecycle to ensure compliance, reduce supply chain risk, and control costs.

With ICI for SAP S/4HANA (Buy Side), these professionals can initiate contracts in ICI or Ariba, pull appropriate master data from S/4HANA, negotiate contracts in ICI, then push executed contract information like pricing and terms into S/4HANA. This enables buy-side users to:

• Effectively negotiate commercial and legal terms by leveraging pre-approved legal language and clauses, thereby maximizing savings  
• Gain complete visibility into supplier spend, with advanced reporting and dashboards
• Identify and assess contract risks by automatically tracking commitments, expiries, deviations, and other obligations 
• Ensure negotiated pricing and terms are adhered to on invoices  

Sell-side:

Sales and sales operations need to ensure customer satisfaction and commercial performance with fast, error-free quotes, orders, and delivery.

With ICI for S/4HANA (CPQ), sales professionals can initiate sales quotes in SAP CPQ, access approved quote information, flow that information into the sales contract in Icertis for execution, and finally push sales obligations into S/4HANA to automate fulfillment and invoicing. This enables sell-side users to:

• Create and approve quotes quickly, using existing templates and approved quotes, and accelerate sales contracting cycles
• Drive deal velocity through improved collaboration between Legal and Sales stakeholders
• Track all your sales obligations through advanced reporting capabilities
• Capitalize on up- and cross-sell potential during the contract duration  

Finance:

Finance needs a firm understanding of what is coming into the business and what is going out. Contract data has always been part of the equation, yet has historically not been automated but rather painstakingly extracted and entered into financial systems.

With ICI for S4/HANA (Buy Side) and ICI for S4/HANA (Sell Side), finance can leverage AI to extract pertinent contract data and flow it into master data to document terms, pricing, and other financial data, which can then be compared to operational data.

This enables finance users to:

• Reduce revenue leakage through the implementation of efficient and robust processes along the contract lifecycle 
• Capitalize on up- and cross-sell potential during the contract duration 
• Reduce the cost of legal disputes through better insights into clause deviations and usage with the help of advanced analytics 

Conclusion

Contracts define what a business buys, what it sells, and how it runs. With ICI + SAP, the best-run businesses in the world can run better—futureproofing their foundation and delivering the automation and insights they need to be ready for whatever comes next.

To learn more about this exciting new product, visit our listing on the SAP Store, or contact us.

Alex Nadesan is vice president of Global SAP Alliances at Icertis.