Solution
Achieving Cohesion & Clarity in Contract Rules across the Organization
As an organization with a diverse range of service offerings, Vaco Holdings faced significant challenges in managing their varied contract types. Larry Crane-Moscowitz, Vice President of Legal Affairs at Vaco Holdings, explains that the company's unique legal entity structure and growth model led to difficulties surrounding approvals, particularly as the shift to remote work during COVID-19 expanded their scope from national to global.
"We have over 45 different offices," said Crane-Moscowitz. "As a result, we had agreements that worked fine for certain lines of business or a given municipality, but when stretched out over the whole country, or beyond borders, it became clear there was a lot we could do differently within those agreements to improve our ability to scale."
To address these challenges, Vaco Holdings turned to IntelAgree for a contract management solution tailored to their unique needs. IntelAgree provided separate instances for the company's two CRMs: Bullhorn (Vaco Holdings’ talent solutions brand, Vaco's, primary CRM) and Salesforce (MorganFranklin Consulting's CRM).
"IntelAgree allows us to act in a more cohesive way with a much clearer rule set across the organization," states Crane-Moscowitz. "It gives us much more data transparency and visibility into what's outstanding, where we have relationships, how we can make sure we're leveraging those existing relationships — it connects it all." He also credits IntelAgree for encouraging and facilitating the replication of MorganFranklin’s mature contracting function across the organization, maintaining the beneficial aspects of MorganFranklin's system while configuring it to match Vaco Holdings’ enterprise requirements.
"As a more diffuse organization, a lot of agreements seemed to bypass the legal function before," Crane-Moscowitz explains. "During migration, we imported about 20,000 documents and still have 3,000 more to import. But in the six weeks since we've been live, we had another 1,000 documents that have come through our CLM tool. It's a pretty staggering volume, and it's something that we wouldn't have been able to capture manually."
Boosting Cross-Team Collaboration with Bullhorn & Salesforce Integrations
Choosing IntelAgree over other platforms was a strategic decision driven by the nature of Vaco Holdings’ organization and industry. Crane-Moscowitz points out, "The competitive pricing of IntelAgree, their willingness to integrate with our existing CRMs, Bullhorn and Salesforce, and their commitment to API development made them an ideal partner to grow with us."
The integration of Bullhorn and Salesforce with IntelAgree also improved cross-team collaboration, boosting visibility and consistency across processes. Crane-Moscowitz shares, "Diverging processes aren't always easy to align, but being in one tool, even if it's not the exact same workspace, has given us a common language. This has dramatically improved our consistency and visibility into the world of contracting."
One significant feature is the card interface via IntelAgree's Bullhorn integration. This interface increased visibility into the contract lifecycle, making it easier for teams to track contract status and collaborate effectively. Crane-Moscowitz elaborates, "The card interface gives the field a lot more visibility into where each contract is in the given process — whether it's awaiting approval, has been reviewed, or rejected. This has made the workflow clearer."
Furthermore, the integration with Salesforce facilitated an efficient communication system between the two platforms. Farouk Belal, Director of Contracts at MorganFranklin Consulting, comments, "When we have a contract signed in IntelAgree, we automatically get a copy in the Salesforce records, too. Having mirroring records between IntelAgree and Salesforce has been really helpful for our business people. They no longer have to chase us for a copy of the signed contract or ask for historical contracts — they can simply check the system for it."
Increasing Operational Efficiency & User Engagement
Thanks to IntelAgree's automated reminders, Vaco Holdings and its collective of brands have much better oversight of contract milestones, expirations, and renewals. As Belal puts it, "It's not a manual process anymore."
IntelAgree has also empowered the organization with data-backed insights into performance, particularly against its internal SLA. As Crane-Moscowitz notes, the organization uses IntelAgree's data in tandem with Microsoft Power BI to assess its performance against its internal SLA — which is 3-4 business days — and gauge speed to market.
"This allows us to tell a really compelling story that the legal team is working efficiently to get through agreements while minimizing risk," explains Crane-Moscowitz. "We now have the data that says, for example, 80% of our contracts turn around in a business day, and we have a 95% success rate against our SLA, which is one of the highest within the shared services function in our organization."
The user-friendly interface of IntelAgree made it easier for team members to adopt the tool, resulting in increased user engagement and empowerment. Crane-Moscowitz noted that the tool has prompted users to ask more insightful questions about terms, and empowered users to "flag unfavorable vs. favorable terms."
Finally, the transparency provided by IntelAgree has improved collaboration between legal, operations, and finance departments, allowing for better communication and alignment of expectations. Crane-Moscowitz explained: "There's greater clarity from the finance department as an approver of contract terms. They're now partners earlier in the process, which has helped standardize our payment and invoicing terms and improved predictability in our financial operations."
Looking to improve cross-team contract collaboration in your organization? Schedule a free demo today to kickstart the optimization of your contract management process.
