As is all too often the case, such M&A deals require the review of vast quantities of documentation, including contracts, and that typically means “a horde of lawyers” to determine which documents are relevant.

As Palazzolo points out, cases like this often require legal counsel to “sift through millions of electronic documents”, and this task typically falls to an army of contract or temporary staff and lawyers, at significant cost. But in this case, as with some others, the judge involved has ruled that the review can be undertaken utilising technology, specifically software to process and assess each document to determine if it is relevant.

Palazzolo writes that, “Only a handful of judges have approved the use of such data-review software in litigation, and law firms have been cautious about deploying the technology”. But as Palazzolo points out, the Justice Department go-ahead is likely to be a catalyst that will spark more interest in the use of technology in this area.

In the case of the beer companies, lawyers had identified more than a million documents that would have to be picked through in order to satisfy the government’s request for information to determine if the merger could proceed. By using technology to determine which documents were truly relevant, the number of documents ultimately handed over was reduced by around half, saving time and money.

Using technology to determine the nature of documents isn’t new, but looking more deeply at the specifics contained and automatically extracting key details, such as those contained in contracts: dates, monetary values, milestones, obligations and other clauses is something unique to Seal Software.

By adopting the same approach to that undertaken in the case of the proposed merger, Seal is able to reduce the corpus of contract documents significantly by removing expired, immaterial, draft and duplicate contracts. Seal is then able to extract key data points such as contracting parties, dates, termination clauses, jurisdictions, governing law and more. Just reducing the volume of documents that require further review is often justification alone, but these can then easily be uploaded to another system, such as CLM, CRM, ERP etc. or used for further analysis. Either way, there is a massive reduction in cost, and a compression in the time taken, it seems machine certainly can come out on top versus man.

Click to read the full WSJ article

The post Blog – The Attorney Who Is Always on the Job – Man versus Machine appeared first on Contract Discovery and Contract Analytics.

The NHS has been tasked with a target of £20billion in savings, and a not insubstantial portion of this is expected to be saved in procurement.  The NHS Standards of Procurement, “provide a clear vision of good procurement and identifies high quality procurement performance. They enable Trusts Boards to assess procurement performance and recognise areas for improvement to ensure value for money (VFM) is delivered through its procurement activity and its procurement partners.”

The paper defines Contract Management as “the management and measurement of contracts. This includes ensuring compliance with the terms and conditions, as well as documenting and agreeing any changes or amendments that may arise during its implementation or execution. It can be summarized as the process of systematically and efficiently managing contract execution, and analysis for the purpose of maximising financial and operational performance and minimizing risk.”

With procurement already expected to contribute £1.2billion of the target savings, possibly more, and with many other changes and pressures affecting the wider health service, efficient and effective contract management is essential. But with various restructuring exercises currently underway or commencing soon, means that a significant number of contracts will be transferred from one entity to another. The practical upshot with so many contracts, small and large, within the NHS is that many will not be providing VFM. Are all obligations and milestones clearly understood and being met? Are volume discount structures being applied rigorously? Are contracts auto-renewing that are no longer required?

Contract Management can only be truly effective if all contracts are known about, the terms and conditions clearly understood and tracked and milestones are managed. In order to achieve this, contracts must first be discovered. Many will be left languishing in repositories, file shares, users own computers, with no proactive management. Seal Contract Discovery and Analytics is the first automated Contract Discovery solution that will locate contracts, extracting key contract clauses, creating a complete contract abstract that can be uploaded to a Contract Management solution, along with a fully text searchable copy of the contract if required.

The post Blog – Contract Health in the NHS appeared first on Contract Discovery and Contract Analytics.

Organizations can no longer afford to delegate performance and compliance risk.

Contracts are steadily assuming increased importance as critical tools in business management. It has become essential to ensure that key commitments and obligations are captured, extracted and imported to other systems and applications. The ability to manage contracts effectively is a major source of competitive advantage, impacting both financial performance and market reputation.

This webinar will discuss several of the areas upon which performance most depends and will describe how companies are addressing weaknesses through improved systems and process:

•    Tackling organizational silos to enable improved information flows
•    Undertaking disciplined ‘contract discovery’ to support improved abstracts
•    Ensuring actionable analytics to provide business and market intelligence
Today’s contracting process must provide both a business enabler and a point of control. Join us to discover how this can be achieved.

IACCM CEO Tim Cummins will be joined by Seal Software CEO Ulf Zetterberg to share their invaluable insights into this increasingly important topic.

The post Recorded Webinar – Contract Management – How analytics is transforming value and control appeared first on Contract Discovery and Contract Analytics.

Kase advocates the use of an automated discovery solution that can enrich the most basic of data items, with layers for example covering procurement: price, quantity, delivery time, discounts, rebates, payment terms etc. as he points out, once extracted, this data is invaluable if uploaded to other systems such as ERP and e-procurement.

Using cutting edge discovery tools, Kase says, “There are clear opportunities for multi-tier contractual analysis using highly automated tools to collect and organize contract data”.

The paper further discusses the time sensitive nature of discovery, in particular in M&A situations, and that traditional, manual methods require substantial amounts of time. Kase concludes, “An automated tool approach improves time to value, lowers costs and increases overall ROI of the broader deployment.”

The paper can be downloaded from the Seal website – Click to download

The post Blog – Spend Matters Whitepaper: Seizing Control of Contract Metadata appeared first on Contract Discovery and Contract Analytics.

In the current economic and regulatory climate, procurement, legal, risk and compliance functions are placing more focus on contracting policies and processes to minimise their organisation’s exposure to risk. However for some, perhaps many, achieving good contracting practices, compliant to internal policies and processes, is the real challenge.

To ensure good contracts management, policies and processes are not sufficient. Technology is being deployed globally to support businesses with increased controls and visibility over their contracts and to help their people adopt better contracts management practices.

Join Alan Day, founder and chairman at State of Flux and Steve Tucker, senior vice president at Seal Software Group for a free 30 minute webinar to learn:

·         What risks may arise from poor contracts management.
·         How businesses can minimise their exposure to risk.
·         How to make good use of contracts management technology to support and enhance contracts management policies and processes.

Presenters
Alan Day – founder and chairman, State of Flux
Steve Tucker – senior vice president, Seal Software Group

About State of Flux
Headquartered in London, UK and with global operations and offices, State of Flux is a leading procurement and supply chain consultancy. We help our clients deliver significant and sustainable results quickly, through innovative consultancy, training and technology solutions. Our service offerings include contract lifecycle management, supplier relationship management, strategic sourcing and supply chain risk management. State of Flux works with multinational companies and major public sector organisations, delivering procurement and supply chain solutions tailored to their needs.
www.stateofflux.co.uk

About Seal Software Group
Seal Software Group helps organisations achieve control of their contracts and obligations for compliance, cost saving and competitive advantage. They have created a new market segment, Contract Discovery and Analytics, with their unique Seal cDiscovery solution. Seal cDiscovery addresses compelling pain points within all enterprises: how to find contracts, extract clauses, render them for easy review, and populate corporate repositories – CRM, CLM, ERP, SRM – with contract data.
www.seal-software.com

The post Recorded Webinar – Minimising risk through good contract management practices appeared first on Contract Discovery and Contract Analytics.

There have been a number of cases where borrowers have successfully challenged lenders to produce documentation when debts have been chased. For example, in the UK, a credit card customer of MBNA Bank, with outstanding debts on the card of around £20,000 requested a copy of the original agreement. The bank could not locate it and nor could they reconstitute it accurately, in the case of MBNA the reconstituted agreement had an inaccurate interest rate.

Had MBNA properly stored their original agreements, there would be no case for them to answer and they could have pursued the debt recovery. But maybe, like many other businesses they had stored the documents, electronically. Using advanced, automated electronic contract discovery techniques, they may have been able to locate the documents they needed.

This is just one example from the UK, where the lender has been forced to write off the debt all for a lack of proper contract management and contract discovery. The BBC News website highlighted this and many other similar cases in their article: How credit card lenders can trip up when chasing debts

The problem is not limited to the UK, similar cases in the US, such as that of Bank of America attempting to foreclose on a commercial property, have also fallen foul of an inability to locate original documentation. And in just one case, this was for a sum of $2.1million, with numerous other examples coming to light in recent years.

There’s no doubt that better record keeping is a must, as is effective Contract Management, but many organizations need to first discover the contract corpus that exists throughout their organization – often spread across multiple repositories and file stores. Seal Contract Discovery and Analytics is uniquely placed to provide the solution to automated Contract Discovery.

More information on Seal Contract Discovery and Analytics can be found on the Seal website: http://www.seal-software.com/solutions

The post Blog – Missing Contracts and Unenforceable Agreements – How Lenders Can Slip Up When It’s Time to Call in a Debt appeared first on Contract Discovery and Contract Analytics.

Following on from Thomas Kase of Spend Matters white paper “Effective Contract Discovery, Analysis and Control”, Kase, again working with Seal has produced an insightful look at the basics of Contract Discovery and why, as he puts it, “Contract management is a necessary core competency for organizations of all sizes.”

Kase goes on to outline that an often overlooked factor in contract management and visibility is time. He specifically focuses in on the time needed to reach a level of actionable visibility of the contract landscape. He uses the example of M&A, where early contract visibility is key to accelerating the due diligence phase.

The paper looks at why a lack of visibility can lead to significant liabilities downstream and moves on to introduce the benefits of automated Contract Discovery. Kase advocates organizations conduct a contract audit: “Effective contract management is critical to drive performance and contain risk. To avoid contract “surprises,” we recommend doing a full contract audit leveraging a toolset such as Seal Discovery.”

The paper can be downloaded from the Seal website – Click to download

The post Blog – Spend Matters Whitepaper: The Contract Discovery Basics appeared first on Contract Discovery and Contract Analytics.

Seal solution to streamline contract identification, reporting and clause extraction

San Francisco, CA – Seal Software Group, a provider of solutions to discover, capture, extract and manage contracts, today announced that its Contract Discovery and Analytics solution has been selected by Lender Processing Services (LPS) to help analyze key contracts within the organization, extract a range of contract clauses and provide detailed reporting and contract migration.

LPS, based in Jacksonville, Florida, is a leading provider of integrated technology and services to the mortgage and real estate industries.

Ulf Zetterberg, Founder and CEO, Seal Software Group said, “Seal Contract Discovery speeds up the location and identification of contractual documents, allowing organizations such as LPS to meet their compliance drivers. Our reporting and analysis capabilities further enhance our automated discovery and we look forward to working with LPS as they embark on their contract compliance project.”

Further information on Seal Contract Discovery and Analytics can be found at: www.seal-software.com/solutions

About Seal Software Group

Seal Software Group has created a new market segment, Contract Discovery and Analytics, with its unique Seal cDiscovery solution.

Seal cDiscovery addresses compelling pain points within all enterprises: how to find contracts, extract clauses, render them for easy review, and populate corporate repositories – CRM, CLM, ERP, SRM – with contract data.

Seal cDiscovery is installed in minutes and, without expensive configuration, automatically discovers existing contractual documents from a wide range of document and image file types. It also automatically extracts key clause metadata and provides an easy format for further review, as well as a platform for on-going management of contracts, with a fully searchable repository and obligation management tools. Critically, it allows easy migration of contracts and metadata to the full range of enterprise platforms.

Seal has the vision to make Seal cDiscovery the cVault for every enterprise – a central repository representing the ‘single source of the truth’ for contracts, used to process in-bound contracts, audit the enterprise for rogue contracts, and provide a single search, reporting and migration tool for regulatory, transactional and strategic purposes, accessed by every major enterprise process for which contracts are important.

Seal helps organizations in verticals such as legal services, financial services, oil and gas, high-tech, pharmaceutical, media, manufacturing, transportation, and telecommunications achieve control of their contracts and obligations for compliance, cost saving and competitive advantage.

For further information, visit the Seal Software website: www.seal-software.com

The post Press Release – Lender Processing Services Selects Seal Software to Support Contract Compliance and Migration appeared first on Contract Discovery and Contract Analytics.

The article, written by James Misterman, a Managing Consultant, draws upon his experience of Contract Management, project management and deployment. His article, the first in a series of four, highlights areas of ineffective contract practices that lead to monies unnecessarily being left on the table:

• Spend discounts not realized
• Payment on expired contracts
• Spend outside of contracts
• Late penalty fees
• Payment penalties and fines associated with regulatory non-compliance
• Miscalculation of existing market share impact on contractual arrangements

He discusses three pillars aligned to three primary business functions of Operations, Legal and Finance. He uses these as the basis for success and introduces his maturity curve for achieving best-in-class – starting with visibility – where most contract programs begin. He uses the example of an organization preparing for an acquisition, creating a spike in contract processing volumes and the ensuing need to mitigate risk.

Misterman advocates the approach of contract audit in the pursuit of supplier performance managements, again something that relies on visibility if success is to be achieved. Starting out with a small sample of contracts, processed perhaps manually, for any audit and review to be truly successful an automated, and reliable mechanism must be employed. Only in this way can the money be “taken off the table” he concludes.

Seal Contract Discovery and Analytics is the world’s first automated Contract Discovery solution, significantly reducing the time and cost of Contract Discovery, improving contract visibility in a reliable, repeatable fashion. Once discovered, contracts and their associated contract metadata can be migrated to a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) or other solution, helping organizations reduce cost, mitigate risk and drive competitive advantage.

View the full article on the IACCM website.

Visit www.seal-software.com/solutions for more information.

The post Blog – Failure to Manage Contracts is Costing Organizations Billions of Dollars Worldwide Each Year appeared first on Contract Discovery and Contract Analytics.

Seal solution will help locate, process, migrate and manage contacts within its organization

San Francisco, CA – Seal Software Group, a provider of solutions to discover, capture, extract and manage contracts, today announced that its Contract Management, Discovery and Analytics solution has been selected by Thoratec Corporation, the world leader in mechanical circulatory support. The solution, once deployed, will assist Thoratec in consolidating contracts within their organization, and in extracting key contract data for migration to Seal’s Contract Management solution, for improved ongoing contract processes and visibility.

Thoratec, headquartered in Pleasanton, California and with operations throughout the US and Europe, has grown both organically and through acquisition, and the Seal Software solution will aid their drive to streamline and consolidate their contract landscape.

Ulf Zetterberg, Founder and CEO, Seal Software Group said, “Seal’s unique Contract Discovery solution allows organizations of all types and sizes to quickly locate contracts, extract and analyze key data and then prepare to migrate both contracts and extracted data to a Contract Lifecycle Management platform of their choice. We look forward to the implementation of Seal at Thoratec and to them realizing the benefits that Seal is already providing many organizations the world over.”

Further information on Seal Contract Discovery and Analytics can be found at: www.seal-software.com/solutions

About Seal Software Group

Seal Software Group has created a new market segment, Contract Discovery and Analytics, with its unique Seal cDiscovery solution.

Seal cDiscovery addresses compelling pain points within all enterprises: how to find contracts, extract clauses, render them for easy review, and populate corporate repositories – CRM, CLM, ERP, SRM – with contract data.

Seal cDiscovery is installed in minutes and, without expensive configuration, automatically discovers existing contractual documents from a wide range of document and image file types. It also automatically extracts key clause metadata and provides an easy format for further review, as well as a platform for on-going management of contracts, with a fully searchable repository and obligation management tools. Critically, it allows easy migration of contracts and metadata to the full range of enterprise platforms.

Seal has the vision to make Seal cDiscovery the cVault for every enterprise – a central repository representing the ‘single source of the truth’ for contracts, used to process in-bound contracts, audit the enterprise for rogue contracts, and provide a single search, reporting and migration tool for regulatory, transactional and strategic purposes, accessed by every major enterprise process for which contracts are important.

Seal helps organizations in verticals such as legal services, financial services, oil and gas, high-tech, pharmaceutical, media, manufacturing, transportation, and telecommunications achieve control of their contracts and obligations for compliance, cost saving and competitive advantage.

For further information, visit the Seal Software website: www.seal-software.com

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