It's Time To CLOC In With Navin Mahavijiyan

Made with speech-to-text software, so a few words may be off.

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. Well, Navin, thanks so much for joining us. We're really excited to have you here on the podcast. You know, we've, we've known each other for quite some time and, and obviously the space is so small, so I'm really excited that, uh, we're finally able to, to get you on here to have a conversation. Yeah, pleased to be here, Marc. Awesome. And, you know, I think something that's top of mind for everybody right now, right? And I, I'm hoping this podcast goes live on, on Monday, that we're kicking off CLOC, is obviously CLOC, and, and, you know, we've all been there once or twice before. So I, I mean, I thought maybe we could start this episode off by, uh, giving maybe some, some folks that, uh, haven't been to CLOC before some, an understanding of, you know, what to expect, you know, how the, how the sessions are gonna be laid out, right? How, how the vendors, vendors work, right? Everybody's been to a trade show before, but I think CLOC is just on a, on a whole another level typically, right? Yeah.

1:01It's definitely the biggest e- event of the year for the, I would say in... Yeah, I guess in-house teams, right? Yes, definitely. I mean, I think CLOC, like you said, Marc, is the biggest event for, you know, people in legal ops, uh, in-house counsel as well in some cases, especially those that have been, uh, adopted into the legal ops role, uh, with their respective teams as well. You know, the problem, I guess, uh, and not to sound negative about CLOC, is that it's so huge. There's so much going on that you can't do it all. And so I think making the best use of your time is kind of how I like to tackle CLOC, because, you know, there's so many people to meet. Networking is a huge part, uh, of being at CLOC, uh, exchanging ideas, learning from other people that have done what you hope to do as a legal ops professional, and spending time talking to the right vendors as well. And finally, educating yourself. Let's, let's not forget about all the different sessions that are incredibly illuminating at CLOC.

2:02And so I think on that level, what I would say is my first bit of advice to have kind of the best possible CLOC experience, at least, uh, the way I've experienced it myself, is to make sure you figure out upfront who you want to meet with. Because trying to meet with people on the fly, it will not happen. I've bumped into tons of people that we've been talking all year about getting together and chatting. In fact, it happened to us last year at CLOC, right, Marc? We ran into each other in the hallways and- ... just say hello, and we each rush off to the things that we need to do, and we never cross paths again for the entirety of CLOC, and we all go home, and then we message each other and say, "Hey, we should have spent some time getting together." Don't plan this at CLOC. Plan it days, perhaps weeks in a- weeks in advance is now a lost cause at this point, but I hope that those of you listening have planned this out days in advance. But that's something that you should do because that will ensure you carve out time to meet the right people that can, you know, coach you, mentor you, or just, you know, to reconnect with old friends as well.

3:09Uh, you know, all of us are spread all over the country, and so sometimes CLOC is the only place where some of us get to meet, uh, our colleagues and peers. Yeah, and I, I think, you know, if, if this is your first CLOC, right? Maybe you're just starting to evaluate, uh, maybe some legal tech vendors, CLM vendors, right? And I think it could be, uh, important to maybe try to reach out to some industry peers as well on LinkedIn before getting out there, right? So even if you're just kind of doing the, you know, the scan of the floor, you're seeing what vendors are gonna be there. Um, maybe setting up some meetings with, with other folks that are, you know, in, in your space and having conversations around what, what has been successful for them and what solutions they've evaluated. Uh, I think that could go a long way if, you know, you're not already, you don't already have meetings set up with a couple of vendors, right? Maybe you've seen some initial demos, but you wanna get to learn the teams more and, and get a, a better feel for, for the organizations themselves.

4:00I mean, obviously it, it depends on where you are in your journey, but I think there's definitely, uh, many different ways to, uh, to approach this, this opportunity wh- you know, when we all get together at CLOC. Right. And I think networking is one of the main things that, that I love about CLOC, because it's people from all around the world, they have a lot of experience, a lot of, uh, you know, legal ops directors, a lot of in-house teams. And like you said, Navin, is that, uh, just planning ahead because it's like, you know, Vegas hotels are just, takes a lot of time just to move from one place to the other. So if you can just, like, schedule a couple of drinks with, with people you wanna meet- Mm... I think that's gonna be really good. I'm really aware about the efforts that the board members of CLOC are doing to, you know, putting the, setting the bar to the top, because this is going to be a really cool event. The ARIA Hotel is, is really cool. And one of the, one of the really cool things about CLOC members is, like, everybody's really open to share their experience.

4:58So you can go with the vendors, and there's gonna be a lot of vendors, and that, that's one of the things- Yeah... that we're going to talk about in this podcast. But take your time to meet new people and try to get their experience on what they have implemented in their organization because you're, you'll get, right, you'll get exactly what you need. You, you can get a lot of, uh, information from there a- and experience and just enjoy Vegas for a couple of days. Exactly, Pepe. And, and Marc, uh, as well, you both mentioned vendors specifically, and not, not to jump ahead into our actual topic, uh, too much, but having a sense of what you're actually looking for, what your requirements are, what system features you need in advance instead of going in blind and just talking to vendors is a really important tactic if you're at the point of actually looking for vendors. Uh, not just CLM, but really any legal tech vendors. They obviously have a huge presence at CLOC. There are tons of booths. What I would say is that- Clock is not the time to select a system.

6:03However, uh, you can make great use of your time interacting with vendors if you target booths that are of interest, that have live demos. Anything about, you know, collateral, lists of features, talking points, all of that you can get outside of clock with no issue. But being able to get a hands-on experience for tech that you're considering is, uh, incredibly useful because it's not you watching it through a Zoom screen. You are ideally there. So I think for anyone that's looking to evaluate vendors, don't jump the gun. However, if there are some vendors on your radar, look for the ones that actually have live demos in their booth so that you get a feel for the system that you're contemplating instead of screenshots and, uh, you know, web conferences where you're not in control. Because sometimes as a user, that experience of how the system handles a clicking can trump a, a lot of features that sound pretty, but your actual user experience is painfully slow and difficult to, to kind of work with.

7:05And that's, that's usually the best case. And that clock also gives you a chance to try the latest and greatest. Most vendors have live demos that you can interact with, uh, at their booth. So definitely look to that as well. And, uh, I think the only other piece with clock, uh, not to pontificate too much, but, uh, the educational aspect of it. I think especially for people that are new to legal ops, you're early in your career, or you just haven't done that much, and there's nothing wrong with that, clock is a goldmine to get information, not just from talking to people and your peers that have done it, but sitting in sessions. What I would say is don't get sucked into the hype train. Every year at clock, we kind of have some topic that everyone's talking about. The last couple of years, it's always been CLM because it is a huge part of legal operations and what we do. And this year, I'll predict it's going to be AI and Gen AI, right? And- It is... if you're not ready to adopt AI, don't spend too much time on that when you could be spending time in sessions that can actually help you specifically.

8:09So I guess what I'm trying to say is don't just go for the popular sessions. Try to focus on the sessions and panels that can help you specifically in your role with the challenges that you and your legal team are facing or your entire organization. Because sometimes the answer isn't, "Hey, this is a cool way I can use AI." Uh, it might be along the lines of process simplification or negotiation strategy, uh, because you don't have high volume contracts. You have large contracts that are really complicated. Just to give you one of a bajillion possible examples. Yeah. And I, you know, I think-- and that's a great jumping off point, right? Because I think one of the things that we wanted to talk about was how to streamline your processes, maybe evaluate and, and look at how you're doing things now, the tools that you have available, and understanding if you can use things at your disposal to, to help with these processes before going out and, and trying to look for an outside, uh, CLM solution to help. Yes, yes. I mean, when you think about-- because we, we get very bogged down in evaluation, uh, system evaluation, business requirements, things like that as well.

9:18But I think it really helps to understand what problem you're trying to solve. And I'm not saying anything incredibly novel or new, but everyone with CLM, they have contracts. We have, you know, X number of contracts every month, and the typical problem is it's too slow. We're not getting from start to finish and, you know, everything else kind of winds up being minutiae. It's slow because I can't get an answer as fast as I want about a signed contract, or I can't get my contract signed as quickly as I feel I should. And so I think understanding what actual pain points you have. Forget about business requirements, forget about budget first. Understand where your gaps and bottlenecks are. And sometimes it's because your attorneys are just over-negotiating contracts. You know, everyone's off doing their own thing, and it's taking a long time because we're versioning, you know, fifteen different versions when we could just get straight to the point by version three and move into execution.

10:19And sometimes it's our data gathering on the front end that's the problem. We get requests in to draft a contract or to review something, and we, uh, attorney hat on, have to go back and forth asking a bunch of questions because we don't have all the information we need. So CLM will not just solve your problems. In fact, sometimes they can automate you into, uh, more problems than, than less. And so understanding what you're trying to fix is the first step. Because if you just automate crappy intake system that you already have today, you still lack information. It's just now it's within the structure of a nice UI. And if you over-negotiate your contract, so you don't have a clear negotiation strategy, what your must-haves are in a contract, for example, and we're not gonna compromise on these things, then your negotiations get all over the place. And it still happens in a nice, easy-to-track version control way, but it's not gonna cut your negotiation time in half because the problem is not your process.

11:22It's just those steps that you are taking when you get to a specific step of the process. So that would be my first step, honestly. Everyone should take a long, hard look in the mirror and really understand what their real pain points and their real problems are. And with that, it's usually skewed very heavily towards the legal team. And, and that's very specific school of thought. Everyone goes and interviews the lawyers and asks them what they're doing, uh, what their pain points are. But to me, contract lifecycle management is a business-wide issue. And so you need to be talking to salespeople to understand what their real pain points are. They will almost always say it takes too long to negotiate a contract, or I don't feel empowered. I don't know what I can and cannot do, so I wind up dumping it Over to legal and hoping for the best, uh, as well. And then, you know, finally, all the different executives, you know, procurement, finance, the people downstream that need information, and sometimes they want to be injected into the review process, and sometimes they just want to come in at the end.

12:27And so those are two very different problems, uh, as well. So what I would say is to just kind of summarize what I've been kind of ranting about a little bit. You need to figure out what your actual problems are before you go about trying to solve it. I know that that sounds very straightforward and simple, but most people don't do that. They just go, "I need a CLM system because I do not have one." And that is usually the sign of a poor implementation in the making as well. Right. And especially because for even the implementer side, we wanna know exactly what you need, right? Mm-hmm. Like, we can make some, you know, some recommendations on, on what you can do. We, we can tell you a little bit on what we have seen are some of the best practices depending on the industry. But one of the main and one of the most important things while you're evaluating hundreds of vendors we have, right? Mm-hmm.

13:26Just when, when you go to clock into the expo floor, you're, you're gonna see, like, a lot of booth just for CLMs. Yeah. Right? Exactly. So, so it's, it's an art. It's an art of not just choosing the right vendor, but scoping what you need. And what you said, I mean, it can sound a little bit vague, like, yeah, we are slow with our contract management processes. We are slow signing the contracts. But you need to be really clear on what are your main pain points. And what I like to say is, like, I, I, I really don't like to say it's a legal tech technology because contracts are not just for legal. This is more like an enterprise- Yeah... which makes it really useful because this is not for the legal department. This is for the whole enterprise, for, for procurement- Mm-hmm... for sales, for IT, I mean, de- depending on your, on your industry. But the thing is, like, because it's so wide open for everybody to, you know, ask for things that they wanna see into an implemented CLM- Mm-hmm...

14:28it is very important to understand what are those pain point from the main stakeholders. So it's easier for you, first of all, prepare a business case. Mm-hmm. And second, prepare an RFI. Yes. Right? Because a lot of-- Because when you have those things clear- Mm-hmm... it will be easier for you to evaluate different vendors. And, and it's not like, "Do you have AI features?" Yeah, but for what? Yes. Right? So I-- it's considering your experience that I'm really curious on what have you seen are, like, some of the best practices while scoping CLM implementation. Oh, uh, I-- where do you want me to start, right? So I've implemented CLM, uh, various different platforms more times than I care to count. Uh, I have a bit of PTSD, even though I still love it. And, you know, a lot of the time, I think the worst implementations, and no fault of, uh, you know, all the different teams because they're trying, right?

15:27The worst implementations or the ones that tend to fail typically are exactly what you said, Pepe. They're not properly scoped. You know, typically legal teams don't really know what they want to do, and the scoping basically becomes, "Here's a rough outline of what our process is today. Make it happen in the system." And that results in one of two things. Either you haven't thought through whether your process can actually fit within the system that you have selected, and that goes back to, you know, requirements gathering, which I'll touch on in more detail. And the other piece of it is, is that you take your crappy process that is not streamlined, that was kind of built by happenstance, right? You did it all manually, and so you build it a particular way, and you want to stick that into your system. And so even after the implementation is technically successful, "Hey, we've built everything you said you wanted into your CLM system," it still kind of sucks because now you've got that exact same.

16:26I would use a, a story around, you know, when you had to walk to school, you might take a very specific route to get to school. But then when you get on the school bus, the bus has a much more streamlined route that you're not gonna be driving, cutting across a neighbor's backyard or driving through the woods because you cannot. And so I think that's a fairly good analogy where when you have a CLM system, you have to kind of conform to that system that you have purchased. And if you're trying to figure this out after you've made the purchase, well, it's gonna kill your ROI. You will not be able to go live as quickly as you want. And a lot of the times, people don't wanna compromise, uh, once they've reached that point as well. Okay, well, I-- this is what I wanted in my heart when I bought this system, and I need to have it before I can go live. And so you start kicking the can down the road. So either you completely fail to launch, or you launch very, very late.

17:22So now you're one and a half, two years behind, and you have a ton of, uh, you know, ROI to catch up on as well. And as far as requirements gathering goes, I think, you know, it's easier said than done, right? Because you can kind of go overboard. And so I always tell people, figure out what your budget is, because that is usually the biggest stumbling block to actually gathering requirements. You're not going to, you know, be comparing the feature set of, like, a Toyota Camry with the most expensive, like, sports car on the market and going, "Huh, you know, I want this feature and that feature." You cannot afford it. So get, get that out of the way first. What is your actual budget? And the other piece of it is, don't just budget for the platform, right? 'Cause someone will come and say, "Hey, I've got a budget of a hundred grand." And that's great, but do you have budget for the support staff that you're going to need to run your system?

18:21Is there a person in place already? Because that has to come out of your CLM budget as well. So that's, that's the very first critical step of any requirements gathering step, the money. How much do you have to spend? It's no sense talking about- Bespoke systems or APIs that you have to custom build when you don't have the cash to do it. Just buy something cheap if you really want CLM. Or Marc, what you alluded to in the beginning, just work with the tools that you have and change your process, simplify it, uh, you know, maybe use a spreadsheet to track. I know that's kind of anathema sometimes these days. But, um, if you have a simple, easy to populate spreadsheet, then that can still work. It's going to take more time. It's not going to be automated as well as a fully fleshed out CLM system will be. But you cannot afford that fully fleshed CLM system.

19:16And if you try to kind of squeeze one in on a very low budget, you might find that your experience is a poor one, and you will not really gain the efficiencies that you could have. And then, of course, get into the technical aspects of what you actually need from your business requirements. So, you know, do you need, uh, something that's no code that you- your team can manage fully internally? Do you have the resources to do that? Or do you want kind of a c- a vendor that has a fully fleshed out professional services team that you are going to pay to, to support you because that's the kind, the level of support you need as well. And then you can get into features, right? Do you require Microsoft Word editing and a Word add-in? Do you have to integrate with very specific systems like Salesforce or your procurement system? And in my case, I kind of always push those towards the end because I, very cynically, I kind of always go, "Well, are you integrated today?

20:18And is that really your pain point that, you know, sending a document into Salesforce, is that really where your process is breaking down? Or are you really focusing on a requirement that does not matter and does not actually massively impact your contract life cycle?" Yeah. And, and I think a couple of things there, right? And, you know, just to touch on the integration piece, you know, obviously different departments have, have different needs. And what we often see, right? Is, is the sales team wants to, uh, work out of their CRM, and, and that's why we see that integration being such a big piece. But- Mm... I think, you know, you need to take that a step further and really understand, you know, why that's important, and is that gonna be an absolute requirement for phase one. You know, sometimes you can save those integrations for phase two. Just allow those, those users, you know, for the time being, right? Maybe they go through a simplified end user portal to submit those requests, right? Keep things easy, get the user adoption up, and then in phase two, you look at the integrations.

21:15And that's, that's a nice way to maybe be able to look at some, some nicer CLM tools on the market without breaking the bank in, in that original phase. And, you know, on top of that, I, you know, I think it's important, we see often that organizations are not comparing apples to apples when it comes to the types of CLM tools that they're looking at. You know, they've got one tool that's maybe $20,000, and it comes with a free implementation, and then they're looking at another one that's $50,000 for just the software, and it's $50,000 for the implementation. And, you know, it's, it's tough to, it's tough to compare tools like that. And, and it, it also is gonna leave the door open for, for maybe a failed project because, you know, you need to decide, right? When we talked about this, right? You need to decide what you're really looking for out of that application and out of the organizations that you're partnering with so that, uh, everybody internally and externally is on the same page. Yes. And, you know, it is a mountain to climb.

22:13Sometimes bringing in, uh, an expert, a consultant to kind of help you sort through what you do not know, uh, and what you should know, that you just, that's things that come from experience, I would say, can be incredibly helpful as well. You know, especially if this is your very first CLM implementation, or interestingly enough, it's your second implementation because your first one just bit the dust, and it, and you're kind of pivoting to a different vendor or re-implementing your CLM system after a year or two. Uh, kind of bringing that person in, I think, almost pays for itself in the time that you save and the dollars that you save. Again, not everyone needs an expert, right? Many, many legal ops heads are experts in their own right and can kind of just step in, assuming they have the time to kind of go through all of this as well. And what you were saying about kind of comparing apples to apples, or in this case, we wind up comparing apples to oranges, uh, in too many instances.

23:14I think understanding the level of implementation support that you are going to need. Again, it goes back to, do you have the resources? Are you expecting the vendor to come in and figure out your process for you and put it into a system? The level of implementation support that you need can vary greatly, uh, and that can make the price vary as well, as we all know. 'Cause if you want a ton of support throughout the process, then that's gonna cost a lot more in just time and resources. And if you're buying a simple system with just a couple of thousand dollars implementation, that's great, but you might find that you have to do a lot of the heavy lifting. And if you're not prepared to do that, that, that cost savings isn't necessarily a good thing because you get the system, six months will go by, and no one's used it because you haven't had the time. So again, I think when you're comparing systems, the first step is you need your baseline CLM features. I think at this point, it's become so homogenized that it doesn't matter what platform you go to.

24:18What you're really doing is ruling out certain platforms because they just do not have a functional feature at this time. And I will say my personal belief is I do not buy based on roadmaps. So don't, don't get locked into, "Oh, this is coming soon. That is coming soon." Because in the world of software development, coming soon can quickly become two years from now because there's a weird architecture quirk that keeps the development team from launching the next build that they were planning to launch. So what I would say is you're looking for an intake process, right? An intake form, data fields that you can build into a form. You have automated routing with some logic. Now, the level of logic you need, uh, again, that can be something that, that you should think about. Do I just need it to say, "If this is this, then go here," or do you need something a lot more intelligent and a lot more customizable? Uh, I would argue basic logic is fine. This is kind of the and/or type of reasoning.

25:17If this is over $1,000, it goes to Pepe or, uh, this other person for review, for example. So that part, I think I would take a hard look at how much routing logic, uh, do you really need, uh, and how much of it is tied to bad process. And then, you know, the review step as well, like how reviewers get routed to email, you know, notifications, an easy way for reviewers to see all their tasks and prioritizations in one space. And then finally, integration with an e-signature tool, because we didn't just get a CLM system to print out contracts to sign them. We want to connect to an e-signature tool. That is all baseline stuff, and if a CLM system does not have that for your pre-signature needs, you should not even be wasting your time talking to them. And then on the flip side of that, of course, post-signature, this can get really technical. What do you really need? Because again, everyone wants lots of data, and here's where AI can come into play.

26:21I know we'll dive into this in a little bit. But having AI extract information from the system so you don't have to do manual entry can be really great for new contracts that are natively digital. But for your older contracts, AI can be hit or miss because we're talking about scan quality and things like that. So understanding, uh, this is where people tend to go off the rails as well is what I found in, uh, requirements, in that they want too much data. Everyone kind of spouts the jargon of making data-driven decisions, data, data, data. And I'm a huge fan. Don't get me wrong. I love data too. However, don't overdo it. Focus on just the data points that are absolutely crucial to you. Who cares if you could get fifty data points if what you need for your organization is twelve? Focus on those twelve. That's what you need. Future-proofing, being able to kind of custom code an algorithm and all that. If that's necessary because you hit a ton of regulatory, you know, curveballs every year, then that makes sense for you.

27:25But if you're just thinking, well, there might be a change in law one time, and I want to have this cool AI, you do not need this right now. So don't necessarily focus on post-signature AI if you do not need it, because that can extend the amount of time and effort you put into your implementation, uh, as well. Because you're proofing, you know, are the dates correct? You're training the algorithms for specific things that perhaps you did not need to. And more CLM systems plug into an AI tool at some point, uh, in their cycle. So you could bring in a third party or a legal services provider to do some analysis for a fairly low cost as well, compared to trying to implement it yourself. So that's something to think about as well when you're thinking about your requirements. Everyone wants data, but they go overboard. And so as vendor hat on or if I'm evaluating, uh, and trying to fill out these requirements, which I've done many times in the past, you're kind of going, do they really need this much information?

28:24Like, the answer can be yes, yes, yes. But you get into, well, we can kind of give you this data set, but it's not going to be accurate because your contracts look terrible, or you're guessing because you're not really being realistic about how bad your scan quality is. Uh, and that's something I should have said at the beginning, which is if you're migrating legacy contracts into your CLM system, that should be another huge part of your requirements gathering as well. What do you really have? Because a lot of people just go, "I have ten thousand contracts." That is an almost useless statistic in today's, like, AI world. It's not the number of contracts that you have unless someone is manually reviewing it. That has a bearing on the cost that your vendors will quote you. But what's the quality of these contracts? Uh, are they bundled together so that I have my MSA and all the amendments and SOWs together, or is it just a huge dumping ground, and now we have no idea which contract extends which unless we have to look into the contract.

29:28And AI, in some instances, some vendors can help you figure this out, but it is very hit or miss. So I would caution people these-- the whole AI hit a button to sync all your contracts together where it can figure out which is the amendment to what SOW. It doesn't always work. There are a lot of different factors tied to that, uh, from scan quality to how the documents cite each other as well, uh, which you will find is not always consistent. And so if it's not consistent, the AI can't figure out that this amendment is actually amending this SaaS agreement and not this other SaaS agreement that you signed a few years prior. So I know I've said a lot, but I guess to summarize really with requirements gathering, I could sit all day and say, figure out one by one these different requirements, and I know we don't have time for it. But you start with the budget. You figure out what your process is, and then select your features that you really, really need. Integrations are important, but don't overemphasize integrations as well.

30:31So integrating with Salesforce, like you said, Marc, if your sales team is used to just generating a sales sheet, a purchase order, statement of work through Salesforce already, which is what they are probably doing, and just sending it to legal for review, there is an element where it's nice to have to be able to launch the review process out of Salesforce. But if you have to train them on a new system, that might be one bridge you don't want to cross just yet. And so again, Salesforce integration is one of the most asked for integrations with every CLM platform. There's a cost to it because Salesforce does charge a fee, uh, as well. So ask for it if you need it. You don't necessarily need to implement it or have it on day one, uh, as well. You could do a staggered rollout and keep your cost down. And same thing with other systems, you know, whether it's Ariba, um, or Coupa, any of your procurement systems. Sometimes you don't necessarily need to integrate with every system. So be very realistic about what you want because you could always build a custom API tool-... integration later.

31:36I think what you really want to ask is, first and foremost, I think every CLM system should have an open API. If once you get to a certain scale where we're talking about I'm not a mom and pop shop, I'm not, I'm not a legal team of one, I'm a full-fledged organization of over 1,000, 3,000, 4,000 employees, you have to have an open API. You don't really pay for that necessarily, but it is a, a endpoint that you can now build off of in the future when you really do need it. Yeah. N- and I think, you know, some- on the integration front, right? And Pepe, I know you, uh, probably have a bunch to say, so I'm gonna let you jump in in a second. But on the integration side, you know, even with these... As tools are getting more advanced, right, aspect of middleware that, that comes into play and how, how much easier that makes, you know, Workato or Boomi or something like that, how much easier those types of- Mm-hmm... applications make it so much easier to connect these tools as well. So I, I think that's something else, right?

32:33If you are, you know, considering integrations, I would consider looking at, at applications that do allow you to, uh, use some type of middleware instead of, you know, just even having open APIs. Right. Yes. If, if... Uh, sorry, Pepe, were you about to say something? No, no. I, I, I was just about to say that usually the integration part is one of the most expensive parts of every implementation, because you need- Mm-hmm... to work with both consulting teams. Especially if you're, like, trying to integrate an ERP system, you need SAP or, or Oracle implementers to build what they need to do on their side. Mm-hmm. You have your CLM implementers, and then you have the integrators, that they're either, you know, developing an API integration from scratch or they're using a middleware such as these ones that Marc just said, Workato or Boomi. But, uh, I think this is very important, and I, a- and I really like how you summarize this, Navi, be- because it's, um... You need to prioritize a lot. Mm-hmm.

33:32And we've seen a lot of, of our customers or, or people we have talked with in the recent years that they have really bad nightmares with- Mm-hmm... CLM integrations because they try to do everything in just one phase. Yeah. And what happens at the end is that they never go live, their implementation is taking years. They already- Mm-hmm... invested maybe not hundreds of thousand, but even millions of dollars just by, you know, trying to kick things up, and they are never ready to just go live. So this is very important because if you wanna start with using a, a new type of software- Mm-hmm... you gotta think about, it's not just the business plan, the implementation, your request r- gathering that you just said. There, there's a lot of homework. The... But the best thing is to divide these projects by phases, because one of the things that a lot of companies don't put enough attention is change management and adoption. Yeah.

34:31Because you can have the perfect implementation, but if nobody's using the software, well, you just dumped couple grants there, and this is very important. So, so, so you can start with an MVP, then try to move forward always thinking about it, like how you can s- scale this implementation- Yeah... bring the stakeholders from the beginning, bec- because remember, this is an enterprise software. It's not just for legal. It's also for procurement. It's also for sales because they wanna close deals faster. And, uh, and once you have that, adoption is gonna be easier, because they don't- Mm-hmm... you don't need to put them into a one-month training just to use your CLM. Because if you do that- Yeah... you know, the commercial team is gonna hate you. Yeah. And it's gonna be your fault because it was your idea to have a brand new CLM system in your organization. But once you have that, figured that out- Mm-hmm... it's gonna be easier. And I like what you said a couple of minutes ago, Naveen. It's like start with what, with what you have.

35:29Because maybe you have right now the Toyota Camry and you... And once you know what you need, right, when your current software is just too short for what you need to have in place, now you can say, "Okay, we need this, this, this." You can prioritize your requirements and start with an MVP. Yeah. And once you have that, you can go to the shiny features- Mm-hmm... which is the one that I really want to focus on this last part of our chat, Naveen, is the GenAI, right? Yes. Because this is... I'm pretty sure this is something and... Well, I'm not pretty sure. I'm sure because I've seen the topics for, for all the, uh, chats at clock, and this is going to be like, I don't know, probably like 70% of the speakers are, are going to talk about it. Mm-hmm. But I really wanna... Like, you, you have a lot of, uh, own experience on AI on the, on the CLM space, uh, Naveen, and, well, uh, it's like how do you foresee the emergence of GenAI influence the landscape and CLM?

36:33Mm-hmm. And after that, like, how can organizations take advantage of these new features- Mm-hmm... in order to have, you know, maybe not a more successful implementation, but what things can they do with this type of tools that maybe they didn't thought they could do? No, I, I think I have a lot to say about this- ... and I'm gonna take a very contrarian view, uh, 'cause I know AI is the new high trade. And don't get me wrong, I love AI. It works really well, and there are some innovative use cases for it. But, uh, and I'll say something controversial. I... So I've negotiated contracts for, like, over a decade as well. I've been an attorney, uh, in-house counsel negotiating contract, uh, hundreds of pages long, uh, sometimes as well. And so, you know, I understand the challenges of actually reviewing and redlining a contract and negotiating your positions.

37:30What a lot of CLM vendors today are doing and where- There is a lot of attention is generative AI in the negotiating process, so kind of using AI to redline your contracts or to draft a clause for you or to redraft the language in your contract. And what you will find is that while it's great to go to, you know, OpenAI and say, "Hey, write me a story about Little Red Riding Hood where she's the villain and the wolf is actually the good guy," and it's fun. Uh, when you're an attorney using GenAI, in many cases, it can actually slow you down, because if you put your attorney hat on, it-- which is easier, for me to just look at a contract and start marking it up based on my concerns or looking at a contract that's been marked up by a first-year law student, really good one, let's just say, and now I, I'm looking for mistakes in the redlines and making sure the redlines are consistent with one another? And so until GenAI, in my opinion, is not there right now. So while a lot of teams are looking to GenAI for that to kind of magically simplify your negotiation process, I don't think it's as useful.

38:43However, with GenAI, there are a lot of benefits with content creation, coming up with suitable answers. And so there's a lot of busywork that happens with contracts on the front end. And so, you know, I've been pitching this to many vendors. I hope some of them are listening, but there are a few that are starting to look towards using GenAI and leveraging it for the intake process. So think about your business users. So forget lawyers for a second. Who cares about them, right? They don't-- they're not the only CLM users in the world. All your business requesters that need to get their contracts created or reviewed, uh, third-party paper reviewed, they have to fill out an intake form. A lot of these systems rely on you filling out a form like you're at the DMV. The more complex the process, the more questions you've got to answer. I've seen some where it's a hundred plus questions just to get a statement of work reviewed. It's ridiculous.

39:38However, using GenAI to analyze these contracts and then answer the intake form for you and make recommendations before you ever send it to legal, front-loading your contract life cycle with GenAI is really where you should be looking at. And so there isn't a very good CLM solution right now in the market. I know a few that are kind of trying to push that into their feature set, and I hope they will be successful because I do think that is the real game changer because it speeds up the intake process. It advises business folks, "Hey, you're sending this contract to legal for review. We typically don't approve three-year contracts. Can you ask for a two-year option instead? Because that will speed up your review time." GenAI as an advisor or an assistant to your business requesters is going to be a huge time saver and a game changer for contract life cycle management.

40:38The other variation, and this is available today already, is GenAI chatbots. So this is where it's not really CLM, but it does leverage CLM information. And, um, I can drop some vendor names in a second that I think people should consider for this. But just having a chatbot, whether it's a webpage you go to or preferably something that's within Teams or within Slack where you can just go, "Hey, GenAI bot, do I have a non-disclosure agreement with so and so? Um, do I have a statement of work with this vendor? Do, did we already sign a statement of work, uh, for this project?" Being able to ask the GenAI tool. Now, again, it's not just hit a button, it magically happens. There has to be some effort that you put into tools like this. You have to extract data from your CLM system and train it so that it knows how many different contracts you have. But this enables two very important things. It keeps all the contract's busywork that sometimes goes into a CLM system and sometimes exists around the periphery of your CLM system off of legal's plate.

41:48I no longer have to answer questions about, you know, do I, do I need to sign an NDA for this, or do we have a non-disclosure agreement? I can just ask the, the AI tool. And again, this covers a lot of legal and compliance, uh, activities, right? You know, can I take someone out to dinner? Can I, you know, say this to a potential customer? So on and so forth. And then finally, it leverages a lot of the information from that, that existing CLM system. So it's an additional almost cherry on top of a CLM implementation instead of just being a part of CLM. And so that actually helps you triage or pre-triage a lot of contracts before they go into your CLM system and also answer a lot of questions so that you don't get kind of, they're no dumb questions, but dummy requests. "Hey, I need an NDA." "Actually, we have one." And finally, people will have a different perspective on this, but keep business out of your CLM system.

42:47See, they want to use the CLM system or the information and the functionality of, of the CLM system without having to be trained on another dang system. You know, 'cause again, to go back to what you said, Pepe, training and rollout for a CLM system is a huge problem. But most of your business requesters are not going to be submitting one contract every week. They probably come into the system once a quarter or once a year to, you know, get something signed or to request something, unless they're sales and they are, you know, having a baller quarter, for example. So, uh, not having to learn how to look up an NDA, you know, forget the, "Hey, I've got this cool system where I don't have to answer questions for you anymore. You can just search for your contracts." That still sucks because I have to learn a new system, I have to kind of get used to it, and I have to know how to search within this specific system.

43:41'Cause, you know, I might have come from company X that used Ironclad, and I'm going to this company that's using Icertis, and how I search is similar but not exactly the same. So I have to retrain myself as a user. Skip all that stuff. Just ask the AI, do I have an NDA? Do I need to sign a non-disclosure agreement with s- so and so? Uh, does my contract expire with them because I want to, you know, negotiate an additional statement of work? Getting all those answers taps into your contract data without you ever having, I shouldn't say you, without the users for the most part having to interact with the CLM system. That is the other game changer that you can have with gen AI, and that's doable today. The intake stuff, that can take a while. Uh, and I can't say I'm not a software developer. It's a very simple implementation to kind of use gen- gen AI in the intake process in my head.

44:36However, there are people smarter than me that are actually doing the work to build this out, and I know there will be some challenges. But gen AI bots, you've got, you know, vendors like Josef, vendors like Checkbox, Legal OS. They have excellent bots that, you know, I have played around with and tested a lot that can do exactly this job. And again, you don't have to do everything all at once. You can just start with, here's a bot that's gonna answer questions about my contracts, and then you can build and iterate on that to have it now go, it can give me advice. It can tell me who my signers are. It can tell me what our signature thresholds are. You know, these are all simple things. Or it can tell me what my internal policies are around disclosures or sharing information, things like that. And so you can scale that beyond just legal, which again, what you were saying about CLM and legal tech, I was just in a, this LinkedIn discussion yesterday about is CLM really legal tech? I honestly don't think it is.

45:39It's like Word. It's like Outlook. It's for the whole company. It is just technology. It's not exclusive to legal anymore. At one point it might have been just for contract nerds like me, but now it's for the entire company. It's for the business. It's for legal as well, and sometimes even for customers, uh, depending on how you use your system. So- Right. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that's just, that's awesome, right? And I think that gives folks that are, uh, gonna be attending CLOC maybe some insight into what to look for if, right, they are interested in learning more about where the, you know, gen AI, other types of AI in the space. Uh, you know, there's gonna be a ton of vendors there that are, are walking through this, so hopefully that gives them some understanding, uh, maybe beyond what they already, they already understand. Well, hey, this has been a, a fantastic conversation. I know we could talk about this forever and, you know, if folks wanna, uh, connect with you, is, is LinkedIn the best place to do that? LinkedIn is the best place to connect with me. Awesome. All right. Well, hey, we appreciate you coming on and, and thanks everybody for listening to another episode of Contract Heroes. Thank you, guys.

46:41This episode of the Contract Heroes is sponsored by Koho Consulting. Koho helps organizations of all shapes and sizes find, implement, and manage their chosen CLM tool. Whether your project is buy or sell side led, Koho can help you navigate the waters of the CLM space to make sure that you're getting a product that's going to fit like a glove for years to come. If you'd like to learn more about Koho, visit their website at C-O-H-O consulting dot com.