Solution
Optimizing Contract Workflows During Implementation
During implementation, IntelAgree conducted a series of discovery sessions to understand Lennox’s contracting requirements and suggest improvements to its existing workflow.
For Jessica Hawkins, Assistant General Counsel at Lennox, IntelAgree’s guidance based on previous client experience was invaluable. “It was helpful for us to ask how other customers are approaching their contract workflows because we only knew how to do it our way,” said Hawkins. “Since our process was so manual, we soon realized there were a thousand opportunities for our team to do things differently.”
Following the discovery phase, IntelAgree marked up over 2,000 contracts, configured 37 templates, conducted four, hour-long training sessions, and helped the company create a self-service training program. Providing resources for employees to learn the platform on their own has been overwhelmingly successful, and as of January 2021, Lennox has 400 registered users and manages 95% of its contracts in IntelAgree.
Maintaining Compliance with Customizable Approval Workflows
With IntelAgree’s customizable approval workflows, the legal team has greater visibility into contract statuses and can verify that contract approvals are implemented as required.
These workflows streamline approvals for the organization in a couple of ways:
“First, it allows business groups to implement their own approval structures in addition to the corporate policy. At the corporate level, all contracts must be approved by legal and finance — but we have multiple departments with their own approval structures, for instance, if a contract is over $500,000,” said Hawkins. “And second, we can assign permissions at different levels to improve contract governance and give the appropriate teams access.”
Auto-Archiving Contracts in a Searchable Repository
IntelAgree’s searchable contract repository not only offers infinite reporting capabilities, but also eliminates the burden of manually collecting executed contracts. The cloud-based repository serves as a single source of truth for all current and historical contracts, and it’s automatically updated if contracts are amended.
“Previously, our work didn’t end when a contract was approved because we still had to do the heavy lifting to get executed contracts back into the system,” said Hawkins. “Now, it’s all handled by the platform. Once a contract is signed in the platform, it’s archived in the tool and automatically searchable — no more auditing, searching, or tedious follow-up on executed contracts.”
Accelerating Contract Creation with Smart Forms and Templates
Prior to IntelAgree, Lennox’s legal team rarely had all the information they needed for contract requests upfront. But with IntelAgree’s contract creation wizard, they can get the information they need immediately without exchanging back-and-forth emails with the requestor.
“The contract creation wizard makes the requestor do their due diligence and provide the supporting information we need, so we can turn around drafts faster,” said Hawkins.
Plus, IntelAgree offers another benefit the legal team didn’t have before: template version control. “Previously, we didn’t know if an attorney was using an outdated version, or if another attorney tweaked a template but didn’t share it with the team,” said Hawkins. “But now, all templates are in the same place and all attorneys are using the same version. And if an attorney improves the template, everyone benefits.”
