Increased Visibility to SLAs
Time Savings in Reports
Johns Hopkins University (JHU), America’s first research university founded in 1876 and ranked #12 in World University Rankings 2021, is home to nine world-class academic divisions working together.
The strategic sourcing team at JHU collaborates with 3000+ vendors using integrated systems for contract management. Contract administration team manages 5000-6000 active services and product contracts for the Lab research, IT, Admin/facilities, and other categories.
The JHU uses SAP for managing vendors, product catalogues, and shopping cart for products and services procurement. Recently, they have launched the Procurement Service Portal built on ServiceNow to offer a single integrated point of contact to the Procurement team. The portal supports inquiries and requests only regarding SAP shopping carts, SAP purchase orders, PO related invoices, or general inquiries. All matters regarding contracts, sourcing, travel, P-Card, non-PO invoices, etc were handled through traditional channels. JHU wanted to incorporate these matters on ServiceNow.
Typically, it was taking multiple emails back and forth between procurement, contract management, risk assessment, and all other stakeholders regarding contract requests, reviews, approvals, and signatures that slowed down contract turnaround time. As a result many ad hoc purchase requisitions happened with no vendor contract in place.
Additionally, all contract requests and approvals were tracked manually or in spreadsheets and ad-hoc tools.Thus, JHU had no real-time visibility on the status of contracts.
Matthew, a ServiceNow champion at JHU, discovered Aavenir, a certified CLM solution built natively on ServiceNow. Aavenir’s clear domain expertise and solution features are nicely aligned to JHU’s overall source-to-pay strategy. Hence, despite covid situation causing delays in budget allocation, JHU implemented Contractflow on their existing ServiceNow and here is what they achieved:
Centralized contract processing on ServiceNow:
Using Contractflow, JHU can handle 30+ different types of contracts (e.g. Master Agreements, NDAs, supplier contracts, research contracts, IT MSA, etc.). Within a few days, they could set up a clause library and 20-50 contract templates to enable self-service contracting on ServiceNow.
Artificial intelligence for 3rd party contracts:
JHU was pretty excited about the AI capabilities of Contractflow to automatically capture useful metadata from 3rd party contracts. The smart suggestion feature enhances self-service contracting and ensures that contract language comply with university policies and procedures, as well as applicable federal and state laws.
Frictionless contract approval workflow:
Aavenir’s easy to use workflow interface enhanced collaboration between internal stakeholders and vendors while creating, reviewing, negotiating, and signing contracts. A rule-based customizable workflow orchestration and Microsoft-word based redlining helped JHU to minimize time spent in emails and managing contract versions.
Contract Analytics:
Using dashboard and reports, JHU can track deliverables, monitor KPIs of contract processes, identify contracts in approval or sent for signing. It takes seconds to access contract information using google-like search or filter contracts by type.
JHU and Aavenir teams went through a series of sessions for successful implementation and adoption. And, it wasn’t long before they saw the benefits of using Aavenir Contractflow.
Unified source-to-contract experience: Extended ServiceNow capabilities to centralize sourcing requests and contract lifecycle. This also increased ROI by leveraging existing subject matter experts, IT support, security, and other KPI’s from a ServiceNow perspective.
Better control of purchasing processes: JHU is expecting significant reduction, possibly eliminating hundreds of rogue purchases per year, ensuring contracts are in place, reducing exposure to risks, and providing better negotiating power.
Faster Contract Turnaround: Before Aavenir it would take weeks to internally review and negotiate contracts before both parties become comfortable to sign. With Aavenir, it has been reduced to under 10 days with fewer emails back and forth.
Want to know how leading university streamlined the procurement contracts management process using digital workflows and AI on ServiceNow?
