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| Features and news |
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| Contract management solutions |
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OUTSOURCED CONTRACT MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS CAN REDUCE COSTS
Corporations face many challenges in the control of Contract Lifecycle Management costs. Inconsistent manual processes, lack of a central repository for contracts and no standardized contract templates impact the ability of corporations to manage and track compliance of contract milestones. Through the combination of technology, processes and staffing with offshore attorney resources, corporations are able to reduce contract management costs significantly and create a "best in class" and effective enterprise-wide system.
The Aberdeen Group, in their recent 2006 "Contract Management in the Mid-Market" report, stated that:
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"The major goal for contract management within any company is to ensure that its commitments and obligations to customers and suppliers are clearly visible to the right people in the organization and that these commitments are promptly executed upon. A contract that an enterprise has with its suppliers or its customers is what determines pricing structures, volume discounts, delivery times, rebates, service - level agreements and many other key aspects, all of which are essential to controlling the two most important factors in any business: expenses and revenue…"
"Improved controls driving the contracting process ensure the use of standard, risk-assessed clauses and terms. For example, a salesperson may have the ability to tweak' the clauses within a contract due to the lack of control, visibility and standardization, thus presenting various legal risks. Also, maintaining audit trails of all approvals reduces the risk of violating certain regulations (e.g., SOX)." |
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| OVERVIEW OF INTEGREON'S CONTRACT MANAGEMENT SERVICES |
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Contract review |
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Summarizing and abstracting key information Comparing contracts against client checklists |
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Contract management and databases |
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Organizing, routing and monitoring performance Creating and maintaining searchable databases |
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Due diligence contract review |
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Transactional review of documents (e.g., corporate M&A transactions, employment contracts, supply contracts, leases, shareholders agreements, loan documents, etc.) |
Integreon can assist corporations to control costs and standardize their contract review process through our offshore staffing and technology solutions
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CONTRACT ADMINISTRATION SAMPLE WORKFLOW |
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INCEPTION |
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NOTIFICATION |
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ASSIGNMENT |
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Client's contract administrator receives new contracts and uploads them to client's contract management system. |
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Integreon's delivery team leader is notified via secure message that new contracts are available for review. |
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Deliver team leader assigns the new material to Integreon associates in client's dedicated delivery team. |
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QUALITY CONTROL |
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SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS |
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REVIEW AND CLASSIFICATION |
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The associate marks the contract to indicate that the review is complete. Completed contracts are then subjected to QC processes agreed with client before document is |
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The associate extracts key terms, conditions and dates per the template for the contract type established in consultation with client. |
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Assigned associate reviews each contract in detail and determines its client-established category or type. |
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RELEASE |
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REPORTING/FEEDBACK |
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Upon completion of QC, the document is released to client. |
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Periodic reports are provided to client detailing each associate's productivity. Client feedback on accuracy is solicited and reviewed with associates and delivery |
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CLIENT RETURN ON INVESTMENT
Clients enjoy the benefits of outsourcing to Integreon which include increased efficiency, reduced contract cycle time, standardized key clauses, 24/7 online access to contracts, quicker turn-around time and the ability to reduce contract creation costs allowing their own employees to focus on higher value matters.
The General Counsel of a global real estate company came to Integreon because they were suffering from a backlog of contracts for all the properties they managed around the world. Integreon provided a team of dedicated lawyers to review new agreements and summarize their terms according to the client's requirements. The Client received increased efficiency in that the manual processes were reduced from ten steps to four and paralegal and clerical staff were reduced from ten to three. The contract cycle time was reduced, it was streamlined from 40 days to 15. Key clauses were standardized, compliance and key company clauses were consistently listed in contract language. The client received 24/7 on-line access to contracts which are now all searchable and uploaded to a web-hosted database so that the General Counsel plan ahead by looking up all contacts for renewal in the next six months. The business managers were satisfied that their contacts were no longer "stuck in legal" for weeks at a time. Ultimately, the in-house legal team was able to review finished contracts and just sign them off, rather than writing them all from scratch.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF AN OFFSHORE LEGAL KNOWLEDGE STAFF?
Cost savings are the most obvious, but not the only benefit. Resource management (resource deficiency or inefficient utilization) and turn around times were vastly improved. In many cases, the requirement for improved turn around was driven by a business unit of the company, supported by the corporate legal department.
Corporations that are leveraging global knowledge staff have identified offshore outsourcing as a long term efficiency strategy. They start by identifying an existing in-house process that can be effectively migrated to an offshore dedicated team with appropriate support and transition. They seek to identify scalable processes, starting with a few people, developing the relationship and the expertise and then ramping up and spreading the success into different parts of the business.
ABOUT INTEGREON
Integreon focuses exclusively on legal and financial outsourcing, where we have deep domain know-how. We offer a full line of knowledge support services from multiple, low cost delivery centers in India, the Philippines and the USA. Our transition planning and program management teams work from New York, London and Los Angeles.
Our customers include 6 of the 10 largest investment banks, 2 of the 3 largest global law firms, several top-tier private equity firms, hedge funds and many Fortune 100 and FTSE 100 corporations. Integreon has been in business for a decade and has around 2000 employees. |
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