What I Learnt When Choosing a CLM: Zego

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‍Founded in 2016, Zego is a commercial motor insurance provider that powers opportunities for businesses, from entire fleets of vehicles to self-employed drivers and riders. It combines best-in-class technology with sophisticated data sources to offer insurance products that save businesses time and money. Working with partners such as Uber, Bolt, UberEats, and Free Now, Zego has been powering opportunities for hundreds of thousands of drivers, riders, and businesses - providing over 40 million policies so far.

‍What were the reasons you wanted to adopt a CLM solution?

The primary reason we chose to adopt a CLM solution was due to an overall lack of organisation in our contract management process, which created an increased level of risk in our business.

Secondly, we struggled with renewal dates and getting to our contracts on time, meaning that we were unable to re-negotiate key terms. We wanted and needed to have way more control around this.

Finally, it was very important for us to collaborate better as a business. With so many requests from other departments, we needed the ability to organise and streamline them through one entrance, rather than have the contract lifecycle spread all over our tech stack.

We knew that by having a CLM solution, our efficiency would improve dramatically, which was a key benefit to both our legal team and the overall business.

What was your idea of success for a CLM solution?

As a business, we had several criteria around what success with a CLM would look like for us. The main things were:

·      It needed to provide a clever repository to store a contract once it had been signed, and ideally it should provide some analytics and tracking capabilities.

·      The solution had to integrate with our current tools, especially as the rest of the business would be using it as well as legal.

·      It needed to provide a legal front door for all contractual queries.

·      It should provide an element of self-serve for users outside of legal, particularly for low-value, high-volume contracts that don't really need our input. That way, the team could focus on more detailed and high-level tasks.

Summize was able to meet all our criteria points and that’s why we chose to partner with them.

Knowing what you know now, are there any changes you would have made when going to market for a CLM?

I would have thought more about implementation. It’s worth trying to foresee some of the pain points you might face if your contractual processes are not currently very organised. An implementation plan is very important, and the Implementation Team at Summize has been fantastic at mapping out the steps we need to go through.

Implementation isn’t something you really think about when you go through the procurement process. So, you need to make sure you manage expectations internally and ensure everyone understands how important it is that you work together with your CLM solution to ensure success.

What were the main factors that made you want to work with Summize?

The reason we chose to work with Summize was because it’s a little bit different. It’s not a platform that you have to work from 100% of the time. It can integrate with our existing software, such as Microsoft Word and Slack, which was important to us. This approach fitted our business model and needs a lot better than the end-to-end platforms.

We know that, by integrating with tools that our wider teams are more familiar with, the implementation and onboarding process will be a lot easier.

How was your experience getting the stakeholders in the business to buy-into Summize?

The main thing that helped us get stakeholders to buy-into Summize was being able to demonstrate the likely return on investment. On top of this, through working with Summize we were able to showcase how it would bring consistency to our governance process and provide significantly better organisation across the business.

The business case for us ultimately was to save money. So using metrics was important to showcase that, whilst there would be a cost to purchase the software, we would be able to secure a significant amount of new business and save a lot of resource. We want the business to grow and thrive, and Summize allows us to do that.

How did Summize compare to the other CLM vendors on the market?

Summize stood out to us because they have been incredibly receptive to our needs and feedback. We have been able to tailor a plan that was more in line with we what we were looking for. A lot better than other CLM providers that just gave us a standard roadmap in a like it or lump it scenario.

I have been working very closely with the Development Team, including the Chief Technology Officer, which has allowed us to understand what is possible, what’s not, and create a plan that suits all our needs.

What advice would you give to other legal professionals on their legal tech journey?

Don’t rush! Explore the market, workout which solution best meets the needs of your business. We spent a lot of time scoping out a solution, and Summize was the best choice for us.

Make sure you do your research, workout what exactly are the problems you are trying to solve and find a solution that does that. It might take some time but it’s worth it in the long term.

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