The Exari Blog

Top Issues Facing General Counsel in 2012

2012-01-20T15:21:00.008-05:00

A recent survey of more than 100 general counsel at American companies conducted by Corporate Counsel, in partnership with ALM Legal Intelligence, revealed that compliance and cost are the primary issues concerning general counsel in 2012.

According to the survey, 61% of respondents identified the increasing number of regulations and their growing complexity as their biggest issue. At the same time, legal departments have suffered budget cuts. And despite those shrinking budgets, 68% of respondents anticipated an increased workload. In fact, “53 % said the second-biggest issue they face, after regulations, was the pressure to do more with fewer resources.”

Traditionally, legal departments have used manual, labor intensive processes for creating their contracts. Legal staff would copy and paste existing material and then modify the content to meet specific needs or to accommodate customer requirements. To minimize risk, especially when faced with increased regulation, this approach demands the close attention of the general counsel and senior members of the legal team. Plus, the need to manage risk—to ensure the accuracy of the documents and to support regulatory compliance—dictates that organizations rely on subject matter experts at every step of the process.

Confirmation that too much time and resources are spent on each contract, comes from the recent Corporate Counsel Survey Report which found that over 30% of respondents spent more than an entire day to review a single contract. Assuming 8 working hours a day, and 125 contracts per month – these companies are spending 12,000 hours annually on contract review.

If contract creation was automated and contracts were created using pre-approved, compliant templates, much of these review costs could be eliminated while maintaining compliance with increased regulations. The cost savings in review time alone is just one element that helps an investment in contract automation software have a high return on investment.

If you’d like to learn how contract automation software can help you manage compliance and cost this year, please contact us.

Just Released: Corporate Counsel Contracts Report

2012-01-05T12:01:00.001-05:00

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that we recently conducted our second Corporate Counsel Contracts Survey at the Association of Corporate Counsel Annual Meeting. The results have been tabulated and the report is now available. You can request your complimentary copy here.

This survey was a follow-up to one we conducted in 2009, and explores a variety of issues affecting the contracts process, the level of adoption of document assembly software and the most common methods of contract management.

Contract management has long been important to the overall success, profitability and risk management of organizations. Now, with business increasing, law departments are finding they need to be more efficient in order to keep up with the heavy demand for new contracts, often with no increase in headcount. And once the contracts are created, the information or data they contain must be accessible to help management make informed decisions about the business.

General Counsel are not only tasked with reducing the organization's risk, they also need to be mindful of legal spend. This is leading some law departments to adopt more automation. In a recent post on Prism Legal, Ron Friedman suggests to general counsel that they," Get More For Less."

He goes on to say that, "The best way to lower cost is to work smarter. For all work - inside or outside - make sure you apply process improvement techniques, legal project management, the appropriate technology, and knowledge management."

For more information on contract automation technology, contact your local Exari office. The survey results are also available in webinar format. To request a copy of the webinar, click here.

New Corporate Counsel Contracts Survey [On Demand Webinar]

2011-12-22T07:34:00.001-05:00

We recently conducted our second Corporate Counsel Contracts Survey at the Association of Corporate Counsel Annual Meeting. The survey was a follow-up to one we conducted in 2009, and explores a variety of issues affecting the contracts process, the level of adoption of document assembly software and the most common methods of contract management.

The results were previewed in a recent webinar which is now available on-demand. You can sign in here to view the webinar. During the presentation you will see that the poll responses from attendees at the live webinar closely mirror the survey results.

New to this year's survey is a ranking of the top contract risks. Approximately ¾ (71%) of respondents reported being concerned about the risk of revenue leakage as a result of their contracts. Results from this survey have been compared to results from the 2009 Corporate Counsel Contracts Survey to assess how the practice of contract management is maturing.

The full results report will be available to readers of this blog after the first of the year, so please check back. In the meantime, have a wonderful holiday season.

Photo credit: Dom W

Edens & Avant Licenses Exari to Optimize Commercial Lease Creation

2011-12-15T10:12:00.001-05:00

Edens & Avant, one of the nation’s leading private owners and developers of neighborhood shopping places, has licensed Exari Document Automation Software to automate the various documents and contracts involved in the commercial leasing process.

The leasing group is implementing the solution to help them get their deals done more quickly and respond to a push from the executive level to achieve rent starts more quickly. Exari will be integrated into other systems internally such as ERP and Business Process Management (BPM) to streamline the process, avoid manually rekeying data and errors.

Will Ponder, Vice President of Investments, Southeast, Edens & Avant said, “Successful implementation of Exari will allow for fast, efficient production and negotiation of leases. Within certain parameters, we plan to empower our leasing reps to produce a lease themselves using Exari, which will eliminate time-consuming data entry and non-value-added legal review, thus getting leases out the door to potential tenants on the same day that the terms are approved."

We are pleased to welcome Edens and Avant to the Exari Community and look forward to helping them achieve their goals. To learn how you can streamline your leasing or other document intensive process, please contact us.

Document Assembly and Contract Management Resources

2011-12-01T11:16:00.002-05:00

We have expanded our resource library to provide additional tools and information on document assembly and contract management topics. The latest addition is a set of on-demand webinars. The library also contains whitepapers, case studies, demo videos, and several other free contract automation resources. It's a place to learn best practices and keep up to date with the latest industry trends.

The webinars are conducted in partnership with industry experts, ranging from Forrester Research to InsideCounsel Magazine. When possible, we have also made the accompanying presentations available for download.

Currently we offer three complimentary webinars with a fourth coming soon:

1) Managing OTC Derivatives Documentation in a Central Clearing Environment
The panel of experts discusses the new documentation requirements of central clearing and explores how financial institutions are changing their documentation management to reduce bottlenecks and avoid increased legal costs and operational risk.

2) Mitigate Risk in Your Sales Contracts
A preview of new data from an InsideCounsel survey on the "state of sales contracts," discussing how to use benchmarks to compare business process to best practice, and providing strategies for law departments to help improve their sales contracts processes in order to reduce risk.

3) The 4 Stages of Value from Contract Management
Speakers from Forrester Research and Exari discuss insights and lessons learned on how to best evaluate and implement a Contract Management (CM) system. Beginning with assessing your business problems, you will learn different strategies on how to phase in and measure success and ROI.

The fourth webinar, Corporate Counsel Contracts Survey Report 2011, is coming soon. Based on the Corporate Counsel Contracts survey conducted at the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) Annual Meeting, this webinar reveals early findings from the survey of 100+ General Counsel.

As a leader in the document automation and contract management industry - we are pleased to share relevant and insightful content with you. We encourage you to check our resource library frequently for new content and to make use of the document assembly and contract management resources. If you would like to be notified of new content, including upcoming webinars, sign up to receive our monthly newsletter.

If there are other types of content you'd like to see in the library, please tell us below in the comments.

5 Document Assembly/Legal Technology Blogs to Follow

Orica Mining Services Licenses Exari for Sales Contract Automation

2011-11-18T11:31:00.007-05:00

We are pleased to announce that Orica Mining Services, the world's leading supplier of commercial explosives, has selected Exari to automate sales contracts throughout North America.

Our interactive document generation solution will enable Orica to create and execute sales contracts more efficiently and reduce the risk of errors. Orica plans to integrate Exari into the other systems that support their sales organization including Lotus Notes and SAP.

Orica's Director of Commercial Management, Jeff Blair said, “We chose Exari because it was the best fit with our requirements including ease of use for our end users and the ability to integrate with our other internal systems. We’ll use Exari for all of our sales agreements in North America and will benefit from gains in both efficiency and risk reduction.”

Exari’s sales contracts solution automates all of the documents in the sales process. From Non-Disclosure Agreements through pricing (quote), proposal and sales contract, we provide fast, consistent and compliant documents. The solution reuses the underlying data across related documents saving time and eliminating errors no matter the complexity of the documents. Sales people can create their own pre-approved documents and contracts by answering questions in a browser-based interview.

For more information or to see the software in action, visit our website or click here to request a demo.

ACC Annual Meeting Recap

2011-11-03T16:38:00.001-04:00

Last week we were in Denver for the Association of Corporate Counsel Annual Meeting. The event was very well attended and we had great meetings with customers, prospects and people dropping by the booth. Judging by the number of people visiting our booth, there seemed to be a lot of interest in both document assembly and contract management.

Tim Cummins of the IACCM spoke on a panel entitled, "Contract Management: What is Realistic for My Department?" to a standing room only crowd. Questions from the audience ranged from "Can I trust the sales team with self-service contracts?" to "Can I implement a contract management system without additional headcount?" (The answer to both questions was yes.)

We conducted a new Corporate Counsel Contracts Survey and had more than 100 respondents. (One lucky respondent received a voicemail today telling her that she had won the drawing for an iPad2!) We're busy compiling the results which we will share in a webinar on Thursday, November 17th at 11:00 am (ET). If you'd like to attend the webinar or receive the full report of the results, please take the survey here.

For information on document assembly and contract management, visit www.exari.com.

Exari Partners with the Aberdeen Group on New Survey

2011-10-13T15:30:00.007-04:00

Automating Lead-to-Win: Shrinking the Sales Cycle, Sealing the Deal

We are pleased to be partnering with the Aberdeen Group on their new survey and invite you to participate. As sales organizations try to escape the constricted economy, one of their most significant challenges is bringing their sales cycle under control.

As top-performing selling teams continue searching for ways to reduce this window, as well as to increase their win/loss "batting average," the use of selected business processes and enabling technologies hold significant promise for better sales team performance in 2012.

Each respondent of the survey will receive a complimentary full copy of the report containing this study's results (a $399 value). Individual responses will be kept strictly confidential and data will only be used in aggregate.

We greatly appreciate your participation in this research effort and look forward to sharing the findings with you.

Take the 10-minute survey today!

Exari to Exhibit at the ACC Annual Meeting

2011-10-06T14:55:00.002-04:00

If you're heading to the Association of Corporate Counsel Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, October 23 – 26, please visit us in booth #712. We will be providing “first look” demonstrations of our new Contract Management Solution and the latest release (6.0) of Exari Document Assembly Software.

We are also conducting a follow-up survey to the Corporate Counsel Contracts Survey and all respondents will be entered into a drawing to win an iPad. To schedule a demo in advance please contact us.

Exari's new Contract Management Solution combines our patented Document Assembly Software with Contract Management capabilities including approval workflow, reporting and document management (DMS). The system is designed to create, store and manage contracts in one flexible system; and provides immediate visibility into contract data to better manage compliance, mitigate risk and act on contractual revenue opportunities.

The latest release of Exari Document Assembly Software (V 6.0) has many new features including:
• seamless integration with Exari Contract Management
• the ability to preview your document during the interview
• enhanced security features including the ability to encrypt embedded answers during Roundtripping
• improved visibility into contracts (through new tagging options)
• new batch mode for high performance output of high volume customized documents
• improved data portability and visibility across systems
• enhanced connectors for Salesforce.com, WorkSite, Alfresco and Jackrabbit

For more information about either product or to schedule a demo, please contact us.

Exari Launches New Contract Management Software

2011-09-22T14:37:00.017-04:00

We are pleased to announce the availability of our new Contract Management Solution which combines Exari's patented Document Assembly Software with Contract Management capabilities including approval workflow, reporting and document management. The system is designed to create, store and manage your contracts all in one flexible system.

Over the years, many of our customers have asked us to provide a configurable contract management solution that incorporates Exari Document Assembly. We synthesized their requirements into a single, open-standards solution: Exari Contract Management.

Investment banks, insurers, technology vendors, professional services firms and B2B manufacturers of other high-value goods are some of the organizations that realize the best ROI from contract management. Because Exari enables users to easily capture contract data and generate all types of contracts, Exari clients can automate 100% of their contracts in every part of their business and extend the benefits enterprise-wide.

For companies with existing Contract Management Systems in place, Exari Document Assembly’s open API allows for seamless integration with Sharepoint, Salesforce.com, and any other Contract Management system or database.

You can find more information about Exari Contract Management here. Click here to request a demo.

Forrester Research Presents The 4 Stages of Value from Contract Management

2011-09-09T14:31:00.007-04:00

We are sponsoring a webinar with Forrester Research called, "The 4 Stages of Value from Contract Management," on Tuesday, September 27 at 11:00am (Eastern Daylight Time). You are invited to attend this complimentary webinar, just click here to register.

Andrew Bartels, Vice President and Principal Analyst of Forrester Research will present his research and share insights into implementation strategies for contract management and automation systems in order to realize the best return on investment.

Andrew will be joined by Exari's Jamie Wodetzki and Therese McGee who will share lessons learned from over 10 years of implementations and preview Exari's new Contract Automation Solution.

In this webinar you will learn:

How to achieve value in each stage of implementation.
How to get sales and legal on the same team.
How to avoid common implementation mistakes.
How to pitch contract management to your CFO.

A Q&A session with the audience and panel speakers will be held after the roundtable discussion to allow for interaction between the panel and attendees.

For more information or to register, click here. All registrants will receive a recording of the webinar shortly after the live event.

Document Assembly Can Improve Law Firm Profits

2011-08-25T12:25:00.001-04:00

In this week's Wall Street Journal, Vanessa O'Connell writes that, "More than half of the country's top 50 law firms may have overstated a key measure of profitability in a closely watched ranking." The ranking of "profits per partner," published annually by the American Lawyer magazine in May, is the most commonly used gauge of health in the $100 billion global corporate-law-firm industry.

The findings— which were shared with The Wall Street Journal by a person briefed on the report— raise questions about which law firms are making the most profit as the legal industry slowly recovers from a prolonged downturn.

An analysis by Citi Private Bank Law Firm Group reportedly found that 22 percent of the top 50 firms overstated profits per partner by more than 20 percent in 2010.

Part of the problem may be differences in definitions of equity partners, according to Robin Sparkman, editor in chief of the American Lawyer. "As best we can tell, the majority of our numbers about law firm profits—then and now—are identical to, or within 10 percent, of Citi's,” she told the Wall Street Journal. Calculations of overall changes in year-to-year revenue have been very close, she added.

Regardless of which numbers are correct, Document Assembly is one way for law firms to increase their efficiency and profitability. Many of these top law firms are using Exari to automate documents ranging from trust and estate documents to technology licensing agreements to new partner agreements.

Exari Document Assembly serves as both an intelligent precedents system and a platform for online delivery of Do-It-Yourself documents direct to clients. It provides the tools to create smart precedents, clause libraries and packages of documents, using the firm's intellectual property and best practices. You can see how the software works here.

The ROI of Document Assembly

2011-08-12T10:58:00.001-04:00

Depending on your accounting method, you may be trying to determine your ROI (Return on Investment), TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), or simply the payback on your investment in a document assembly or document automation solution.

There are a number of elements to consider when calculating the value of a document assembly implementation, including:

Time Savings - Automating your documents means not starting from scratch every time. You can reuse all of your standard clauses and best practices, as well as pull information from your database or CRM systems. Business or Legal users can create documents via a web interview in a fraction of the time it used to take

Cost Reduction - Legal departments don't need to spend hours drafting routine contracts or reviewing the documents, since they created or approved the templates. Think about your fully loaded cost for a senior in-house attorney. Automation can reduce or even eliminate the time they need to spend reviewing standard contracts. They could use that time instead for higher value work.

Faster Revenue - The sooner your contract is finished, the sooner you can book the revenue. And if your contracts are automated, you know exactly what's in them (i.e. no one cut and paste the wrong clause with less favorable terms).

Risk Reduction - Do you know what risks are hidden in your contracts? Do you have all the necessary data available if the regulators come to call? By automating your contracts, risks become more visible, and can therefore be managed before they become a problem. And, a much tighter approach to risk management can be built into contracts. Document automation provides immediate visibility into data to better manage compliance and mitigate risk exposure.

There is solid value in document assembly if you match the right solution to your problem. If you need help in creating a business case for your document assembly initiative, contact us and we can help calculate the value to you and your company.

2011 Contracts Survey Report Now Available

2011-07-29T16:00:00.009-04:00

Did you know that one in four companies experienced unplanned losses last year due to errors in their sales contracts? This helps explain why sales contract management has become increasingly important to the overall success, profitability and risk management of companies.

To gain insight into how law departments manage their sales [sell side] contracts and the effect it has on the success of their companies, Exari, partnered with InsideCounsel to survey its readership. The complimentary report with full results is now available here.

The detailed survey findings, compiled from more than 400 responses from corporate attorneys, suggest:

• Reducing risk in sales contracts is the highest priority for law departments
• Many companies experience businesses losses due to errors in sales contracts
• Prioritizing the automated assembly and management of sales contracts will allow companies to mitigate risk and improve overall performance

Streamlining contracting processes (both document assembly and management) will become increasingly important as legal departments feel more pressure from their business departments to improve turnaround time, particularly when the volume of sales contracts expands with the improving economy.

Download the survey findings here to learn more about the most important process issues of the sales contracts process.

Why CFOs Should Care About Sales Contracts

2011-07-14T14:50:00.002-04:00

Are you actually booking all of the profits that your company is entitled to? Because revenue leakage due to inadequate management of sales contracts is regularly costing companies a slice of their hard earned revenue. Do you know the full impact that revenue leakage is having on your bottom line?

In a recent survey of more than 400 in-house counsel conducted by InsideCounsel Magazine and Exari, more than 25% of respondents reported incurring unplanned losses or write-offs due to errors in their sales contracts during the past year.

The Aberdeen Group has reported that, "poor management of contracts in the opportunity-to-order cycle results in revenue leakage between 5% and 9%," - a figure that can be the difference in making or breaking the revenue goal.

To learn more about improving contract quality and negotiations in order to reduce revenue leakage and book more revenue, download this whitepaper,"Improve Your Bottom Line: Reduce Revenue Leakage."

Photo credit: Brooks Elliott

Derivatives Documentation in a New Market Environment

2011-06-30T11:31:00.000-04:00

With the introduction of central clearing for OTC derivatives, financial institutions will have to manage new agreements, with different business rules, in addition to the existing documentation for bilateral trading relationships.

Exari's Paul Nelmes was recently interviewed by Julia Schieffer of DerivSource and he explained how documentation will change within a Central Counterparty Clearing (CCP) environment and why financial institutions must implement efficient documentation processing methods to avoid increased legal and operational costs caused by the new market requirements.

DerivSource: How does the introduction of central counterparty clearing change the documents used to support OTC derivatives?

Exari: The existing Over-the-Counter (OTC) clearing documentation structure between financial institutions and clients or counterparties in the bilateral trade clearing environment, will be supported by the existing International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) Master Agreement and supplemental documents/annexes such as Credit Support Annex (CSA), trade confirmations.

In the central counterparty clearing (CCP) environment there will be a significant increase in the amount of documentation and overall, the documentation will be more complex. The terms of the agreements with CCPs may be less favorable to the clearing members than their typical bilateral agreement, and commonly will give the CCP power to make unilateral changes by virtue of incorporating its clearing rules (which they decide when and how to change).

Banks trading with many thousands of derivatives counterparties will be compelled by regulators to clear a certain amount of those trades on a central exchange. However, not all OTC trades will be cleared, so anyone dealing in OTC trades that are not standardized will still need bilateral ISDAs or other master agreements in place.

To read the entire interview, you can request a copy of the full article here.

And the iPad Goes To...

2011-06-23T16:31:00.000-04:00

Thanks to all of you (and there were more than 400 in-house attorneys) who completed our recent Sales Contract Survey which we conducted in conjunction with InsideCounsel Magazine.

If you'd like a sneak peek at the results, join us on Tuesday, June 28th at 11:00 am (EDT) when Karen Cariello, Associate Publisher of InsideCounsel, will be presenting some of the early findings in a webinar. You can register for the webinar here.

Rees Morrison, President of Rees Morrison and Associates, will be joining us as well and sharing some of his benchmark survey results and advice on law department best practices, as they relate to the sales contracts process.

Congratulations to Laurie McCall, Vice President and Associate General Counsel of Harris Broadcast Communications, who was the lucky winner of the iPad drawing held among the survey respondents.

General Counsel Metrics Survey

2011-06-16T14:48:00.013-04:00

Rees Morrison, noted law department management advisor and blogger has launched the largest benchmark survey ever done for law departments. We encourage you to join the more than 300 law departments who have already completed the General Counsel Metrics survey. All participants will receive a complimentary report of the results in July.

Click here and answer the six data questions on your staff and spend - all responses are confidential.

The survey asks for six pieces of your law department’s data:
- number of lawyers, paralegals, and other staff broken out (as of Dec. 31, 2010);
- internal and external legal spend last year; and
- your company’s revenue last year.

Responses to this year’s survey are ahead of last year’s pace, which had 805 participants. The final report displayed aggregate benchmark metrics from law departments in 48 countries who employed collectively nearly 22,000 lawyers. Its 25 benchmark metrics were broken down by 20 industries. If you have questions, contact Rees at rees@reesmorrison.com.

Rees, along with Karen Cariello of InsideCounsel, will be joining us for a webinar on Tuesday, June 28 at 11:00 am (EDT) about "How to Minimize Sales Contract Risk." Rees and Karen will be sharing data from their recent surveys. To register for the complimentary webinar, click here.

How to Minimize Risk in Your Sales Contracts -- Complimentary Webinar

2011-06-09T11:10:00.003-04:00

We are sponsoring a virtual roundtable discussion featuring a panel of leading experts who will the discuss challenges that Corporate Legal Departments face in trying to reduce risk in their sales contracts. You are invited to attend the complimentary webinar on Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 11:00 am (EDT). Click here to register.

The panel will be sharing results from the recent InsideCounsel survey on the "state of sales contracts," discussing how to use benchmarks to compare business process to best practice, and providing strategies for law departments to help improve their sales contracts processes in order to reduce risk.

The panel includes:
• Karen Cariello, Associate Publisher, InsideCounsel Magazine
• Rees Morrison, President, Rees Morrison Associates and founder of General Counsel Metrics LLC
• Jamie Wodetzki,, Founder, Exari Systems, Inc

The panelists will discuss the following topics:
1. The number one concern that in-house legal has with the sales contracting process.
2. How to avoid suffering unplanned losses from sales contracts.
3. Law department best practices for contracts.
4. How sales contracts can be a source of competitive advantage.

A Q&A session with the audience and panel speakers will be held after the roundtable discussion to allow for interaction between the panel and attendees.

For more information or to register, click here.

Derivatives Documentation – Questions Answered

2011-05-27T13:41:00.016-04:00

During our recent webinar, "Managing OTC Derivatives Documentation in a Central Clearing Environment," we had several questions from the audience that we couldn't cover in the time allotted. Paul Nelmes of Exari offers the following response to one of the questions posed from the audience during the Web-event.

Q. If not already on the agenda, would appreciate an overview of the client clearing documentation that will be in the US, given that client clearing would be a principal-agency model (futures/FCM model). What is the status of such documentation?

A. My understanding of the documentation required under the ‘Principal’ and ‘Agency’ models is:

Documentation ‘Principal model’

1. Existing ISDA for uncleared transactions remains

2. New ISDA and CSA between CM and client for client clearing transactions

3. New set of documentation for each CCP

4. Security Deed/Agreement whereby the CM grants to its client a security interest in respect of client account at the CCP

5. New security arrangement for each CCP

6. Give-Up agreement – agreement between the Clearing Member and Broker whereby the CM agrees to accept give-up transactions in relation to underlying clients

7. Compensation Agreement (if a transaction is not cleared) – a fall back to the previous Give-Up, which covers compensation arrangements between the Executing Broker and the client in the event that a transaction is not accepted by the CM for clearing

6 & 7 above are between the three parties until the transaction clears and/or in the event that it doesn’t

• There are potentially further agreements required detailing the fees charged to the client for clearing – prepared by the CM

Documentation ‘Agency’ Model

1. Futures Agreement – with addendum for Clearing transactions

2. Give-Up Agreement between FCM, Client and Executing Broker

3. End-User License Agreement for use of electronic systems

• There are potentially further agreements required detailing the fees charged to the client for clearing – prepared by the CM

To see some more of the post-event Q&A, read the DerivSource Blog (registration required).

For information on streamlining your derivatives documentation visit Exari.

Derivatives Documentation Resources and Glossary

2011-05-19T12:51:00.002-04:00

Following our recent webinar, Managing OTC Derivatives Documentation in a Central Clearing Environment, Julia Schieffer posted a list of her favorite resources for derivatives professionals in search of explanations for some of the jargon used in the derivatives industry. Her list included:

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission website:

http://www.cftc.gov/LawRegulation/DoddFrankAct/index.htm for its resources on the Dodd-Frank Act legislation, regulatory meetings and related reports; and

Sapient Global Markets OTC Derivatives Terminology Glossary -- this is a very useful resource for basic terms though not documentation specific. http://www.derivsource.com/glossary/

The complete list can be found on the DerivSource Blog. To request a recording of the webinar, please click here.

Photo credit: artemuestra.

InsideCounsel Magazine and Exari Launch Survey On Sales Contracts Processes

2011-05-12T13:55:00.013-04:00

We have partnered with InsideCounsel Magazine to survey how in-house legal departments assess the effectiveness of their current sales contracts creation and management processes. The survey launched yesterday and will be open for two weeks.

All qualified respondents are eligible to enter a drawing to win an iPad and can elect to receive the full results report. You can take the 2-3 minute survey here, if you are an inhouse legal professionals.

Contract Automation has become increasingly important to the overall success, profitability and risk management of companies. Prioritizing the effective creation and management of contracts and streamlining contract processes allows you to mitigate risks and improve overall performance.

This survey is designed to provide an understanding of how companies currently manage their sales contracts and the effect it is having on the success of their business. The survey is open to corporate legal professionals and is designed to assess the current state of sales contract management from an in-house legal perspective.

Contract Benchmark Data

2011-05-02T14:28:00.002-04:00

Spring seems to be the season of surveys and we're being alerted to several. Since many of these contracts surveys have a direct correlation to contract creation (document assembly) and contract management, we'll be sharing interesting findings. Where appropriate, we'll also provide links to the surveys.

We recently received some interesting contract benchmark data from Tim Cummins and the IACCM. And, since as Tim points out, "in the areas of contract management and negotiation, it is extremely hard to obtain relevant information," we wanted to share that data with you. The IACCM findings include:

Only 11% of organizations are consistently successful in imposing their standard terms and conditions;
Sell-side legal and contracts groups are increasingly struggling to get their standard terms accepted by business customers (some spend a lot of time fighting, while others have recognized smarter ways to manage risks and variations and are changing their negotiation strategies);
The role of Legal in the contracting process has increased on average by almost 40% in the last 5 years
The average cycle time to negotiate a medium-complexity contract is 7 – 10 weeks (Companies that shorten cycle times gain the benefits of increased speed to cash and less exposure to competitive challenges or changes in market conditions / requirements);
Productivity of contracts professionals, measured by the average number of contracts handled, varies by more than 100% between high-performing and low-performing organizations.

This data is drawn from IACCM's recent series of contracting benchmark studies and is being made available at no charge to participants in the survey.

Tim adds, "Today, leading organizations (as revealed by the benchmark study) have grasped that the contracting process can drive the quality and efficiency of many internal commercial practices. Academics share this view, with a growing number highlighting the competitive advantage to be gained through superior contract and commitments processes."

Exari clients know this first hand. They have succeeded in shortening their sales cycles, built their standard terms and conditions along with acceptable negotiated fall back positions into their contract templates, streamlined their negotiations and reduced their revenue leakage by automating their contracts process. You can learn more by visiting www.exari.com.

You can participate (and receive full results) in IACCM's Performance Measurement survey here.

Managing OTC Derivatives Documentation - Complimentary Webinar

2011-04-22T14:19:00.003-04:00

Compared to the typical environment for bilaterally traded OTC derivatives, central clearing adds complexity through the inclusion of multiple parties and the need to manage different sets of legal contracts. In this new market environment, if documentation management is not streamlined, financial institutions will face increased legal costs and operational risks.

To best cope with this processing burden, financial institutions will need to automate documentation management processes to manage both the increasing volume and use of a wider range of legal contracts required to support central clearing of OTC derivatives and other future industry changes including new regulation.

In a virtual roundtable discussion on May 17 at 10:00 am (EDT), panelists will offer advice for what financial institutions should review in their legal documents and how to most efficiently manage documentation to reduce operational risk and related costs.

The panel, moderated by Julia Schieffer of Derivsource includes:

• Trish Cooper, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities
• Sean MacGloin, Document Risk Solutions
• Tim Baros, Legal & General Investment Management

• Paul Nelmes, Exari

The following topics will be discussed:

• How will central clearing impact documentation between end clients and clearing members?
• How will documentation be adjusted in the event of a trade termination?
• How will the clearinghouse rules influence documentations?
• Regulatory reform in US and Europe is currently in progress. Will the regulators likely prescribe what the agreements must contain for central clearing?
• How can financial institutions improve the processing of documentation to manage a growing volume of documents while also reducing operational risk and cost?

Click here to register for the complimentary webinar. We hope you can join us for this very informative session.

Poll: How Does your Sales Contracts Process Rate?

2011-04-14T13:54:00.004-04:00

You like to think you're efficient- don't you? Maybe even more so than the next person. These days, efficiency is more important than ever and no where is it more important than in your contracts process.

We're always examining contracts practices across businesses to understand the processes and technologies in place to address the challenges in contract creation and management, risk management and compliance. So we created this instant, 4 question poll to take a quick snapshot of sales contracts practices.

By participating in the poll, you will see instantly how your sales contracts practices compare with those of your peers and be able to benchmark your performance.

You can take the quick poll here and instantly see how you rank.