Improving contract efficiency from review to signature
Discover how Lucas Oil improved its contract management processes, all the way from review to signature, using Summize's CLM software.
Key Outcomes
Objective
Lucas Oil, an American manufacturer and distributor of automotive oil additives, and lubricants, was looking to streamline its legal processes and create a consistent way of working across the whole business.
The organization was finding it challenging using shared drives and emails to manage all its contracts and agreements. The absence of one central location not only caused delays when searching for and finding contracts but also led to departmental bottlenecks and a lack of business-wide involvement in the contract process.
It is essential to recognize that contract management extends beyond the responsibilities of legal teams, and touches all areas of the business. In the case of Lucas Oil, key contributions came from various departments, including marketing, sales, production, and compliance teams, all of which played a pivotal role in the management of contracts.
The business therefore needed a consistent way of working that improved contract and data retrieval, while ensuring easy access for the entire organization. The business needed Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software.
Lucas Oil began its search for CLM software, and after a vendor selection process, the business chose Summize’s CLM for its ability to streamline legal processes, the ease of migrating contracts into a single source of truth, and Summize’s user-friendly interface, designed for ease of use across all areas of an organization.
The Solution
Lucas Oil now uses Summize for the full contract lifecycle, from creation, review, storage and analysis.
Across the business, the various teams have taken advantage of Summize’s unique integrations, including Salesforce at the point of request, as well as Outlook and Microsoft Word for contract reviews. The integrations allow non-legal colleagues to continue using the email, CRM, and collaboration tools they are familiar with while utilising streamlined CLM practices and workflows, with minimal training required.
It was important for Lucas Oil to use a solution that aligned with the business’s current workflow, and Summize did just that. The team felt the solution was simple and effective in comparison to other CLMs and implementation was able to happen initially with just a small legal team of three, before the roll-out expanded to the wider business for training and adoption.
The CLM can now be used by all teams involved in the contract management process. Key features that prove particularly useful to Lucas Oil include:
- Summize’s AI-powered contract summaries that present key contract and clause information in clear, natural language
- AI assistant in Microsoft Teams, which speeds up and navigates non-legal colleagues to create and request the contracts they need
- And the calendar integrations. A vital Summize feature that extracts a contract’s renewal or termination date and syncs the reminder to the calendars of the business’ choosing
Outcome
Lucas Oil has successfully implemented Summize’s CLM across the business, with notable adoption in areas such as marketing, IT, and sales.
By using the business’s existing Salesforce and Outlook tools, the training and adoption of Summize was a quick and seamless task. The Lucas Oil team believes its contract collaboration has significantly improved, leading to much more efficient workflows across the business.
Having a single source of truth for all contracts and workflows makes it easy for anyone in the business to quickly find the information they are looking for. Non-legal teams no longer need to waste time searching for the right contract template or a signed contract in a folder they don't have access to – instead, they can access the information and agreements they need without legal intervention.
Contract management processes are faster and more efficient for Lucas Oil, meaning the likes of compliance requirements and contract collaboration are met in a simpler way.
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