Understanding CLM: Insights from the Pharma Industry with Angelina Bellanton

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. Hi, Angelina. Thanks so much for being here on the Contract Heroes podcast. Before I flip things over to Pepe, who's gonna give us a bit more of an understanding of what we're gonna be chatting about, we'd love to just understand, uh, your background and, and how you started working with contracts in the first place. Uh, thanks, Marc. Uh, my name's Angelina Belinson. I have been working in the pharma space for about 17 years now. I've been doing contracts probably just under three years of, of that time. I initially started in, in the patent space, which I still continue to work in. I got into it because in my, uh, previous organization, there was a need where the, the patent work was kind of slowing down a little bit, and there was some need to get into, have more assistance in the contract space. And it was something I was willing to learn and be trained on, and that's where I started. That's awesome.

1:00So in this interview, I mean, we've been talking about how CLM can be useful for a lot of companies in general, right? But this time we wanna go a little bit more specific, and it's very interesting talking to you, Angelina, because you have experience in this, right, from the beginning onto adopting the CLM system. And as everybody know, you know, like, pharma companies struggle with a lot of complex, uh, highly re-regulated, uh, programs, complex supply chains, and of course, contracts are in the middle of everything, right? Yeah. So we would like to start this conversation, Angelina, like, can you just give us, like, a brief introduction on, on how a pharma company works like, and especially in the contract management team, like, how does the day-to-day work looks like? One of the things that, uh, a lot of organizations don't think about in, in the very beginning, right, is how to manage or handle their, their contracts.

1:54They understand there's obviously a, a need and importance to have them in place. Most companies start off with a, with a SharePoint, you know, just a repository for holding onto their agreements. And actually, in most organizations in the very beginning don't have any way of, of tracking. And for us, that was a big pain point and why we decided to, to move into the Agiloft system. Day to day looks like basically, uh, we, we have so many agreements moving in different spaces, meaning new requests, you know, drafting or negotiating or finalizing certain agreements. Any given day, I always start with kind of putting out fires, so to speak, anything that's more emergent, uh, than others. Definitely working a lot in the Agiloft system on a, on a daily basis. You know, we're a small organization, but we are h- handling a high volume of agreements on any given day. Well, you said that one of the, of the main pain points was, of course, like, the communication between finance and legal, right? So there's a lot of, you know, operation going on, especially during a- audit processes.

2:56Like, can you tell us how was this relationship b- between legal and finance benefited by implementing a CLM tool? Sure. I mean, initially in the beginning, we were handling contracts via email, and so we weren't always obtaining, you know, the correct information. And then there was a lot of back and forth that was occurring via email with finance and even the internal contract, uh, requesters. You know, is this budgeted? Which program does it belong to? Do they have permission to proceed with this particular work or study? And so with the implementation of Agiloft, the approvals were, you know, streamlined, where it was, it was visible to the organization, visible to finance. Anything under a certain dollar value wasn't going to finance, but those approvals now are, are, are visible. And then once it's actually been approved, the signature process is also visible to them. And as an organization before, we didn't really have that in place.

3:50And now it's also made and facilitated with our auditors the ability to, to find agreements and also easily view the approval and signature process right within the system. Yeah. And I think, you know, something else that I, I wanted to, to touch on was, you know, talking about putting out fires, right? W- That's, that's usually how you start your day, and I, I think we hear that a lot from, from folks that are, are working with, uh, these tools and, you know, specifically before, right? Before they, they were using a tool like Agiloft or another CLM. I don't think that it changes that you still need to put out those fires, but maybe could you give us some understanding on how it's changed working on those, those first things that you need to, to come in and assess in the morning? Definitely have efficiency. You know, like I said, I mentioned before, we were handling contracts mostly via email before. There was no protocol, so to say. If, you know, people would internally within the organization would send an email and just say, "Hey, I need, you know, this master service agreement with, you know, XYZ vendor," or, "I need an SOW in place."

4:45And then there was a lot of back and forth to obtain the information that we needed in order to proceed. All of that has since been removed since we've implemented the system, and we're going on now a year of, of having it in place, and it's made things so much easier when it comes to that. All, all the required information that we need is right within the system, and we don't have to worry about, you know, a lot of the back and forth. It's the same thing for finance. They're able to easily go into the system and view if the PO requisition has been completed. And also, like I mentioned before, they're able to see those approvals. And so the system has definitely saved a lot of time and energy, I think, for not only the, the internal business owners or the requesters, but, uh, the legal department and the finance department. And at the end of the day, even, uh, for our, you know, our C-suite management as well, as they're able to easily view, approve, and sign. And so it allows for all the work to be streamlined. Of course, one of the, of the first benefits on every CLM system, in this case Agiloft, is the contract request, right? So how important is to have a well-designed intake form?

5:51Because, like, in general, some of the fields that you have to fill is, like, you know, like title, contract amount, description, maybe the name of the provider in case that you have all the database of your vendors there. Uh, is there any other, uh, like, specifics that, that you think will be, uh, important for, uh, for, for the pharma industry so they can streamline it from the beginning? I think it's very important to have a, a robust contract intake form. Uh- Um, and we started with, I guess you could describe it as a Google Doc type of, um, intake form where we used that as our test prior to implementing, um, Agiloft in the Agiloft system, and that allowed us to tweak and know what type of information we were looking for, what questions, uh, we needed to have added. And I'll be honest with you, over the year that we've had the system, we've tweaked that a lot. It's an ongoing process where we're adding things all the time. We just updated one of our contract types recently, and that's what I like about Agiloft.

6:48It's so easy to tweak anything in the system that you need and make those changes because it's table-based, and so that allows for us to have the flexibility that we need. So far, I haven't really run into anything where I've been told, "No, you can't do that." And so I think that's important for an organization to have that flexibility. Right. And that's something that is very important for people that are starting their journey to look for CLM vendors, right? There's the technical part, which is sort of like the futures of the system. But the other one that is, I would say, maybe as important as the technical part is the consulting, right? Because this is not something that, uh, it will be perfect on the first time. This is something that you need to keep updating because you see that there is, like, better ways on how you can handle all those processes, right? And especially for highly regulated industry, all the parts of the compliance, right? Because another thing that can be, uh, very important to talk about is, like, this is not just about contracts.

7:46You know, like, you know, fill this intake form and then just click bottom and then, and then you, you get all the, uh, the first draft of the contract, but also, like, compliance, right- Yeah... uh, obligations that you need to, uh, especially if you're going into an IPO or a, or, or a public company, there's also reports that you can automate there. And re- regarding compliance regulations, Angelina, anything that comes to your mind that can be, uh, solved, uh, using an automation tool like Agiloft? Um, yes. For us it was... So we had our, you know, we went public about a little bit over a year and a half ago, and just trying to figure out what would be the best way to integrate legal and fin- financing, stock compliant, making sure that we were following our authority matrix that we have in place, and how to tie those two things together. And we were able to do that by creating our approval workflows within Agiloft.

8:40And also, it's very automated as far as the contract type and the contract amount is kind of the decision-maker of where it's gonna go from that point, right? So if it needs to go to finance, if it needs to go to the SVP or VP of that department, et cetera. And there was not kind of a one, a one place for that, and now we have that. It's made finance's life, um, a lot easier, as well as the legal department, and we work very closely together, uh, in regards to the... Also, the reporting, you mentioned reporting. The reporting functionality out of Agiloft has also been very helpful for us in our organization, in just providing all of those details for finance when they're doing their closing, you know, at the end of the quarter, and also for their budgeting purposes, ready to move forward into the next quarter. You know, I think we, we brought something up here a lot or, or you have, you know, when we're talking about finance. And are you saying, so is finance actually working out of the Agiloft, your Agiloft system as well? Or are you integrating with another application that they're working in? We're not integrated. We use Tranio for our PO process, and so we're not integrated with our system.

9:43We have it set up so that whoever the finance approver is for... We do it by department, so whoever is the finance approver for that particular department has access, and they're able to view and then approve those particular agreements. Um, once it goes to signature, finance also signs off on the agreement. Um, and so that's kind of where our, our two touch points are with them for approval and signature. That's something, too, if you're out there and you're looking at, at these types of applications, it's important to make sure that you're evaluating what the future could look like inside of your organization. Because I think a lot of times, folks, uh, maybe this is a legal-led project, they've never implemented something like this before they start the project. You know, they find a tool that they think they're going to love, but then, you know, six months down the road, eight months down the road, they find out that other teams, right, doesn't have the flexibility to work with the other departments that are inside their organization. So I mean, any tips from that perspective on, on making sure that, you know, the tools that you're evaluating are able to, to work with those other departments?

10:39Was that something that your team considered at the beginning of the search? Oh, definitely. And that's actually a conversation I recently had with someone who was a friend of mine who was reviewing systems. In the beginning, sometimes we're, you know, you have, what do they say? Penny wise, pound foolish, right? In the beginning, "I don't wanna do all this work. This seems to be costly for us in the beginning." But you hit the nail on the head. You have to think about the organization as a whole and being in a system that you can actually grow into and that's going to continue to fulfill the business needs, whether you're 30 employees, 80 or 500, right? And that was a big thing for us, making sure that we don't have to go through this process again, basically, right? So we wanted to find a system that was robust, that functioned for all departments. I mean, I continue to mention, you know, primarily f- legal and finance because we're the ones that are handling most of these contracts. I think it was also, it was great for the internal business owners. And most importantly, you should have buy-in, you know, from the top down.

11:37So you wanna make sure before you start this process that you, that you've, you know, talked to the correct people and made, made sure that you've got, you know, their, their considerations also, you know. And they're the ones that are saying, "Yes, we wanna move forward with this," because it is a long process. Is it difficult? There are some pain points, as you know, obviously, as you're implementing any new system, there can be pain points. But, you know, if you have that buy-in and, and you take the time to set up the system the way that we did in the beginning, and our implementation took about 24 weeks. But looking back, okay, at that point, we were like, "Wow, this is, this seems to be like a, it's a lot." But honestly, the time went by so fast, and we were able to make our changes as we went along. Like I said, we continue to make changes within the system. And I think at the end, right before we went live, I was in charge of this project, and I was definitely- Satisfied with the outcome, even the, the amount of time that it took, et cetera, because we took the time to get feedback. I think it's very important to get feedback internally, right? W- we met with each individual group, various people from each department. You know, we said, "We wanna implement this system.

12:39What types of things do you guys think will be helpful to you?" We were able to get a lot of information from the various departments, even though it may not make as much of a difference to them, right? They're just going to be inputting their contract requests. Also, as an organization, just understanding the importance of having the system and what it was going to do for us versus the way that the systems we had in place at the time. Right. And I think that one of the best ways in order to bring those champions or stakeholders into an implementation like this to show them the benefits. A little bit about any KPIs that, that you think, like, the finance team or any other department, uh, was looking for in order to make, you know, better business de- decisions. Let's think about, like, the dashboard, right? Like, what kind of information do you think it- it's important for them when they log into their user, what's, like, the first information that they're, they are looking for to have them, uh, the home site or, uh, the, uh, the dashboard? A lot of times for them, they're looking f- they're just looking to make sure that they have the contract amount, which program it runs under. So we also...

13:39We, uh, aligned all of our, our program, internal programs with finance as well so that they're able to easily run reports, view by program, view by dollar value, view by ven- by vendor. And we have some automated reports that we set up for finance. I run reports all the time for them to be able to just double-check across when they're, when they're making payments, et cetera. Um, and so their dashboards are set up, pretty much everyone's set up pretty similarly. I think I probably have the most unique just because, you know, I've, I've kind of learned to play around with the system and, and create the different fields that I need. But it's, for me, it's very important to see what we have coming up that's expiring, what agreements are in draft, uh, how many we have in review. We also, you know, keep an eye on, uh, times for approval, how long it takes for something to get approved, and how long it sits in signature, et cetera, to try to make things more efficient for the organization as a whole. Perfect. And another thing that we discussed in our last call, Angela, and, and one thing that I, that I really liked was about the training on the system.

14:43Nobody touches the platform until they're all well-trained, and I think that that's very important for the adoption, right? Because they need to know how to work. It's not just like, okay, so this is your access information, and then just play around and then come back with questions. You need, you need to get trained and also to see the benefits. And once they see the benefit, it's easier for them to know, okay, okay, so I gotta learn this because this is gonna save me some time, right? It's gonna save us- Right... uh, some money on, on the budgeting for the pr- procurement people. Can you tell us a, a little bit on, on how this training looks like? Obviously, the out-of-box Agiloft is, is, or any CM, um, contract management system is going to be different than the end product. So once we actually had our system established and we pretty much decided what it was going to look like and, and the functionality, then I created a, a training manual, uh, with screenshots and step-by-step procedures on how to use the system.

15:39That works for some people, and some people are more hands-on and they wanna have also the individual training. But every person, regardless of whether or not they may or may not be using the system, gets trained as part of our onboarding process, and that's very important. And as you mentioned, no one gets their, their log on until they've actually been fully trained. Another important piece of that is the continued education, right? So we continue to offer training. Just sometimes people, you know, they have lag times between using the system. Maybe they enter something this month and then they don't use it again for another couple months. They may reach out, and I'm always readily accessible and available to assist them and, and to maybe walk them through if they have a question at that time, but also set up additional training. And we also do quarterly meetings with our departments. Um, just check how the system's functioning for them, see if there's any- anything that may make their life easier with their requests, et cetera. And then we've been tweaking obviously the, the training manual as we go.

16:34I think that's something that's super important that not a lot of people understand is that the things that you don't know at the beginning of an implementation aren't gonna be the same things that you don't understand at the end. At least the goal with, with us and, and with Agiloft is we want you to be hands-on during that implementation process. You need to be in the system, you know, looking at things that have been changed and testing them out to make sure that they're, they're working the way that you want. Because although, you know, we're very hands-on those first couple of weeks while we're working together, you might actually get in there and understand that you want something done differently than you thought you originally did. And I think that that's why it's so important to continue to always be evolving with these, these training manuals and having, you know, either someone internally or externally that is going to manage this system. And that was gonna be my next question. So Angela, are, are you is or is there somebody else that's, that's managing your, your Agiloft instance in- inside of the organization? Does that fall to a, a particular person? So we continue to work with our, our outside im- implementation team, and, you know, we have set up that we have, you know, a certain amount of hours with them every month.

17:37So anything that's really complicated, when I say complicated, I mean if we wanna change, you know, an approval workflow or something that's more than just a simple edit in one of our tables, then we reach out to them. I think one of the important things that we did as well is we invested in a sandbox environment. And so our IT department, although small, they work within the sandbox environment. A lot of times we'll do testing in there before we go live. It's a new system also for them to learn, right? So we... a lot of times I'll meet with, um, a IT person and we'll... I'll say, "Look, we, we wanna do this. Do you think this is something that you can actually do, or should we reach out back, uh, you know, to our implementation team?" Sometimes we play around and we try. If we're unsuccessful, then we'll reach out. We have a variety of options. As far as the daily use of the system, most people know to reach out to me. This is my second implementation. I did on my previous organization, and this is my second implementation here. We actually, we joke around internally within the organization, we say Angeloft instead of Agiloft because of the customizations, you know, that we did to the system.

18:36So I think it's a, it's very robust, and I think what I like most about it is it, it can suit just about any organization. My previous organization was much larger and, you know, we did a transition from a, from one CMS to another. Here we had kind of, um... We went from, like, a SharePoint type over to a CMS that didn't really suit our needs, and then, you know, then moved over to Agiloft. And so I always recommend when I speak with anyone about the system, it's always important to kind of look at your needs now, but also look at your future needs, because every organization is evolving. You know, look at a lot of people start the use of their contract management system because of the pandemic, because everyone was remote and no one had access, and so a lot of people decided, "We need to get a contract management system," at that point. And businesses are just evolving every day.

19:26Our needs evolve and change, you know, daily, weekly, monthly, and so it's important to have somebody within the organization, you know, who's kind of that point person and can look at those things and I guess, you know, for lack of a better word, make them happen, right? And just kind of knowing where you can reach out. Our implementation team has been great, and we've been fortunate that, you know, like I said, any questions, any changes we've wanted to make, we've been able to do so. And so I think overall that's made the entire organization and, and our entire business happy, right? And it's, it's made people's lives easier. And so I think when you're kind of satisfying various needs across the entire company, it's hard to not say that this was... It was long and maybe a little painful, but at the end, um, it's, it's been an excellent outcome for us. That's fantastic, and I, I think, you know, being through this a few times, it really sounds like you you, uh, understand what you're doing now.

20:19So I would, I guess I would ask for any other folks that are out there, you know, in your industry that are, are starting this, this type of process and are gonna start evaluating vendors, what two tips would you have for them if they're starting to, to look and evaluate? Um, like I mentioned, it's really important in the beginning to understand, you know, look at your needs now, but also look at what you think your future needs may be. Because in the beginning you may find a contract management system that initially is, you know, cheaper to implement or maybe, you know, their annual fees are less, but then, you know, it's only gonna be useful maybe for a year or two, and then at that point you have to start looking at other contract management systems. You want something that's gonna suit your needs now and in the future as you continue to grow. I think that's a big, big point that a lot of people don't think about. At this point, while we're small, we don't wanna spend a lot of money. And, you know, that's not to say I think Agiloft is very competitive in, in, in the pricing, et cetera, but, you know, a lot of times we just wanna go with the cheapest thing and just kind of get something in place and, and move on.

21:17If you take the time in the beginning and you really think about your internal processes, you really think about, what do we need on that contract intake form, how do we wanna give accessibility to the system, and you take the time in the beginning, you're really going to save yourself in the long run. Because no matter how big the organization gets, you're gonna continue to be able to work with the contract management system that you have in place. You have a variety of license options, uh, we have... We give people access, like I mentioned, after they're trained, and we also have power users, et cetera. There's so much flexibility with the system. I just think it's very important in the beginning to kind of really sit down and think about, how is this going to benefit us now? You know, you don't wanna just put out the immediate fire. You wanna make sure that you're looking at the, the system as a whole, and how can we, how can we grow into this system, or are we gonna, are we going to grow out of this system, which I think is what happens to a lot of organizations.

22:13Sorry, that was a long-winded two tips. No, no, that's great. I, I think those are, uh, you know, a couple of points that we always try to, to hit on as well, so I think those are fantastic tips. Um- You need to do the work in the beginning, right? Yeah. And I think sometimes in both implementations that I've done, you look at this and you go, "This is gonna be a long, kind of a long haul," right, when you have that initial phone call and you kind of map it out. But actually, if you do the work in the beginning, you're gonna reap the benefits all the way. Definitely. And, and, you know, like we've talked about, right? Very important to make sure that you have whoever's doing the services, the implementation piece, you know, knows what they're doing and is a good fit to work with your organization. Yeah. Because if, if you don't have that, then there, there's gonna be a lot of time that's burned and, and, uh, the, the project might ju- just not be successful, so, um, yeah. And that's a good question to ask, too, um, now that you mentioned that point. I have worked with, uh, the consulting organization that, that we selected. I worked with them before, so we had good, um, rapport with them. But it is important to ask that, you know, how that consulting group works, how hands-on they're going to be, the kind of access you're gonna have with that particular implementation team, et cetera, and I think that makes also, can make a big difference in your experience with implementing the system.

23:23So you are correct. It's definitely important to make sure you have a good implementation partner. Totally agree. Totally agree. Hey, well, thank you so much for joining us. I think this has been a fantastic conversation. I think there's a lot of organizations that are out there that are in the, the same space as you that are, are, are having these issues and, and need some guidance. So I think this is gonna be a great episode, and a lot of people are gonna be able to learn from this, so thanks. Well, awesome. And thank you guys for inviting me. I appreciate it, and it's been great. It was nice to meet you guys at the Agiloft Summit as well. Yeah, absolutely. Well, hey, thank you so much for joining us, and thanks everybody for listening to another episode of Contract Heroes.