The Contract Management Quadrant - Kris Kwiatek

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. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Contract Heroes, where we're not the heroes, our guests are. Uh, today we've got a great one for you, uh, coming in from across the pond. Kris Kiatek over at J- Deloitte is joining us. I'm very excited to, to have you here, Kris. Thanks for, uh, thanks for coming on board. Uh, before we jump in, would love to get just, uh, a little bit more about, uh, your background, your experience. Uh, so yeah, take it away. Yeah. Thanks, Marc. Thanks for having me here, uh, and thanks for inviting me to this great podcast. I'm Kris Kiatek, associate director at Deloitte Legal, uh, from Kraków, Poland. I'm a part of legal management consulting, and I run technology center of excellence here, mm, mostly focusing on CLM implementations.

0:57And I sa- as I said, I'm from Kraków, Poland, and this is a beautiful city and encourage everybody who has a chance to visit Poland to just, uh, visit Kraków. I have 20 years experience in widely understood IT, last eight years in CLM, in contract lifecycle management, and it all started in 2014 when Craig Conte, who I believe was a guest in this podcast a few months ago, was looking at the time, uh, for, for someone who could help him manage, um, the tech part of the newly created contract management team at Capgemini. I thought that's a great opportunity. I, I joined, and this is where I am now, just last, um, uh, last eight years just doing different CLM implementations and, and managing contract lifecycle management. That's awesome, Kris.

1:44And, well, in our most recent, uh, episode we've been d- discussing a lot what needs to happen before doing a CLM implementation, and I think this will be a very interesting one because this is something that we've been working on, we've been leading on with Marc and I and you for a couple of years already, and it's what about, o- okay, you decide now that you wanna go full in, uh, doing a CLM implementation. So before we go to the details on what's, what, what needs to happen during this process, Kris, can you talk a little bit on why is having a CLM important for every organization? Oh, yeah. So, so many companies have just realized that, that efficient contract management is, is a crucial process inside the organization, as, uh- Right... the contracts are everywhere. Services are, are everywhere. And now this is more and more common that companies are signing these contracts, and this process has to be efficient. And when you look at other processes, every, almost everything is automated.

2:44You have ERP systems, you have CRM systems, uh, HR systems, and still this contract management is a little bit left alone. So now when everybody knows that time is money, now I think it's time to, to implement the CLM. And, um, the, the thing is that contracts are touched by everybody, but no one really is the owner of a, of a contracting process. That's why automation of this is not that easy, because no one really wants, at the beginning, to pay for it. Uh- Right... and, you know, when, when, when you realize that you have to automate, that, that time is money, then you also came to the next conclusion, that without a proper CLM you cannot do the search. You cannot really find the contractual information. It's one thing is just to sign a contract. Second thing is just to extract quickly the information you need at the moment you need it. So, uh, I think this is one of the major reasons. Don't think about AIs. Don't think about all this nice functionalities.

3:44Just i- if you can implement only proper CLM repository, only contract repository, which is searchable in all the ways, then it's a success. If you don't have your own templates, if you are not ready, just start with a third-party template. Start tracking the, the approval. Start tracking what is happening to your contract. Start tracking all the pieces of the process. Make them faster, make them better, and then, uh, I think you will s- you will quickly see the, see the, see the benefits. Yeah, Kris, and I, I think you made a, a lot of good points there and, and, you know, when you are building that business case to, to bring to either your department head or, or management, you know, a- as you said, everything else inside an organization is already automated. I mean, ERPs and CRMs have been around for an extremely long period of time and, and, you know, organizations have those folks in place to manage those tools, and that's why we're seeing the, the legal ops, uh, growth and, and, um, people inside of, uh, legal be- becoming technology experts because they have to. Yeah. You know, and I, I think you brought up, you know, something important there that I, I wanted to drill into a little bit more and, you know, that was around the, the repository functionality.

4:52So, you know, a- as a, I, I guess as a, a good phase one, right? That's, that's kind of a good phase to, to bring in the repository, maybe some of the workflows, the alerts, um, but you need to start simple to make sure that you can drive user adoption. H- how have you, um, you know, in taking this phased approach, how have you seen success, uh, when implementing these, these processes? How do you, you tell folks to slow down, let's do the basics first before trying to, to jump in, uh, to a full system? Yeah, so we have learned the, the hard way, uh, and now after a few years of, of trying to deploy the perfect CLM system, uh, we realized that the best way or the f- the, the fastest way to do it properly and to have the user adoption is to start small with probably a pilot. So we are not now, we are trying to, when, when we convince the client or client comes to us asking for a CLM implementation, we strongly, strongly send a message that first let's build what in IT is called MVP, minimum viable product.

5:56Let's narrow the scope, uh, build this quickly, introduce or implement a pilot, not a POC, because many people think that if you deploy a POC and you tell your users, "That is the system, you can just go there and play and test it," no one has time really to, to test the POC. Right. And after a month or two you are at the same point, so you know nothing So the better way is to design a pilot, maybe with just one template, maybe with just one department, deploy it very, very quickly, give it to the real users, gather the real feedback, uh, uh, because they will be creating real agreements, they will be signing it. And then based on this, when you are at the end of the pilot, then you may think what to do next. Because in fact you have two options, either go deeper with the functionality, so in fact extend everything still with the same department and test it again, or maybe use this MVP and spread it through the whole organization. And this is what we usually do. Because then, uh, you still have your first group of users as your ambassadors. They know this tool in and out because it's not very complicated. The, the scope was very narrow.

7:05And then they can help you with the adoption with, with the other departments. So this is what we usually suggest. Uh, start with the pilot, start small, test it. And what is also very, very important, before you start the pilot, you should agree internally what is the, what are the success criteria, what in fact you wanna fix with this tool. Because if you don't know what you wanna fix, if don- if you don't know how you're gonna measure if the pilot was successful or not, then at the end, still decision will be tough. Do we want to deploy it in the full organization or not? Right. And, and Kris, I, I know that every organization is different, and most of these implementations are very ad hoc and are very case by case. But can you give us an, an example of any, uh, MVP or pilot that you implemented? Because I would say that some of the basic features that companies are looking for is, okay, it's re- repository, right? Because one of the biggest problems is that everybody has a piece of the files, right? And then whenever somebody needs a contract, no- nobody knows who has it, right?

8:11Because maybe they don't have, like, a central repository. But besides that, like, which other kind of features do you think, or in your experience, uh, companies can s- uh, can start working on during the pilot process? Yeah. So we usually try to keep only two integrations, so only integration with single sign-on. Because if you want, if you want a good- Mm... level of adoption, the login to the system should be easy. Yeah, so single sign-on is a must. So with single sign-on. And if you wanna see this digitalization of the contracts, e-signature is the next natural step. Yes, you want your users to be able to sign a contract with a signature. So just these two. No integrations with SAP, no integrations with Coupa, Ariba, with, you know, Salesforce. Nothing. Just these two. And if you, if companies are asking me, "But what about the master data? What about vendors? What about, uh, integration with HR?"

9:05W- at the beginning, we just download this data for the pilot, you know, just using files and uploading it to the CLM system, just giving them this data, but without any integrations because it's very, very complex. And then we come to the next question, which is how many templates, and we usually say one, max two. So if you wanted two, just one probably will be NDA, because it's super simple, and another one, just pick one, but make sure that, uh, this is the template which will become a real contract during the, the validation period. So if you choose an MSA, okay, we can automate MSA. But what if during this two months or three months you're not gonna sign an MSA? And how often do you sign an MSA? Maybe just few in a year. So you will not see this volume in the tool, so in fact your search will be useless. So this is a very, very difficult decision, but once we have this template, then we should select group of users who will be not testing, but really validating the, this, this pilot or validating the idea.

10:07And, uh, we try not to extend 100, because these guys, w- we, we have very limited period of time, we have to train them properly, and we are just doing in a agile, uh, way. So very, very quickly we are just showing the progress of the CLM configuration. We are inviting these users for, or representatives of these users, for these frequent demos. So the moment we just give it to them, they already know what to do. So just to summarize, just two integrations, one, max two templates, limited number of users, and very, very quick deployment. Yeah, I, I think that, you know, I... Sometimes we, we get into situations where customers say, "Hey, we, we need to have this on, on the phase one," and, you know, we, we do get a little bit flexible. But I think for the most part, I think you're right.

10:55You, you need to start with things that everyone's going to be comfortable with, make sure you get that user adoption up before you start to expand and give them access to other parts of, of the system to make sure that they're successful in using it and not gonna revert back to, you know, their old ways because it's what they know how to do. And Kris, you know, I, uh, obviously you've been in the space for, uh, a, a good amount of time and, and, uh, you know, we're, we're going on four years in the space now as well, and I, I think even in that period of time, you know, we've, we've seen an explosion of different types of solutions and vendors coming into the market. When you're working with these organizations, do you ha- do you s- typically, do you work with the same handful of vendors? Is, is there a couple that you are always recommending or, or does it really vary depending on what an organization's looking for? So when we been working at Capgemini, uh, and, uh, co- in cooperation with WCC, World Commerce and Contracting, we, we designed some kind of a database of CLM solution.

11:54And I realized at the time, it was 2000, I think, 18, that there were more than 300 tools on the market. So yeah, this is, uh, an overwhelming number. Since then, there was a consolidation on the market, but still we are talking about hundreds of CLM solutions. We as Deloitte, we are tool agnostic. Uh, so in fact, we, we don't have, w- we don't have our own solution, and we can recommend always the best tool, um, for the client. But as Craig, uh, is usually saying, we are tool opinionated, so we have of course our preferences. And we, we are trying to have, like, two or three solutions from each shelf of the market. So yeah, like, two or three solutions for the biggest players on the market, and then for the middle shelf and, and of course, for the small organizations. So this is what we are suggesting our, our clients. Okay. Yeah, and I, I think we'd agree with that, too, and it is nice to be able to, one, have those different tiers of types of solutions, but also in those tiers, you know, being, being able to show somebody, um, two different solutions because no, no two tools are the same even though a lot of these tools have the same functionality- Yeah...

13:03they might do something a little bit different or look a little bit different. So yeah, it's, it's... I think that's, that's also what we're seeing over here. So I think that's fantastic. Yeah. So s- we are just, as you just said, just one sentence more. Even if there are, like, 300 tools on the market, these tools are sometimes for completely different purposes because- Mm-hmm... some of them are designed to, to support sell side. In fact, they are very flexible and you can create a contract quickly. Some of them are for buy side, so are more focused on processes and just keeping everything into order. Some of them are just for pre-signature phase or maybe even just for contract drafting and collaboration and that's it. Mm-hmm. The moment the contract is signed, you don't have nothing more. And some of them are for post signature. So in fact, the moment the contract is signed, all the fun begins. You may, you can track everything which is happening with the contract. You may manage your cooperation with the vendor or client. So yeah, it's, uh, the, the CLM term is a very, is very wide- Yeah... and, um, it doesn't mean always the same for all the tools. Yeah.

14:08Yeah, and, and I think we, you know, we'd agree. Those are kind of the four quadrants that people need to look at when they're considering a tool and, you know, even if, if I, I think some of these tools have evolved. You know, maybe they were just pre-execution tools, but now they have post-execution functionality as well. But you need to, you know, understand as an organization, well, where do we really wanna focus? All those other functionality is great, right? Those might be nice-to-haves, but we wanna make sure that we're really getting a tool that once we implement it, it's going to, uh, it's gonna work with our processes and, and what we need it to accomplish. So yeah, I think that those are four great kind of categories to, to think about when you are taking a look at, um, you know, let's say the- Yeah... s- maybe five or 10 solutions that are out there. Um, and y- y- when you're doing, when you're doing these, um, pilots, Chris, do you typically see that starting always with the legal department? Does that vary depending on an organization? Almost everybody thinks, or, like, this is, like, a wide understanding that, that when you say contract management, you think legal.

15:04But in fact, we are, legal is probably the, the last on our list after procurement and sales. Right. Because legal, legal only touches the, the part of the, of the contract management process, and usually legal doesn't want to pay for CLM implementation. So procurement is the main driver, so usually we, we cooperate with procurement and we build the solutions for them. Then sales, because sales is now more and more aware of the fact that, uh, you know, drafting contracts in Word is fun, but you have to somehow control this process. And legal is now joining this, this team also because as you said, the, there is this quadrant, yeah? Buy side, sell side, pre-signature, post-signature, and now th- this matter management tools were separated completely, and legal had their own set of tools. But CLM players noticed that this is a niche and, uh, they can just add these functionalities to nicely embed everything together and en- encourage legal to work, uh, using the standard CLM tools.

16:10And matter management platforms also notice that CLM is something they can conquer. So I think soon, sooner rather than later we will start seeing this big platforms for legal and procurement with matter management embedded. And if you have it, then later you can create matters directly related to the contract so then- Right... legal's life is, is easier. Right, especially I, I, I like what you said at the beginning, right? Because who's the owner of the, the contract? I mean, legal is the one that, I mean, takes care and they are responsible for avoiding risks for their companies, right? But at the end, like, the one who is going to be benefited is, uh, is the sales team, is the procurement team. Yeah. And, uh, and they're actually the ones who are in charge of the commercial terms during the negotiation process with external parties, right?

17:03So legal only focuses on the riskier, you know, like, uh, limitation of responsibility of li- liability I mean, and, and any other, uh, clauses inside the contract. And Chris, I, I like what you said, uh, also when we were discussing the first steps during the implementation process, and it's setting the goals, right? So what would you say that will be, like, the pres- the, the main benefits for procurement and from sales for doing a CLM process? Like, do you do, do you work with any KPIs, or what do you think will be, like, the, the, the main benefits for them to have a CLM in place? So it's different from company to company. It's very difficult- Right... to just have the one golden standard. But what we usually do before this, this MVP implementation that w- we are trying to understand the pain points and then we convert these pain points into, into KPIs.

18:01So for example, if before a CLM implementation, like, only 50% of the signed, the contracts were searchable in, I don't know, SharePoint or somewhere, then during the MVP we say that 95% should be there. 95% of assigned contracts between- Right... this date and this date should be in this repository. Or very, very simple example, if today it takes you Five to 10 minutes to find a document, um, in your repository because first you have to understand where is it, and then find the real folder, and then just, just dig in deeper. And in the new CLM tool, it takes you just 30 seconds. You log in, you type your keyword, bang, you have it. This is the saving. Uh, so yeah, we work with our clients and it's different from, from client to client, but usually we, we, we focus on the pain points, we listen to...

18:55A- and sometimes we even have to change their mind a little bit because clients now just, just want... just tend to tell us that, "You know, I need a CLM system, and the CLM system will, will fix my problems. And this is the best on the market, this is the most expensive- Mm... so probably I should choose this one, yeah?" Big mistake. So now we just w- yeah, this, this is a big mistake. So first of all, we have to understand why do you need it, w- which problems do you wanna fix? It's like, it's like comparing, I don't know, two cars. If you come to me saying, "I need to buy a car." But okay, do you have a family? Are you single? Do you have kids? Or why do you need this car? To, to, you know, to transport goods from place A to place B, or maybe you're just a single soccer player and you need Ferrari, yeah? It's completely different. That's, that's why we, we have to first understand the pain points and then choose a CLM to fix it. Mm-hmm. And, and Kris, how, how, um, how long does that kind of pre-implementation conversations, how in-depth those go?

19:56What, what do those time periods look like? Is there a lot of, um, pre-implementation consulting that, that the team also does in some scenarios? It takes three to six weeks, depending on- Okay... the size of the company. And we have the, um, we have the tools, so we have all the surveys and, and questionnaires and, you know, we did it many times before, so it's, it's quick I think now. Great. Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, it's always interesting. I think the more the... well, with any, any solution and any, any, the more mature any space gets, the- Mm-hmm... the more folks really start to understand, you know, one, obviously what's important to their organization, but also from a consulting side, we really understand how to, how to be better at making sure that, um, the tool that we're suggesting is the best fit, uh, the implementation is, is going to be the most successful, uh, and also getting an understanding of truly what the team needs to, to make sure that, you know, they're happy for years to come and, and it's something that they can grow with and, and they don't outgrow in, in, uh- Exactly... in a couple of years. Yeah. And, and, um, uh, Pepe, I thought you, uh, did you have a, a new question- Yes... you wanna throw in there? Yes.

20:59I, I, I actually, I was, I was looking at your LinkedIn, Kris, a couple days ago, and I loved your most recent post where you said that something that we need to learn from the movie industry, because this was one of the latest, uh- Mm-hmm... a question that I wanted to tell you because, okay, we have everything now in place, right? We do the pre-implementation process, we talk about with our customers what do you need, what are your biggest p- uh, pain points, then we start by building an MVP, a palette so people can start using, uh, their system with single sign-on, uh, e-signature process. But then once we have the implementation process, this is when the real challenge- Yes... start to grow, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because you already invested thousands and thousands of dollars for this process, and time, and everything, but now you want your team to adopt that system, right? Yeah. So I, I, I, I love that post on how you start building a bus and, and, and how you start, uh, making people excited on how to, uh, start using that, uh, that piece of software.

22:04So can you tell us a little bit more on your experience, like what have, uh, worked the best for, um, uh, for, for your customers to adopt a, a new piece of CLM? Yeah, so y- you're right. Even the best implementation, seamless implementation, does not guarantee user adoption, and this is very, very difficult. And we learned it also the, the, the hard way. So we thought that the tool is perfect and everybody would love to use it from day one, and after day one, no one was there. It was like desert. Nothing. Nothing. So now we, we understand that the closer to go live we are, the bigger bus or the bigger noise about this new CLM we should make. And it's not just talking about technicalities. It's not just giving, um, you know, the recordings available on some site- Right... because no, no one's gonna click on this. Uh, that, that's why we are trying to engage people in this, um, development of the MVP. So users, as I said, we are doing the frequent demos. We are just showing this to them, and then these guys are our ambassadors. So in fact, they are, uh, in this...

23:13They, they, they know what is going to happen, so, uh, their colleagues know that these guys will bring something new, and they are spreading the rumors about how great this tool is in the kitchen, and, uh, you know, in the company. And then we, we, we are trying to, as I said, uh, on LinkedIn, using this as experience from, from movie industry. So from time to time, we, we send some communication or we just, uh, post a short video. Sometimes we try to build like a, like a animation movies about how the, how great the life will be when the new CLM is implemented and, uh, there are many, many trainings and many sessions. So for example, just after go live, we usually tend to have at least one session per day when there is like an open invitation, and we are just sitting there, and anyone can join and ask any question about the usability of the tool or any question about the, about the CLM. So people feel that whenever they are struggling with doing something in the tool, they can simply join this call, and the answer will be quick.

24:18Because giving them just an email address and telling them, "You have to raise a ticket here and here, and then in two days, someone will reply," I think it's not gonna work now. We have to do something better. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, you know, to really make sure that your customers are, are driving user adoption and getting the most out of it, you, you know, I think that's a great idea, right? Having those open sessions. Um, you know, we, we always include some training hours in our, in our implementations to make sure that people have time to ask questions. And, you know, the, the questions that you might have had at the beginning of the implementation probably are not gonna be the same ones that you have at the end, right? You're going through this process. Yeah. You're, you're learning what the system can and can't do. Um- Exactly... hope- hopefully, hopefully can do, you just didn't know it. Yeah, it's, it's, it's always nice to, uh, to really start to be comfortable with the system, and then at the end of a process, being able to drill down into maybe those, you know, couple of things that you still had questions about it. I think that that's massive.

25:13You know, to be successful, you need somebody on the team that is that expert inside of the tool that, that can, um, answer other team members' questions so that you, you know, Kris, like you said, you don't wanna be having to open a ticket every time somebody has a question. That's, that's definitely not the best way to learn. And knowledge bases are great, but I think they only go, um, a certain distance before, you know, you really need to be hands-on with somebody and, and get on a Zoom and have them walk you through it. So, um, I love that. That's the human part of the- Yeah... implementation process, right? Yes, there is. There is So you, you have to be, uh, uh, um, in advance to know, like, what could be, like, the questions that they might have, because this is just like being on the classroom, right? Or at the end of a, of a, of a conference when you ask everybody, "Do you have a question?" And everybody's like, quiet. "No, everything was clear." Okay. Yeah. Now, when they start using that, that, that software, they might start having those questions. Yeah, and I think Apple did it with their Tech Bar, right?

26:08In every Apple store, you can just go and ask any question you want. So- Yep... um, yeah. So I think it's- Yeah, the Genius, Genius Bar, right? Uh, exactly, yeah. And, and Kris, I know we, we touched on this a little bit, right? And, you know, one thing, what do you think one thing that folks are doing when trying to implement a tool that, that they shouldn't be? Uh, and I know we touched on this, obviously, with trying to do too much at once. Uh, but is there anything else that you see, you, you know, setting an organization up for, for failure during these implementations? Uh, I have more than one, but if I had to pick just one, uh, so I would say organizations are too focused on exceptions rather than on standards. So if we are trying to build, like a, I don't know, intake form, that there is always someone who is saying, "No, no, I need this to be working in a different way because there is just one exception which happens, like, once a year, but we have to cover it." And then if you really, if you don't have enough, let's say, courage to guide your customer, to guide your client, that, okay, that's not the best practice. Let's use the Pareto rule, 80/20.

27:10Let's just focus on, on important things, and later we may think about covering all the exceptions. I think this is one of the, one of the biggest problems that, in fact, when you are just focusing on these exceptions, the scope is getting wider and wider and wider. Mm-hmm. And the deadline and the go live is, you know, far away from you, and you are losing this tension, you are losing this interest from your users because no one wants to wait one or two years for the CLM. So usually, when, when the organization buys a CLM or there is an RFP and they announce that, "Okay, we just bought it, and soon you will see it," and then six months, one year, year and a half, and still nothing. So I think this is not the message to, to... And then this is also related to the MVP idea. That's why we are just narrowing it as much as possible, just to cover on standards. Just to, just to focus on standards, not on exceptions. Yeah. No, I think that's great. You gotta keep the train on the tracks, keep people focused. Mm.

28:06Uh, with a lot of these tools, you know, we, we see that, um, as we know, there's a lot that you can do with them. And people get excited when they start to see- Exactly... the functionality that is included that maybe wasn't in the w- one or two demos that they saw, you know, where, where, where somebody breezed past it. Yeah. So, uh, it is important to, to make sure that teams are staying focused and, you know, implementations aren't getting dragged out for, you know, a year or, or God forbid, even longer than that. But Kris, this has been awesome. I, I think you've really given us, um, some, some new things to think about. Um, I really like our, our new, uh, our new quadrant. Not to be mistaken with Gartner's, but, um, I think that that was, that was interesting. It was a new way for us to look at it. So hey, we really appreciate you, uh, coming on to chat. And, uh, if anybody wants to connect with you, uh, or, or learn more about, you know, what your specific department over at Deloitte is doing, where, where's the best place to do that? You can find me on LinkedIn. Uh, I think that's the best way to find me. I'm there every day, and I'm replying to messages, so that's the, that's the way to contact me. All right.

29:07Hey, well, thanks everybody for listening to another episode of Contract Heroes. Uh, we got a couple coming out here real soon, so, uh, keep your eyes peeled, and more episodes will be out. Thanks, Kris. Thanks. Thank you.