During this episode of Contract Heroes we sat down with Dawn Richards. Dawn has an impressive history of leading contracting teams at orgs like Accenture and KPMG and is currently a Sr Contract Manager at VMWare. During our conversation we discussed: How a CLM tool and contract management team can help on a deal-by-deal basis and how to get other departments and stake holders involved in the CLM buying process.
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0:00You're listening to the Contract Heroes Podcast, your one-stop shop for all things contract management. And now here are your hosts, Marc and Pepe. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Contract Heroes Podcast. And this time we have Dawn Richards. Uh, she's the senior contract manager at Global Legal Services at VMware. So welcome to the show, Dawn. Thank you for having me, Pepe. It's great to be here today. No, it's a pleasure to have you. So we're still on the World Commerce and Contracting, uh, uh, America's event at Phoenix, so, uh, it's been wonderful to have you on the show, Dawn, and can you give us just, like, a little bit, uh, summary on your background? Uh, how will you get involved into the contract management? Sure. I actually stumbled upon my career in, um, you know, contracts and as a legal and contracts professional. After law school, um, one of...
0:58You know, my very first permanent position was in a contracts role, contracts management role, and it just unfolded from there. I was with a software company called Manhattan Associates. A short while later, I went to a company by the name of Optio Software, and I led our contracts globally for that, that organization. And then I went to Lucent Technologies, um, from there, did some very interesting work for several years, um, and just continued along my career journey with some phenomenal companies like Lenovo, um, Accenture, KPMG and now at VMware. So it's been a very storied career. I've had the opportunity to be, um, hands-on on both the sell side, as we say, as well as the buy side. And most recently, these days, I've, um, been primarily focused on some of our buy side, but I'm getting back over onto the sell side, which I'm excited about. Right. And, and I think the, you know, the first thing, Dawn, that we wanted to chat about was, was some of your time at, uh, Accenture and, and what you were, were working on there because I, I think it's such a, an interesting area that, that maybe a lot of people don't know about.
2:04Sure. So at Accenture, I joined as a part of a n- brand-new team, um, that was brought in to mitigate some of the key risks that are found when we have our third-party suppliers. And these are typically strategic suppliers that are very instrumental to, you know, our client delivery, so they're not nominal, they're not staff aug, but they have key deliverables that are going to make or break that solution that we're delivering to the client. So our team was brought in to, you know, develop rigor around this, obviously to own the contracting process, but to go further from an operational standpoint with just some rigor with due diligence and making sure that the fit was right, making sure that the, at the end of the day, it was a c- a successful partnership, um, between us and our vendors and that strategic, you know, kind of niche group of vendors that we worked with on these deals that were typically $100 million and above, um, in value. And so it was, it was presumed that, you know, the higher the spend, the higher the risk. Right.
3:01Um, and so our team was, was really laser focused on, as much as possible, mitigating the risk in that process and really establishing some key best practices that were repeatable deal over deal with our clients. Right. And, and, and now you get all that experience on building a team, so that was, that is pretty impressive because, I mean, we still think that for a lot of companies, building a contract management team i-is still something new and they have no idea where to start, right? So that, that's pretty impressive. And now that you switch into the commercial side, like, what kind of, um, you know, like, uh, knowledge or key takeaways were, are, are you still using at VMware? Like, how it is working? Yes. And so, and to be fair, when I joined Accenture, um, several years ago, there was already an existing contract management function.
3:58My team that started, um, brand new that I'm referring to was a strategic subcontracting management team, kind of a sister team to the core client-facing contract management team. So we liaised very closely, um, but just one was client-facing, ours was more of that vendor emphasis. And by the time I left Accenture, I was leading the team, um, for North America. And so taking, you know, a lot of that, you know, knowledge, as you mentioned, for over 10 years, almost 11 years, which was my tenure at Accenture, and then bringing that forward to my current role at VMware, um, I've been in the product and technology law space at VMware for the last two-plus years, working heavily with our products teams, our engineers, who also have that reliance on vendors to bring their products, their software, and put those as a part of our solutions that we ultimately sell to our clients. So a lot of the same, you know, even though the industries are different, um, one was management consulting and more services led, this is software led.
4:56Um, still a lot of the same core care abouts as re- as it relates to making sure you get it right, right? Because ultimately what you're putting on the street to your clients has to be, you know, functional, and it has to, to meet all the marks. So taking those lessons, having had experience on the sell side with the customer directly for many years of my career, as well as on the buy side, and now coming back around most recently to the commercial sell side at, at VMware, I'm excited to, you know, get back into the driver's seat with our clients, you know, kind of understanding how we build things and how we make things come about on the buy side and now having that, that extra insight as to what the clients care about, what their pain points might be. Um, we're going through a transformation, a SaaS transformation. We're, we're continuing on our, our journey with that and becoming more of a SaaSS subscription-based, um, you know, model to our clients.
5:52And so it's exciting to be able to, you know, drive those learnings forward and see the other side of the coin again. And make sure that, you know, our practices are top-notch. That we, we recently did a whole contract simplification effort, so we streamlined our contracting to be easier to do business with. Um, you know, we heard feedback, we took that seriously. So our contracts modeling has improved. It's a lot more streamlined and, and simplified for our customers, and we're just endeavoring to continue to, you know, meet our customers where they are, solve for, you know, their solu- for their business needs and, um, you know, do great work. Awesome. And what about, like, if you could, uh, give a, like, a recommendation or some of the tips, right? Because, I mean, you're working with a global company, and I know that building a, a team from scratch and doing everything at the s- at one, uh, at the same time might not be the, the smartest thing to do. Like, you have to divide it in phases. Like, how do you go with that?
6:58Like, do you start with the region or m- maybe, uh, by side of the contracts? Or, or how is... How can you just describe, like, a roadmap on how to start, uh, building your own team? Honestly, I think when you're new into a company and you're trying to build a new, you know, functionality, a new dependency that is gonna be core to the business, I think it's important to go where the business is, you know? Wherever the business needs are, I think that's where you go, and that's where you get the, the fastest velocity to do a few things. Garner buy-in from key stakeholders because what helped our team to be successful, it was a journey for sure. In the beginning, there was a lot of pushback because we were introducing rigor that people weren't accustomed to in the deal cycle, and they really weren't necessarily excited about someone coming in and saying, "Hey, we're going to do these extra steps before you get the, you know, the, the green light to go forward with this engagement the way you designed it. Let us help you make it the best it can be. Let us help you reduce the risk and some of the unforeseen gotchas that oftentimes go undetected." And so that took time. It took, it took building key relationships.
8:06It, it took stakeholder investment. And the way we did it was deal over deal, getting in there, proving ourselves, doing the work, getting the result. And then our stakeholders in the business started to say, "Wait a minute, you really are adding value. Wait a minute, you really did help me, you know, miss this colossal potential failure with this vendor that really was not suited to do the work we need them to do at scale." And as we began to build our stakeholder, um, repertoire, so to speak, we d- we, we collected testimonials. We would pitch those to our new potential customers within the business and say, "Hey, this is how we were able to help team B. This is how we were able to help, you know, the technology, um, sector. We wanna do the same for health and public service. We wanna do the same for the financial services industry. We wanna do the same for life sciences and pharma. Let us come help your teams be great. Let us help your s- your verticals be great." And really, it was that testimonial that...
8:58I mean, we did key c- we did, um, communication campaigns where we would do targeted roadshows and we would say, "Hey, this is how we're helping these, these client teams. We wanna help your client team." And then it was also intra-organizational, um, networking. We were pulling in our legal colleagues to say, "Hey, when you learn of a deal, if there's a third-party component, could you please give us a nod and let us know? Because we don't have visibility to this entire global food chain and supply chain, but we know that you might have an entryway." Our colleagues in finance will have some insight because they're often very engaged at the very beginnings of a deal cycle. So it was a lot of, you know, intra-working with, you know, sister organizations, a lot of collaboration. And ultimately, the reputation that we developed allowed us to really be a stalwart in the business where when those deals came up, we were a part of the decision matrix, and if our team had not given our buy-in and our kinda check mark, the deal did not go forward without that. Yeah. And, and I think, you know, just like with working with outside organizations to, to get them to move forward with y- your, your business, you know, you had to do the same thing internally to get buy-in and- Yes...
10:09and a lot of the same processes as, as somebody would use if you were speaking with an external customer. So, you know, I, I think that's super interesting. And, and something else, you know, that I think we wanted to touch on is, is also how, uh, your team at VMware has, has they've recer- recently rolled out a new CLM tool. And, and, you know, we were talking before we, we started the podcast and, um, you know, the implementation's been going on for, for quite some time, but that's because you've been taking a phased approach. And, you know, I, I think we'd be very curious to understand, um, you know, how, how has that implementation been broken up and how are, how is the team making sure that different departments, um, are, are gaining user adoption, actually using these new processes that are, are being put in place? Yes. So actually, this is heavily adopted at this juncture with our commercial teams and our sales colleagues, our procurement colleagues, as well as legal. So the syncage is phenomenal. And now, really, it's intended to replace the day-to-day email exchanges that you would normally do. "Hey, here's a red line update," or, "Hey, did you get that, did you get that proposal?"
11:10It's really driving towards this tool where everything is there. All the key parties, all the key stakeholders are engaging with this tool. Because if you only have, uh, to your point, if you only have adoption with legal, then it only does so much. But when you get sales committed, when you get the deal desk committed, when you get procurement committed, and then legal as well and the contracting teams, then you have something that can really serve the business. It can really aid, again, in that deal velocity, that contract cycle that you wanna maximize. And I am a, a recent, um, you know, adopter, so to speak, because with the phased approach, you know, they started on the commercial side of the business because that's where, you know, the, the heavy emphasis was, and they've gradually, phase over phase, brought in other parts of the business. So most recently, the product side of the business has started to come in, and that was the s- the area where I was, you know, primarily focused.
12:04And so now our contracts are being uploaded, all the key terms for us, how we work, um, the turnaround cycles, you know. Because those deals that we do on the product and technology side are a bit more complex, and they usually have longer run phases So all of that is now, you know, making its way into the tool and, um, becoming more seamless because what we had prior to this was a lot of divergent systems. Like, there was a system over here for the third party, the key third party vendors that, you know, we worked out of, and then there was another tool over here that, you know, other parts of the business, Salesforce or whatever it might be, that were focused on that. So it was very divergent, and you really couldn't rely on it. So I'm, I'm glad to see that they've invested in and we've invested in one tool intended to serve the whole organization. Yeah. That, that's pretty impressive because I think you did it, it right, uh, also doing the internal commercial of the new tool and the, and the new department.
13:03That helps a lot into the adoption part because, I mean, you can have all the implementation and the, and the stage zero of your processes, but then if you go live but you didn't give the heads-up to any of the other stakeholders, they're, they're, they're gonna be mad because they were gonna feel that they're, they were not taken in, into consideration, so they can give you their input there. Right. And the adoption, uh, rates will go to the roof now. Absolutely. Yes, and that's exciting to see. And so there is that, you know, inter and intra accountability because now you can't say you didn't know. You know, we can, we can have some, some true SLAs as it relates to turnarounds and things like that, and there can be some real metrics to see how much more effective we're being, um, you know, in our s- contracting processes across the board, so. All right. So Dawn, this has been fantastic. We really appreciate to have you on the show. And if folks would like to contact you, what would be the best place? They can definitely look me up on LinkedIn.
14:02I'm on LinkedIn. I'm Dawn Richards, dawnmrichards on LinkedIn, and I would, you know, love hearing from people and connecting further. So thank you so much for having me today, Pepe and Marc. I so appreciate it. Thanks, Dawn. Thank you. We appreciate it too. Thank you.