Novatus For: Legal

Time consuming and resource-intensive contracting cycles are costly and have a dramatic impact on the effectiveness of your legal team(s). The following factors often contribute to this challenge:

• The lack of, or difficulty enforcing use of standard contract templates
• High-use of non-standard terms and conditions (lack of a terms library)
• Non-standard and manual workflows

The Novatus solution provides a secure, on-demand platform that enables the optimization of resource allocation while streamlining contracting processes. Some key capabilities include:

• The automation of contract creation from standard contract templates, reducing review times and potentially allowing for pre-approval scenarios
• The ability to standardize and automate contracting workflows based on role, contract value and other key variables
• The automation of corporate contracting policies and best practices, such as pre-approvals, compliance measures and communications

Recycled, ad hoc and counterparty contracts not only add significant time to the contract drafting and review process, but also increase risk to the firm and make on-going management more difficult. In instances where firms have standard contract templates, they are often difficult to manage without a structured platform containing the necessary functionality, such as version management, automated contract creation and integrated workflow capabilities.

With fully enabled contract creation capabilities, the Novatus solution provides functionality that will allow you to quickly automate your contract templates and will have your team generating contracts from standard templates in a matter of weeks. Designed to grow with you, this functionality can be activated when you need it. Some key features include:

• System controls that ensure each time a new contract is created, the correct contract template version is used
• Integration with workflow and versioning functionality, allowing for drafts and final versions to be automatically routed for review and approvals
• An intuitive wizard interface that guides the end-user through the process of tailoring new contracts to specific scenarios

The lack of control and consistency of contract clauses creates unnecessarily long contracting cycles and increases the complexity of ongoing contract management, making versioning and control difficult. As a result, pre-approved terms and related policies are difficult to implement and manage, increasing dependency on the Legal team.

The Novatus contract management solution enables the development and storage of contract clauses for reference, contract authoring and on-going terms management. As a central reference point, legal teams can develop and maintain a clause library for use by contracting professionals throughout the firm. By doing so, the impact on legal resources is minimized, control is improved and non-legal contracting professionals are empowered to leverage pre-approved contract language.

Without effective contract research and reporting capabilities, discovery and simply locating needed information is difficult, time consuming and costly. File cabinets, paper files, spreadsheets and antiquated or homegrown contract management systems simply do not provide the transparency required for effective research and reporting.

As the central repository for all contract-related data and documents with full search and report capabilities, the Novatus solution resolves this challenge. Some related feature include:

• An intuitive interface that empowers end-users of all levels to quickly locate key contract data and documents across the contract portfolio
• A robust reporting capability allows for libraries of reports to be created, shared and scheduled for automatic delivery in Adobe Acrobat or Excel format
• An intuitive reporting wizard walks users through the process of creating new reports, enabling reporting capabilities to be pushed out to all departments that rely upon contract data

Intermittent involvement in the deal and communication via email often increases the risk of miscommunication during the contracting cycle between the internal contracting departments and the legal group. On-going contract management is made more complicated, as notes, communications, data and documents are often disorganized throughout different associate’s email.

The Novatus Contracts solution provides functionality that facilitates communication between contracting groups while automatically saving notes, communications documents and other key sources in the context of a single record. Key features include:

• Standardized, scenario-based workflows that ensure legal is brought in at the appropriate stage of the process
• A single, on-demand, central repository that allows all team members to collaborate on the same contract record, on-line and in real time
• The ability to store notes, emails, messages and other key records for historical reference at the contract record, ensuring context is not lost and search capabilities are maintained
• Improved control, allowing you to quickly respond to discovery initiatives and comply with data retention policies
• Embedded messaging and email records, which are searchable and reportable

While corporate policies and procedures may dictate the circumstances and timing for bringing the legal team into a deal, they often fall short in terms of oversight and compliance. Simply put, they lack the structure, automation and controls that only an information system can provide.

The Novatus Contracts solution provides robust workflow functionality that enables the implementation, management and enforcement of corporate contracting processes, policies and best practices. Workflow routing can be automated, based on a wide range of variables, which include contract type (software license, lease, NDA, etc), agreement type (master, amendment, etc), contract value, work function, negotiation team, and multiple levels of approvals throughout a workflow. Workflow notifications work seamlessly with your firm’s email application, ensuring that participants are notified of their involvement in a timely and effective manner.

As a key protector of the firm’s interests, the legal team must be able to conduct due diligence, reporting and/or discovery exercises on an enterprise-wide scale in order to mitigate firm risk. Without the appropriate transparency, associates can find it difficult, costly and time consuming to understand how:

• Current contracts will impact the firm’s contract portfolio or other key agreements
• Recent changes in regulatory requirements will impact the way the firm does business
• The current regulatory environment will impact an associate’s existing supplier and client relationships

Novatus Contracts repository and reporting functionality, combined with its ease-of-use, gives your legal team the visibility it needs into enterprise-wide data to gain a better understanding of contract-related risks. By using a variety of automated system features to conduct on-going oversight of contracting activities, the legal team can effectively enforce internal policies and regulatory requirements.

As legal practices continue to evolve in response to the global economic factors, many firms and legal departments are seeking ways in which savings and cost avoidance measures, as well as improvements to control, can be identified and implemented. However, firms that operate internationally, or are attempting to leverage savings and cost avoidance opportunities have a difficult time doing so without the appropriate transparency and capabilities. Some key challenges include:

• A lack of visibility into the contractual obligations negotiated and managed by offshore legal teams
• Uncoordinated legal efforts, often resulting in under-leveraged buying and a higher assumption of risk
• Difficulty communicating and enforcing corporate policies, procedures and best practices

The highly secure, on-demand nature of the Novatus solution gives you the ability to access contracts globally, enabling transparency and effective oversight and control. Whether you are off-shoring legal functions or bringing global elements under a single legal umbrella, the Novatus solution will provide you with the global access required to maximize the value of your contracts.

Recent government regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and compliance requirements from agencies and departments such as The Office of Foreign Assets Control have placed greater scrutiny on businesses and the way they operate. As a result, firms are now required to proactively implement and maintain systems, processes and expertise to ensure compliance. An organization’s failure to comply with government guidelines can result in a wide range of penalties, including fines, costly audit and remediation projects and damage to a company’s reputation.

Designed to help eliminate control gaps, lower non-compliance and audit-related risks and reduce costs, the Novatus solution provides real-time monitoring capabilities to help you proactively identify and mitigate risks, as well as quickly and effectively respond to audit requests. Key features include:

• Rapid deployment, enabling you to quickly improve and demonstrate control and transparency
• System controls that automate enforcement of regulations, policies and procedures
• Functionality that standardizes and automates contracting activities within defined guidelines, such as workflows, contract templates, and document storage