Taking A Phased Approach To CLM Implementation With Sarah Brower

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

0:00You're listening to the Contract Heroes podcasts, your one-stop shop for all things contract management. And now here are your hosts, Marc and Pepe. All right. So let me introduce our two, uh, really wonderful panelists. First up, uh, Sarah Brown from Trudel. Good morning, Je- uh, Sarah. How we doing? Good, thanks. How are you, Simon? Fantastic. Excited for this. I'm also thrilled to welcome Marc Doucette from Koho Consulting. Marc, how we doing? Ready to rock? Let's do it. All right, good. Let's dive right in and talk about how you recognized the need for transformation. So let me start with you, Sarah. Tell us a little bit about kind of where you came from, from a CLM perspective, and kinda how that played out when you found yourself at Trudel, what you found when you got there. Sure. So I joined, uh, the Trudel group of companies just a little over, I think, well, close to three years ago. It's a company that's privately owned, uh, here in Canada and grew very quickly over a number of years.

1:05So we were working with a small legal team with a very simplistic CLM platform that was really primarily managed by the legal team internally, and any external users or external employees didn't have access to the system directly. Prior to Trudel, I was in pharma, so very heavily regulated industry, similar organizational structure where we had one parent and a number of operating companies, and they actually used Agiloft. So I was able to see how those workflows could be reflected in the system and really create an efficiency for contract review and approval. So when I joined Trudel, uh, actually we'd just finished an implementation with the CLM system that just wasn't fit for the needs, and we could assess that pretty quickly after my joining, that it just wasn't something that was going to be able to take us to the next level. Wow, that's amazing. So they just popped something in and it wasn't going to get the job done.

1:59Can you give us kind of a feel for what sort of things were missing or things that you, you realized you needed that, that hadn't been taken into account in the initial implementation? Sure. So the first thing would've been business review. So the CLM that was implemented just prior to my arriving didn't contemplate the number of steps that we had to do from a business standpoint before it came to legal. So we relied on our users to externally do that review, bring the reviewed contract into the system properly. There were a number of manual steps because the, the workflows were out of the box and not modifiable, so there was a lot of back and forth between our contract administrator and then the external teams to even try to get the contract to the point where it was ready to be reviewed. So a big piece for me was knowing that Agiloft could handle those complexities and quite easily, but also be agile.

2:51So the ability to modify workflows if an approver is perhaps on vacation or has left the company or something along those lines. And then for us, a big piece is the Microsoft Word Work in, so the ability to collaborate on one document, get it through all of those approvals and when it gets to me, I've got something that I can guarantee has gone through business review, and I can read all of those comments and not have to do everything by email or Teams. Right. Okay. So it's really, it's the flexibility to run processes the way that makes sense for the business and then sort of the track ability. Is that a good summary? Yeah, absolutely. And you, and you have a certain complexity to the teams that you are supporting, right? We do, yeah. So, um, the legal team, finance teams are all centralized at the parent company, so my employer, Trudel Medical Limited. Um, and then we have 11 operating companies, so all of them have their own senior leadership teams. There's some overlap between people, leaders, and so it really is a very complex organizational structure. We're in different time zones.

3:54We have different languages, so it can be quite crazy at times, and we needed to address all of those complexities, which I was confident Agiloft could do just based on my previous experience with them. Okay. That's great. So I'm actually gonna just bump the slides along here because I wanna bring Marc into this conversation. So at some point, you've worked out, Sarah, that you, you need to do something different to what's in place. At what point did you bring in Koho? Uh, very early on. So we asked Agiloft for their recommendations, uh, very early on in the process to determine a good business partner for us. Uh, Koho was obviously at the top of that list. We would do like any company does and check references and ask for some testimonials, which we did, and it came back glowing. For us, the big attraction was that Koho had done so many implementations in the past, and successfully, I think 98% success rate, which is amazing. And then also knowing that they were across industry sectors as well.

4:52So we were looking for someone that could communicate well, that could understand our unique needs and our complexities, but also somebody that we could trust to be a business partner, you know, sort of all through the process, because the implementation we completed last year is only the start of it for Trudel. Wow. Well, that's a pretty nice endorsement there, Marc. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Koho, what you do, and kind of how you help folks like Sarah to get their CLM implementations done and done right? Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Simon. So as was stated, we've worked with Agiloft for a number of years now, and, uh, really the core of our business is working with folks to implement Agiloft, right? And, and that's obviously what we've helped Trudel with. But above and beyond that, you know, we do also offer additional consulting services, readiness, CLM readiness work to help organizations that maybe weren't as far along as Trudel was in the process when they came to us. So helping them to really gather the requirements, make sure that Agiloft is the right fit. Uh, looking at their templates, maybe trying to reduce those before we bring them into the system.

5:58Looking at their workflows, maybe trying to offer some best practices to simplify those processes as well before we, you know, get into the system to configure We also handle all of our integration work in-house, so if we're looking to integrate with any third-party systems, uh, which I think will be something that, you know, we may touch on today as well as Trudel looks into the future, along with, uh, managed services. So some organizations, uh, don't wanna get somebody internally spun up to manage their Agiloft instance, uh, so we are there to lean on, whether that be for an extended hybrid care period, three months, six months, a year, full-time, uh, those are all services that, that we work with our customers on. So yeah, pretty much anything that an organization can need when it comes to CLM, it is the types of services that we offer. Right. I was fortunate enough to go to CLOC Global Institute, whatever it was, a couple of weeks ago. Feels like a lifetime at this point. I heard a couple of things about this. One of the things that someone said to me, and, and I'd be interested in your view on this, is that for most people who are installing CLM, they're only really gonna do it one to three times in a career, and that the benefit of working with someone like Koho is that you guys do it over and over and over again, and you've already, you know, as it were, dropped the wine glass and stepped on the shards enough times, can help guide through.

7:17So does that sound like kind of a good description of why people find such value in, in what you do? Yeah. I think as the space matures and organizations mature, we, we work with a ton of organizations where this is their first time implementing a CLM tool. A- and there's a lot of questions and hand-holding that those types of, of organizations need because they just don't know what they don't know, right? They've been using manual methods. A- and moving from that to looking to roll that out to a specific department first or specific geolocation first, but that can be overwhelming. Yeah. So when it comes to working with an organization like us, a consultant to, to kind of do the hand-holding there for, for folks that are buying for the first time, I think that's something that's important. And we also work with a number of organizations that are looking to move away from other CLM tools that they've used in the past. Maybe it's a legacy system, maybe it's a, a competitor of Agiloft. And what we see in those use cases is that maybe there was something that was done incorrectly or not as efficiently as possible in the previous implementation, and they're looking for somebody to really come in and do a system audit, make sure that the next time they set up a CLM system, that it's actually done the right way.

8:22And I think that's also something that is important and organizations are looking for when they reach out to us to, to start a conversation. Right. And to bring this back to kind of what Sarah was discussing about what she found when she arrived at Trudel, do you find, as a number of people said to me at, at the show, that kind of once you've solved the original problem that you set out to solve when you first sort of decided to put in CLM, that's when you discover the 17 bajillion ag- other problems that you need to solve that actually aren't improved by the, by the initial implementation? Yeah. I think that's kind of the fun part, right? And e- especially Agiloft, right? I mean, but any enterprise-wide CLM system that you're going to be implementing. After you're able to handle that initial pain, you get to look into the organization, you get to look into the, the piece of software, the piece of technology that you purchased, and see what else it can do and what else it can help with inside of the organization.

9:22And, and I think that's really where we see customers get excited and we see user adoption start to be gained. End users start to want to use the system because it makes their job easier, it makes their life easier. You've got folks that are actually using the, the CLM application, Agiloft, on a day-to-day basis, and their life is, is improving. So I think that's really where organizations can start to really see the true value in those systems is, is after the, the initial implementation when you look into the future, you look into other parts of the organization starting to use, use the software. Right. That makes sense. And so to, to bring it back to you, Sarah, before we move on, I guess what you've told us is you arrived at Trudel, you saw what they were putting in place, you very quickly recognized this wasn't going to get it done. I'm interested, what was the response from the people who were already there, who were sort of getting towards the last legs of an initial implementation? How did they feel about your, shall we say, expansion of the scope of the chair? Yeah. I'm lucky that I work with a bunch of really great people.

10:23So I think from a personal standpoint, no hard feelings, but it was very, very tough for people to see that quick adjustment, and I think they were all wondering, like, "What the heck is the legal team doing?" Like, they just... There seemed to be, you know, lack of alignment. Once we got the process started, we actually, you know, spent a lot of time doing focus groups, assessing pain points. I mean, we were really into, early into the stages of the first go live from the previous system, so people hadn't really worked with it that long, but long enough to understand, like, there were some significant pain points that maybe weren't addressed, and perhaps was because of some inexperience with members of, of the legal team that had never really introduced to CLM before. Um, so overall at, at the start it was, it was an uphill battle to get people bought into the fact that we're changing again, there's a new system to learn. But once they saw Agiloft's capabilities and we pitched it as something like, you know, this isn't just current state. Agiloft is a system that can take us into the future. It's enterprise ready.

11:21You know, as we grow and as we implement other systems, Agiloft can implement or it can, you know, sort of coexist with those. I always like to say, as particularly on the sales side, I don't really want salespeople in my Agiloft system. I want them working in their wheelhouse, right? Whether it's Salesforce, whether it's Dynamics, whether it's JD Edwards, that's where I want them working. I don't really want them in Agiloft. I want them working where they're the most comfortable. Have that data feed into Agiloft where I'm the most comfortable, and then we're both working where our strengths lie. Right. Sharing the same data, but accessing it through the right tools, right? Exactly. Excellent. All right. Well, let's move on a little bit because I think one of the really interesting things about your story, Sarah, is that unlike a lot of folks I talk to, you weren't just dealing with, like As it were, a monolith or an organizational monolith, where you just had to sort people out. You had to deal, as you, as you mentioned, with 11 operating companies that exist, sort of connected to the mothership.

12:29So can you talk to us a little bit about how you planned and executed the rollout across all of those different groups? Sure. Um, so we started with our signature policies that were in place, so those lovely paper policies that everybody gets when they onboard, and then they forget about a month or two after the fact. But that's essentially what we aligned to be able to work with Koho in implementing the workflows in the background that makes those... that form the basis of those policies. And then it was just starting small. We took our largest users, so the parent company, and then Trudeau Medical International, so the largest base of users, and we started there, and we did that implementation over the course of a few months, uh, working with Koho, knowing that that would be the skeleton for our system, and that anything else that we needed to address that was unique to a particular operating company, that would be a fairly easy either change or add-on to the system. Um, and it's funny, Simon, because I think you, you mentioned a few minutes ago just about how you don't realize until you've started an implementation or until you've implemented a system, that the system doesn't fix everything, and that's when it...

13:38you have to assess, okay, is it a process problem? Is it a people problem? Is it an education problem? And so that's kind of where we're at now, is we've had the system in place for about a year now with those first two operating companies. We're coming up on, I think, seven or eight months with the others, and now we're seeing, okay, so where the system isn't perhaps working as well as it should, it's not necessarily a system issue. We're finding it's either education or it's the fact that the signature policies that we based it off of, because they were done so many years ago, aren't really aligning to current business practices, and there's a need to revisit that and then go through another change with the Agiloft system. Yeah, that makes sense. Marc, do you see that happening frequently in Koho's experience, where you roll it out, now you start to identify challenges and have to start working out root causes? And we can't hear you. I think that's part of uncovering some change management processes, right, that might need to be rolled out as well on top of technology.

14:37I mean, we talk about it on the podcast all the time, how technology is not going to be the answer to all of the issues that you're, you're facing internally, but it absolutely can help to, uh, resolve them in a, a faster and a more eff- a more efficient way. But there are gonna be hard conversations that need to be had internally. There are gonna be folks inside those organizations that need to drive those internal conversations, and stakeholders that need to come to the table so that different parts of the business are involved, and you can make decisions on how you want to continue to roll out, you know, Agiloft or your chosen, um, CLM technology. Right. And that was very nicely done, by the way, Marc. I completely forgot to mention to everybody The Contract Heroes podcast, which you are a host. Uh, for those of you who like to listen to, about contract things on your podcast, I recommend it. It's really good, really interesting. Contract Heroes podcast. Thank you for mentioning that. So I think one of the things that people tell me, and I think it fits with what both of you just said, is that CLM is less a destination and more a journey.

15:39Does that resonate for either of you, or am I completely full of hot air? No, I think you're absolutely right. Go ahead, Marc. No, no, it's completely agree, Simon, and I think that's something that, again, that we've seen. As organizations mature, as the space matures, I think it used to be considered more a point solution for legal teams, and now, you know, I think CLM is really viewed as an enterprise-wide technology that all different parts of the business need to be involved with. And when you take a look at contracting, right, it's... I think more organizations are getting on board with legal not being owners of contracts, but again, it's something that affects the entire organization. Sarah, any thoughts? No, I completely agree with Marc as well. That's the point that we're trying to get to, right? Like, is having the business owners really own their agreements. I mean, legal's happy to assist in going through the review and the negotiation, but at the end of the day, we want people to be able to own those relationships, own their contracts, and essentially know what's in them. Particularly with an organization of our size, I mean, we completed an acquisition late in 2024, and we grew by about 500 employees. We're a legal team of six, with me as the sole commercial lawyer.

16:44There's simply too much volume to say, you know, all contracts reside with legal. Legal needs control over everything, nee- legal needs to see contracts getting signed. We, uh, essentially, at the end of the day, are the, are the largest stakeholders when it comes to contracts. Changing that mindset has been very interesting. Part of the feedback we got from the previous CLM was, "Well, we have no control over our contracts. Legal has it all." And we said, "Well, yes, because the CLM, there was no audit trail with those CL- with that CLM." So Agiloft obviously has that, so if something was to go awry, we can trace it back to whatever user or whatever issue it was. So it's funny, because we gave that control back to them and said, "Okay, here you go. You can now own it as the contract manager. Please own it, track it, follow it." And now it's coming back as, "Well, this is a lot of work. This is quite difficult." So we're managing, we're managing some interesting relationships right now because everybody is quite busy, but the solution is, is to either now look at integrations, look at possible AI within Agiloft's capabilities, and find some efficiencies within the technology that then we can then give to users so that it's not just coming back to legal.

17:54And that's what I love about Agiloft, is that it's able to grow with us. Yeah. It's interesting. A phrase I heard a couple weeks ago was that for a lot of people in the legal operations space, they're being asked to do, and I use the phrase carefully, less with less. And so what we're hearing is, so I... it started off, about six months ago, I talked to a chap in procurement over at, uh, Rush University Hospitals in Chicago. Who set up an incredibly clever system. It's like it's so brilliant that it, it seems obvious. But they used to have all of the contracts emailed into someone, who would then parcel them out wherever they needed to go. They changed it so that the contract goes... is uploaded into Agiloft, and the little AI doohickey reads it and assigns it, right? Right. So based on certain s- certain stuff, like, it just goes to the right person. Saves them a couple of days, right? I then talked to somebody else a couple of weeks ago who says, "You know, we're now starting to reevaluate how many of the things that we used to always look at really need legal attention.

19:01If someone wants 250 bucks to clear the trash off the front of the building, do I really need to look at it? Probably not, but I do want to see the contract. I want the contract to be stored." And so he's looking at a system, it hasn't been built, he's playing with it, uh, where what would happen is business partners, your, your business partner uploads it, runs an AI, what we call a screen on it, that says, "Here's 10 red flags." If there aren't any red flags, "Vaya con Dios. Sign it, don't care." Yeah, and I think that's where we're trending towards, Simon, is just- Mm-hmm... we're having the same conversations at Trudel, is what really matters. I mean, it used to be as simple as saying, okay, if there's an indemnity provision, if the term is X number of years, if there's uncapped liabilities, you know, and sort of pinpoint those key clauses. But, I mean, as you know, we're in an extremely litigious society, so all of those contracts, regardless of dollar value, seem to have those. So we're not helping ourselves, right? Right.

19:57I can have the contract come across my desk for $1,000. So now that we have Agiloft, finding that time to develop a legal playbook to say, "Where is that line in the sand?" Yeah. Apply it across operating companies, then exact- do exactly that, implement an AI tool that can say, "Okay, well, it's not matching your playbook," or it is, and if it doesn't, then it sort of escalates to the right person in legal. Yeah. I wonder if that's why we are still in the phase of this technology where it's still journey more than destination, is we haven't solved the problem yet because there's so much, for want of a, a non-techy phrase, unstructured text, right? The, the, a contract- Mm-hmm... is just a bunch of words. But with the ability to run AI to extract data, perhaps now we're getting onto the path where we are gonna come up with a solved problem, where a CLM five years from now will be like an ERP or a CRM or an HCM where it's establishing things. Does that seem like a direction we're going, or am I just dreaming? I think I'll let Marc answer that one. Well, yeah, Marc, back me up here, brother.

21:03Back- I totally agree, and I think we're seeing the space mature and, and like I, you know, previously stated, it's becoming more of an enterprise-wide piece of technology versus a point solution for your sales side or your buy side contracts. And yeah, I think that's the trend that, that we're seeing as well over here, so. Yeah. Okay, so let's move on. And by the way, ladies and gentlemen, if you are listening and you have any questions, uh, or anything, please do let us know. We want to make this as interactive as we can. So let's move on a little bit here to sort of the delivery. So we've talked about how you found an opportunity to build something that was a little bit beyond what was expected. You've brought in a trusted partner who's helped you get there. You've spent the time to roll it out to the team, and you're starting to understand things. What's the general go forward plan at this point? Is it simply keep rolling out? Is it adjust? What's your thought on how this continues to expand across the organization?

21:58So more immediately, we're looking at rolling out to the more recently acquired operating companies. So, uh, we completed the acquisition November of 2024, and like I said, we've got 500 new employees, so a number of those will need access in some form to Agiloft, whether that's through an integration or just on its own. So we're currently assessing that. And the key is just to get that rolled out, get users putting contracts into the system so that we have traceability, because right now it's not centralized with legal. So that's the most immediate need, and then after that, it's exactly as you said, Simon, it's readjustment. So done a root cause analysis with some of the operating companies. We've got a few more to figure out if it's a technology pain point or if it is something at the organizational level that needs to shift. And then improving the system, so looking at more integrations. We're going through an ERP system change at the moment. So once that's completed, looking at bringing an integration with Agiloft into that.

23:01I'd like to see better user adoption, so focusing on, on user adoption, user education, getting people to really learn how much the system has in terms of capabilities. And also looking at risk management and compliance. So looking at those verticals within Agiloft to support our compliance and risk management teams, because they're currently without a solution, and we know that Agiloft is capable of supporting those teams as well, so beyond just simple contract management. So if I recall correct, we have a, a fairly contained group of integration that are live, right? Just sort of like the Microsoft Word, the single sign-on. What else? A DocuSign- The DocuSign is always coming... integration? Yeah, so we have all of those sort of quick and easy standard out of the box that makes it easier to use Agiloft, I would say, or not easier, but just more efficient. But looking at Salesforce next, likely Dynamics, and I mean, gosh, you guys have, I think it's about 1,000 or if not more different apps. So really looking, doing an assessment of what people are using now.

24:02I think I just heard of Freshworks the other day. I've got it on my list to say, "Can Agiloft, uh, integrate with Freshworks?" But I think it's, the list is gonna be never ending. But again, at the end of the day, my end goal is legal should be using Agiloft. We should be interfacing with the Agiloft system as it's built, but our users should be working in their wheelhouse. And really, it's a case of, I like to call it freeing the data, because I'm in marketing and I use silly phrases like that. But, like, it's taking the information and making it available to the right person at the right time. Do you see a lot of folks really starting to, to get serious about these integrations and sharing the data, Marc? Yeah, I do. And again, I think, you know, as Sarah just stated, right, we wanna make sure that folks inside of the organization are working in the systems that they're familiar with and that they're comfortable with, that they don't need to learn, uh, a new interface. We don't want them to have to. And I think that's the great thing- Yeah...

24:51about Agile off, right, and the integration hub, is that we truly can connect with almost any system that's out there on the market now that that's been rolled out. And I think that goes a long way with inside of organizations, and it, it is another great, uh, selling point to, versus some of the, the competitors that we see on a regular basis. Yeah. I do think that it's important, as I say, I think that the transition from, to, to your point, kinda departmental tool to enterprise solution is that liberation of the data that used to be trapped inside a contract so that people can get involved. I just thought it was fascinating, as I said, the chapter's looking to pass the responsibility for doing the initial screening back to business partners, just a thing that you couldn't have done five years ago. It's now becoming possible. Although, I don't know about you, I kinda feel like people are getting a lot smarter about AI now. I don't know, but I'd like...

25:46I'd be interested in your angle on this, Marc, 'cause I feel like two years ago people would go, "Ooh, what AI have you got?" As though it was sort of bag of muffins that you were just gonna eat. Now it feels like people are asking real questions about, "I have this problem, can AI solve it for me?" Am I imagining that or does that feel real to you, too? Yeah, I, I think we're still seeing a mix of both. Okay. I think that some organizations still, again, just don't know what they don't know, right? But we are definitely seeing more folks that do have pointed tasks or ideas around what they want AI to help them with. And it's probably a good thing that they didn't have those questions two years ago, because I don't know if AI would've been able to actually do the things that they were expecting it to do. So we've absolutely, obviously come a very long way in, in two years, and things are just happening at a, an extremely accelerated rate now when it comes to AI and, and, and what it's, it's capable to help with. So what we always tell folks is to do your research and obviously lean on the software publishers to tell you what the system is capable of, and then kinda map that to some of the, the challenges that you're facing.

26:54Because without it, that information, it, it can be hard to see, you know, what these systems are really capable of and where you can take advantage of AI currently and, you know, what's on the roadmap into the future. All right. Let me bring it back to your story a little bit, Sarah. So you talked about sort of rolling this out to the two largest of the operating companies first and go- going, then sort of moving your way on. What do you think are the benefits of really going step by step rather than just trying to kinda boil the ocean all in one fell swoop? Sure. I'm just thinking of my inbox. It was selfish of me because I just didn't wanna have to deal with all of the questions and everything else. So part of it was, uh, for quite selfish reason. But I say that sort of in jest because there was a point for about six months where we had half of our users in Agile Off and the other half still sending me contracts by email. So it wasn't exactly an easy task. The thing was, is we could identify what would be some of the major problems early on, or the major obstacles to user adoption early on.

27:57And the benefit of that was we were looking at maybe about 50 users, whether it was us having to re-educate or say, "You know what? Maybe we configured this wrong. Maybe we didn't think of X, Y, Z," or adding in templates. We could really take the time to focus on those two operating companies first, make sure it was as perfect a- as it was going to get, knowing that then the product we could deliver to the next round of op cos was in a really good place. I think if you take too much at once, and you, I would say, over-implement, like, even if, I would say if you're working with that monolith organization with a number of employees, I would encourage to think about rolling out to departments, right? Otherwise- Mm-hmm... it's very easy to become overwhelmed with problems that need to be solved with user requests, with user education. I mean, for us too, it was also about rolling out sort of in-house how-to videos for people, right, on how to use the system. Mm-hmm.

28:53And fielding those questions and making sure my contracts administrator wasn't overwhelmed with the amount of people that needed to be educated on the system. Because there's a little bit of a learning curve as there is with any new system. So I would encourage you take the time, do it slowly, do it right, and don't just implement for the sake of getting something in place because it's probably not gonna work very well. Yeah. I think that makes sense. I don't know about you, Marc, I kinda feel like the stuff you read about on LinkedIn where all of the tech bros are saying, "Move fast and break things," doesn't really work when it comes to rolling out, you know, as, as a serious enterprise piece of software like CLM. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we always suggest and talk about taking a phase- phased approach when we look at these implementations, and, uh, making sure that you can get some quick wins, right? And if you are going to be integrating with third-party applications during that first phase, right, let's focus on the ones that are going to, to, uh, provide the, the largest amount of value a- and then breaking that up into future phases.

29:51But as Sarah said, I mean, it's so important to focus on the biggest challenges, focus on the department that's going to see the, the highest amount of value. Or again, right, I mentioned geo-locations, right? If you're a larger organization focusing on maybe the US first or North America first, but making sure that you're not overcomplicating these types of initial implementations is so important. Because if you do have a, uh, a bad rollout, uh, and you don't gain that user adoption upfront, uh, you're going to struggle to, to continue to loop other parts of the organization in and probably get upper management to really see the value of continuing to spend money with your CLMs. Yeah, and I think it makes a lot of sense. So I think what's fascinating here is the very, I don't know what the word is, but measured, I, I wanna say wise, honestly, approach that you've taken to this project. Uh, between the two of you both get the credit, right?

30:43We've started, we know what we want to do, we've built it out, we've integrated to the core pieces that we know deliver us value, and then we're starting to, to move things at a, a steady- But a reasonable and achievable pace. I guess the question I have, and I didn't tell you I was gonna ask this question, so I apologize, but it just hit me, is which other departments that are adjacent to you, Sarah, really are kind of feeling the benefits of this sort of new capability? Is it the M&A team, the sales team, the procurement team? Who, who if we went and sort of kicked around the building would say, "Oh, I'm so glad we have this 'cause it's delivering me some kind of real, real improvement." Hopefully every department. It's a good answer. I hope everybody's having a good experience with it. I think it's really empowered senior leadership, particularly because they tend to be a little bit more removed from the contract negotiations.

31:38I mean, barring something that needs to be escalated to them. But knowing that they can see who's approved, see the various document iterations too if they'd like to, to see how far we've negotiated, so that when a contract comes across to them for signing, that they can see that very quickly and easily. I think our sales team feels very empowered. The reporting capabilities in Agiloft have been huge, and something that our users haven't had before. So being able to, you know, pull any number of distribution agreements. In our instance, you know, we customized so we could look at what products are distributed where, and whether it's on an exclusive or a non-exclusive basis. And then particularly where we've had changes in upper management, to be able to give them a snapshot of what the landscape looks like for our sell side of the business has been really, really huge. Let me see. Who else? New product development would be another.

32:30So we made the decision early on to put template CDAs into the system to allow users to build on CDAs and get them across the table very, very quickly, rather than coming to me and asking me to draft them on a sort of one-a-day, two-a-day kind of thing. So empowering them with templates to say as long as there's no changes to our standard language, feel free to plug and play the information about the other party, send it out, and then only if there's red lines to our standard template would it then come to me. So, I mean, from my perspective, I've had a huge amount of work be taken off my plate from not having to review every single non-disclosure agreement that comes across to our organization. And then on the other side, enabling them to start conversations early on with potential customers, business partners, suppliers, and so forth. All right. Now I'm gonna do the one thing they tell all lawyers not to do. I'm gonna ask you a question that I don't know the answer to. So you said the, the non-disclosure agreements, you sort of, you got it from them emailing you to it was templated, and they can just do it themselves.

33:33I've heard from a lot of people that when they get that solution sorted out, they find that you're actually aware of more non-disclosure agreements than you were before when they had to come directly to you. Did you have that experience? To an extent, yeah. I mean, I have to say credit to our teams is I have a really good working relationship with all of them, so for the most part, they would approach me on every occasion. I think it's made them more agile now. So if they're considering maybe three different vendors, they don't have to do an analysis on their side to say, "Okay, which one's the most important one that we can send to Sarah to get her to do it first?" They can do all three in a row. Oh, that's great. That's great. So it's really changing... It's really creating some real speed in that, in that procurement process. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's fantastic. That's fantastic. All right, so we're, we're trundling towards the end of our, uh, kind of non-question time. So I wanna encourage everyone to get their questions in.

34:29I am going to, uh, disappoint Kevin out there in the audience. We will not be showing a walkthrough of Sarah's instance today. I think that that... I think she might have some people in the business who might be cross with us if we did that. But we have lots and lots of walkthroughs coming up, and I'll make sure that someone gets that to you so you can take a look at stuff and ask your specific questions. We have one question, which is pretty simple: how are you thinking about introducing AI into your environment? And I guess let's put it to both of you, so I'll adjust it for Marc. You know, what sort of AI requests are you getting from your customers? And let's start with Marc. Why not? Yeah. You know, I think the main thing and the exciting thing that we're looking to roll out to customers is screens, right? And being able to leverage that functionality, uh, as we look into the future and as it's, it's now officially part of Agiloft's platform. So a- and the abilities there are really limitless on what it's capable of.

35:29But empowering the legal team a- and being able to speed up their review process even further than, than what we've seen in the past when it comes to AI, I think that's huge. Obviously, the third party comparison, so reviewing documents that are on third-party paper versus, uh, a- and having a quick pass to be able to see, hey, what clauses should we be focusing on to start redlining, right? Where do we need to push back? I think those are two areas that we're seeing a lot of, of interest. And then the third one being, and this is for, typically for new customers, is migration, right? So if they're coming from legacy system, maybe another CLM tool that did not do a good job of extracting that data and being able to put it into Agiloft so that you're able to report on it, that's a huge component to these implementations. And pulling out that data from your legacy agreements, being able to rely on somebody like us to validate that data, and making sure that that validation process is actually happening by people that understand contracts.

36:27And so pushing that data, being able to report on things immediately upon go live, especially your active agreements, we think that's a big focus, and it's questions that we get weekly when it comes to what AI is capable of. Cool. And I, and I should just mention for anybody who hasn't been introduced to screens yet, here's the 30-second version of it. Build playbooks, which are literally a list of pass, fail standards. You bring in a contract, you run the playbook against it. It'll tell you how many of those standards passed, how many of those standards failed. If all... If you set up 10 and all 10 pass, yay, we've got ourselves a good contract. If all 10 fail, ooh, we've got a terrible contract. Quick, it's easy, it's really clever. If you've not taken a look at it, please do. I'll stop selling things now. Over to you, Sarah. What sort of things are you looking at AI-wise in the business? Yeah. So funny you mentioned Screen. So I had a demo of it last week and was really impressed.

37:25Uh, I think on our side, we're going to be taking a slow and measured approach to AI. We're in a really heavily regulated industry, like the medical device world/pharmaceutical world, right? There's a lot of different considerations to be made. I've had requests, "Can Agiloft read our contracts and just put the data into the system for us?" So I imagine at some point we'll have to do something where, uh, particularly with legacy agreements. So I should have mentioned that, you know, we did import a number of legacy contracts into the system, but a number of the opcos still have hundreds, if not thousands, of their own legacy agreements that they want brought into Agiloft just even to keep as a repository. So I think we'll be looking at implementing some sort of AI tool that can do that read and pull the data and do some sort of larger migration with Marc and his team in the next few months. For me, I'm really excited from my perspective is to see where the redlining tools are going to go and where we can increase some capabilities there.

38:22I think it's important to sort of see what tools are out there and reduce our reliance on external counsel. Back to your comment earlier, you know, doing less with less. We operate in 110 jurisdictions globally. I'm clearly not an expert in 110. I'd like to think I am, but not the case. Even having some sort of AI capabilities that can help me understand the jurisdiction that we're entering into so that my reliance on external counsel is really just for a sanity check rather than asking them to review something from start to finish. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. And this is all the stuff that's coming over the next 12 to 24 months, I think, for everybody. It's dizzying. Truly, truly dizzying. On that note, I think we've about, uh, reached the end of our time. Uh, this has been fascinating. Sarah, thank you so much. Marc, you too. Everybody who stuck with us and enjoyed this, thank you very much. You'll be getting some follow-up. You can find us all on LinkedIn. I hope that's okay to say. I guess if you don't want to connect with people, don't. Uh, generally speaking, the Agiloft community is pretty close.

39:26If you hear someone who has something interesting, reach out to them, make a friend. And don't forget to visit the community at Agiloft if you're a customer, because it's a great place to bounce ideas off of each other. I learn something every time I do one of these and get to know folks like Sarah and Marc. So I want to thank you all very much again, wish you a wonderful rest of your day, and say I hope that we will see you again on something future. And Kevin, don't forget to sign up for one of those walkthroughs. Wanna make sure we get you a good look at the system. Thanks, everybody. Have a wonderful day. Bye, everybody. Thanks. Thanks, everyone. This 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 years to come.

40:22If you'd like to learn more about Koho, visit their website at C-O-H-O consulting dot com.