Litigation Readiness Checklist for Contract Managers

Litigation Readiness Checklist for Contract Managers

Contract managers are responsible for drafting, negotiating, and managing contracts on behalf of their organization, and may be involved in legal disputes related to those contracts. Contract managers can benefit from having a litigation readiness checklist to ensure their organization is prepared for legal disputes related to contracts. 

A litigation readiness checklist can help contract managers to:  

Aavenir's Connected Contract Management Experience

Welcome to Aavenir - Your ServiceNow partner for intelligent contract lifecycle management.

Are you looking for a modern, streamlined solution for managing your contracts that is fully integrated with ServiceNow? Look no further than Aavenir Contractflow.

With Aavenir Contractflow, you can enjoy a connected contract management experience that streamlines your contract lifecycle from start to finish. Our AI-powered platform simplifies contract creation, negotiation, execution, and management, allowing you to focus on what matters most: growing your business.

Aavenir Contractflow seamlessly stitches procurement, finance, legal, and IT workflows and integrates well with ServiceNow LSD, GRC, SLM, PSM, and SPM. This means you can manage contracts across multiple departments and enjoy a unified view of all your contracts. Contract managers can easily manage vendors, invoices, compliance, and more without the need for multiple applications or manual processes.

Don't just take our word for it - see Aavenir Contractflow in action for yourself with a live demo. Our demo will showcase the full capabilities of our platform and how it seamlessly integrates with ServiceNow.

Ready to take the next step? Test drive our solution and see how Aavenir Contractflow can revolutionize your contract management process. Our team of experts will be on hand to answer any questions you have and help you get started on your journey to digital contract management.

Don't settle for outdated, manual contract management processes. Upgrade to Aavenir Contractflow and experience the future of contract lifecycle management today.

Meet Aavenir at CLOC Global Institute 2023

Meet Aavenir at CLOC

CLOC is a community of legal leaders who support and challenge one another to help solve the industry's most pressing issues, focusing on legal innovations and transformations.

Aavenir is a silver sponsor of the 2023 CLOC Global Institute - the top-tier legal operations event around the globe! Come visit us at Aavenir booth 119 and witness the power of our cutting-edge AI-enabled connected Source-to-Contract solutions through an exclusive demo.

Attending the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) event is a great opportunity for legal professionals to explore the latest developments in legal operations and learn about the latest source-to-contract solutions. Stop by the Aavenir booth 119 at the event, and learn more about how these solutions can help your organization streamline legal services delivery and improve overall contract management processes in a connected ecosystem.

Meet Aavenir at CLOC Global institute 2023

Aavenir's Source-to-Contract solutions are designed to help businesses manage their contracts from the sourcing process through to contract execution and management. The platform includes features such as contract request, RFX management, vendor management, obligation management, contract authoring, and contract management. By using a connected ecosystem approach, Aavenir's solutions help to reduce manual tasks, automate workflows, and provide real-time visibility into the contract lifecycle. This can help legal professionals to focus on more strategic tasks, while also reducing legal risks and improving contract compliance.

At the Aavenir booth, attendees can learn more about how these solutions work and how they can be customized to meet the specific needs of their organizations. They can also get a hands-on demo of the platform and speak with Aavenir's experts to get answers to any questions they may have. By taking advantage of this opportunity, attendees can gain valuable insights into the latest trends and best practices in legal operations, and discover how they can improve their own contract management processes.

 With Aavenir, every contract is a goldmine of value, and we'll show you how to unleash its full potential. Schedule a meeting with us.  

Contract Scorecard

Contract Scorecard (Contract Management KPI (Key Performance Indicators) worksheet)  

A Contract Management Balanced Scorecard (CMS) is a performance measurement framework that lets organizations track and evaluate their contract management processes performance. It typically includes a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) and performance measures aligned with the organization's strategic objectives. A CMS typically consists of the following four perspectives:  

  1. Financial Perspective: It measures financial aspects such as cost savings, revenue generated, and return on investment (ROI).
  2. Customer Perspective: It measures customer (or supplier) satisfaction and the effectiveness of contract management processes in meeting customer (or supplier) requirements.  
  3. Internal Business Processes Perspective: It measures the efficiency and effectiveness of contract management processes, such as a time-to-contract award, contract compliance rate, and contract renewal rate.  
  4. Learning and Growth Perspective: It measures the organization's ability to learn, innovate and adapt to changes. It covers aspects such as the training and development of the contract management team, the implementation of innovative technologies, and the level of automation of the contract management process.  

The balanced scorecard approach allows organizations to track multiple aspects of their contract management performance and identify improvement areas. It also helps align the contract management objectives with the organization's overall strategy and goals. How to compute and measure each of these aspects? Download the detailed worksheet now to get started. 

The Connected Contract Management Experience: Maximizing Outcomes Across The Enterprise

Contracts are the heart and soul of businesses and define arrangements and obligations between you, your customers, and your vendors. You already know the value of a robust CLM solution to your contract management process and legal teams. But are you seeking greater value from your CLM solutions? The value that hugely benefits your upstream and downstream processes like sourcing, procurement, payments and invoicing, governance and compliance, and delivers outcomes across your enterprise never imagined before? 

Connected Contract Management Experience

A ‘connected contract management experience’ can bridge gaps between people, processes, and systems that organizations struggle with and deliver far-reaching value aligned with business objectives. It enables tracking and monitoring of productivity, risk, cost, and revenue KPIs that spread across multiple functions within the enterprise. 

Watch this one-hour interactive session and hear from Aavenir’s Contract Management and Source-To-Pay experts on maximizing outcomes with the connected contract management experience. 

In this 60-minute LIVE session on how a Connected Contract Management Experience can boost S2P outcomes, attendees will also see a demonstration of Aavenir’s AI-driven connected contract management solution and learn:

Unlock the Power of AI-driven Insights to Author & Manage Contracts

For data-driven organizations, simple contract management systems won’t solve complex vendor & contracting problems. Are you able to extract key high-risk clauses that counterparties introduced in agreements they sent to you? Or is your contract management system capable of assisting in contract reviews and providing relevant contract insights using AI? 

McKinsey & Company reports that 90 percent of annual revenue across industries is documented in contracts. Increased contract automation can help in frictionless contract approvals and collaborative communications, but are you leveraging the power of AI to its fullest?

Even though contract management organizations are aware of ML & AI, they are yet to unleash the full potential of what AI has in store for many different use cases, including the 3Es:

Organizations are exploring artificial intelligence (AI) to author, execute, and manage contracts, but are unable to extract the full potential of AI & machine learning technology to transform business outcomes.

Watch this 30-minute webinar and demo to learn more about defining a path to AI-driven contracting excellence in your CLM journey.

In this webinar, you will learn:

Get started with your AI-driven Contract Management transformation journey!

Register Today!

A Leading Telecommunications Company Enabled Contract Creation on the fly with Automated Contract Request Module on ServiceNow

About Company

A leading provider of satellite communications and IT services - delivering critical communications services, based in Texas, serves more than 3,200 customers in over 140 countries across diverse verticals including, Mining, Maritime, Energy,  Media, Telecom, Cruise, NGO, Government, and Enterprise sectors. Known for its passionate customer focus and strong safety culture, the world’s most comprehensive network helps enable faster and seamless pole-to-pole coverage from a global hybrid satellite, besides microwave, cellular, fiber, MPLS, and IP transport network with direct access to public cloud platforms.

Client’s Contract Management Challenges

Despite having a CLM solution, the team was facing operational challenges in managing the contacts across the organization. The contracting processes were manual and inefficient with limited visibility into the specifics. There was no involvement of legal in the contract creation cycle. 

Non-user-friendly CLM system with no user adoption across teams

The global communications partner used Traditional CLM software to manage its contract lifecycle, but the user adoption across teams was zilch. To a large extent, the processes were manual as well as non-standardized Sales, Finance, HR, and IT teams (internal customers) used to reach out to their Legal team for their contractual needs. Most workflows were manual, from contract request submission to contract review and negotiation. The legal team reached out (to the internal customer/s) via email or phone call to understand the need or to gather additional information required to fulfill the requirement. 

And when it came to the adoption experience, it  was not cutting across the different functional areas. So it was one of the prime reasons they decided  not to renew the extension for the legacy Contract Management Software. 

Legal team bottlenecks 

Since the organization is vast and most teams work in silos, the entire contracting process has been marred by inefficiencies, especially between sales and legal teams. The sales team usually created contracts in their MS-CRM dynamics, and then they were sent to the legal team for further proceedings. However, due to a lack of visibility and transparency, the legal team was hardly getting adequate review time. 

Moreover, the legal team had to adhere to very short notices to check the contract's compliance parameters and other crucial areas. 

Inability to locate and trace contracts

The user adoption of CLM was inadequate, and most processes were manual. Hence, despite having a contract repository, not all contracts were uploaded to it. As a result, some contracts were even distorted beyond their existing CLM software as well. This situation was repeatedly resulting in errors and challenges for everyone involved. 

Scattered contracts and siloed operations were a major headache for the legal team, which pursued them to initiate the requirement for a smart CLM system. 

The Solution - Aavenir Contract Lifecycle Management Solution for Telecommunications Industry

The prior bad experience with their CLM system made their CLM evaluation process extremely cautious and precise. After a careful evaluation of features, functionalities, and ease of use, they zeroed down its choice on Contractflow. Th e global communications partner partnered with Aavenir to rethink the approach to end-to-end management of their complex contract processing from MS CRM for creating contract requests to DocuSign for Signatures. 

They implemented Aavenir Contractflow on ServiceNow for different teams involved, It will primarily cater to the legal in Sell-Side & Buy-Side Contract for those based in the United States & Australia helping them digitize all of their paper contracts using Aavenir word-add in plug in and allowing them to access all its contracts in single contract repository.

Legacy Contract Migration

Voluminous legacy contracts were successfully imported from their existing CLM software and stored in the Aavenir Contract repository. Successful migration of their siloed contracts without any data loss, with the help of third-party,  not only improved overall visibility, but also enabled the reduction in time spent searching for them. 

Out-of-the-box and Lean Contract Request Module 

The contract request module has been customized and rebuilt to accommodate the requirements. Internal customers (requestor) can create a contract request (intake form) either via MS CRM, based on email (MS-outlook), or directly in Contractflow.  Instead of primary 5 fields, this revamped version offers 75 fields to ease the contract management process. 

With Aavenir contract request templates, users can now create contract requests directly from their Outlook, without login into Aavenir Contractflow, which gets assigned to the Contract Manager who is mentioned in the email. 

Similarly, the Sales team or Requestor can initiate a request through MS-CRM and it lands in the Aavenir Request module. The entire process is so lean and simplified that the journey from contract request to legal contract creation happens in a few clicks. 

Seamless Collaboration

They have implemented a variety of major contract types. Regardless of the contract type and the channel from which a contract request has been submitted, the entire system and collaboration workflows are seamless. Besides, the internal linking - ticket-to-contract is a seamless journey even for non-legal users as they don't need to login to the CLM solution now and then. In fact, they get status updates from their MS Outlook. In all, Aavenir's solution successfully optimized their contracting process. 

Faster Turnaround / Accelerated Contract Lifecycle

As soon as the contract request is sent, based on the contact request ID, the agreement is created in Contractflow. Everything is impromptu and dynamic - no backlogs in the entire process anywhere. 

Furthermore, the collaborative and cohesive implementation of the inbuilt chat module bridges the communication and collaboration gaps among contract requesters, contract managers, and other teams. 

This LIVE chat mechanism helps get most of the things resolved on time and, as a result, accelerates the entire lifecycle of contract management. 

The Multi-global Users

The global communications partner team comprises a global team and the Aavenir Contractflow application is used and implemented across 4 continents. The sales department is spread across Europe and Africa, the legal department sits in Australia, and the other teams, including Sales, Legal, and HR, are spread across North America and Malaysia.

Contract Management Dashboards

Aavenir Contractflow dashboards give deeper insight into contract status, enhance visibility and reduce risks. Their leadership team, spread across the globe, can visualize all the needed metrics, KPIs, and metadata, harnessing the power of AI-powered contract analytics in real-time with visual dashboards. 

“The ability to create a contract request from an outlook is a wow factor. We use ready-made Aavenir templates for request submissions and contracts seamlessly get created in Aavenir CLM.”

-   Manager, Commercial Contracts

Key Results

In just 1-month post soft launch of Contractflow 3.0, the latest NOW version - San Diego, they were able to successfully migrate legacy contracts and streamline contract lifecycle management by implementing Aavenir Contractflow on the Now Platform.

Contract Termination Process Checklist

Contract Termination Process Checklist

Based on organizational policies, contracts are usually created with 30, 60, or even 90 days' notice of termination. If your contract has a termination with cause clause, you will have to present the reason for termination. Hence, as a rule of thumb, before you proceed with the contract termination process,  identify the reasons leading to termination, it could be any of the following:

Whatever the cause may be, ideally you should contact an attorney if you are unsure about the contract termination process. An attorney can help you identify the nuances of the contract and avoid any legal pitfalls. However, if you use an AI-enabled CLM solution, like Aavenir Contractflow, you need not look back and worry about your contract lifecycle management workflows. 

To get practical insights into the contract termination process, access this checklist by filling out the form and clicking on “Download Now”. 

Set Contract Review on Autopilot with AI-based Obligation Management [With Legal Operators]

In partnership with Legal Operators 

Set Contract Review on Autopilot with AI-based Obligation Management

Win back 60% of the legal time by automating with the #1-rated contracting obligation management platform for ease of use.

In every signed contract each contracting party is committed to the undertaking or performing obligations. 

However, identifying and managing hundreds and thousands of such obligations across numerous agreements can be painful and daunting. Obligations pertaining to contracts come in all shapes and sizes that span across various milestones with deliverables, quality, security, audit, and regulatory requirements.

Are you facing contract performance and compliance events like: 

Join us for an engaging, practical session on how you can implement an effective AI-based obligation management solution to manage contract performance and drastically reduce non-compliance risk. 

This session is for Legal, Procurement, Sourcing, IT and Compliance Teams focused on:

To Explore how Aavenir can help achieve compliance and obligation management:

Schedule a Personalized Demo

 

A CPOs Guide to Managing Buy-side Contracts with Lesser Risk, Greater Efficiency

A contract management process that will guide the entire lifecycle of the contracts will ultimately make or break the organization. For overburdened vendor management and legal teams, handling hundreds of active vendor agreements can be a headache. 

According to the World Commerce & Contracting Association, 50% of buy-side teams cite improving internal processes as one of their greatest challenges, and 37% cite operational workload.

CPOs are responsible for guaranteeing the diversity of suppliers in terms of numbers and ensuring that supplies continue if a first-choice provider is unable to deliver the needed goods or services. Contract lifecycle management is not just filing documents anymore. The entire process entails understanding every aspect of a contract’s lifecycle to extract meaningful data insights. When we talk about buy-side contracts, in particular, their main focus is to improve spend visibility, minimize maverick spending, boost the visibility of suppliers, and enforce compliance. 

Access your E-book copy by completing the form and clicking “Download Now.”