Economic Volatility, Supply Chain Disruptions, and Emerging Technology is Changing Legal's Relationship with Procurement from 'Deal Prevention' to 'Business Driver'

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Apr 17, 2023, 08:33 ET

At Sourcing Industry Group's (SIG) Procurement Technology Summit 2023 Prashant Dubey, Agiloft's Chief Strategy Officer and Research Chair, will outline how procurement professionals can create a new, more collaborative, and productive relationship with legal.

Dubey joins leaders from across Sourcing Industry Group (SIG), the premier membership organization for sourcing, procurement, outsourcing, and third-party risk professionals, to speak on innovation, organizational brilliance, and best-in-class technology solutions across sourcing and procurement.

AMELIA ISLAND, Fla., April 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Agiloft, the global standard in agile contract lifecycle management (CLM), today announced its Chief Strategy Officer and Research Chair, Prashant Dubey, will take the stage at today's Sourcing Industry Group (SIG) Procurement Technology Summit to outline 5 strategies procurement can employ to productively incorporate the converging roles of procurement and legal into daily practice, and how procurement professionals can create a new, more collaborative, and productive relationship dynamic with their peers in the legal department.

"The need for more strategic, collaborative, and partnership-oriented interaction between procurement and legal departments in the enterprise has never been more important," said Prashant Dubey, Agiloft's Chief Strategy Officer and Research Chair. "Traditionally, procurement is expected to drive business value, not just through better pricing from vendors, but through strategic 'category management.' Layer onto this the fact that as unexpected and unpredictable events such as a global pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, sanctions on Russia, and resulting deep and broad supply chain disruptions, occurred, procurement was also expected to be a steward of organizational risk.

"Risk Management has always been the traditional driver for the legal department," Dubey continues. "However, General Counsel and their legal ops leaders are more and more expected to be strategic business enablers. As these traditionally, sometimes adversarial groups, are now motivated by the same converging business drivers, procurement has internalized the importance of contract management as an enterprise business process, and therefore a vehicle to enable a more productive relationship between procurement and legal. Despite this, due to inherent inefficiencies in contracting processes, procurement category managers are often forced to focus on tactical tasks vs. business strategy which creates an often-adversarial relationship between procurement and legal. To regain control, procurement is creating Contracting Centers of Excellence enabled by Contract Lifecycle Management."

In his presentation, "Five Strategies to Turn Your Relationship with Legal from 'Deal Preventor' into a 'Business Enabler'," Dubey will explain how technology is both changing and improving this critical relationship within enterprise organizations, creating a partnership that has the potential to become the foundation of enterprise risk management, cost management, and managing volatility such as supply chain disruptions caused by pandemics and macro-economic conditions. The talk will discuss these five strategies for procurement to improve its relationship with legal:

Collaboratively create an intake protocol for procurement contract requests. This is the point in the contracting process, if done well, will cascade efficiency throughout the contracting lifecycle.
Collaboratively create intake protocol for legal support requests from procurement. It is at this juncture where a crisp, clear process can enable fluid triage by legal and more efficient consumption of valuable lawyer time.
Create a negotiation playbook with common fallback provisions. Not only will this enable a more structured approach to risk management but also create the foundation for more self-serve contracting.
Develop a contract repository that serves as a single source of truth. A repository is the foundation of any contract management program since it enables access to agreements at the point of need and contains detailed data about contracts that can enable an empirical approach to standardization of contracting templates and playbooks.
Analyze and modify starting point templates to reduce negotiation intensity. Since most companies suffer from "template creep," an exercise to harmonize templates, reduce the number of starting points, and bring ending provisions to the front will reduce the intensity of negotiations between parties, which accelerates contracting cycle time and enables lawyers to practice more law.

Dubey concludes: "It's no longer about smooth transaction processing, but rather about creating a more productive relationship that allows procurement to take control of their contracting destiny and accelerate contracting cycle times. This also enables lawyers to practice more law and generate a more uniform application of risk thresholds. The more closely procurement and legal work together, the better they understand each other's priorities, identify areas for improvement, and develop more effective strategies to drive and grow the business."

Legal industry author, widely recognized CLM visionary, and podinar host, Prashant Dubey, brings years of battle-hardened CLM process and program expertise to his role as Agiloft's Chief Strategy Officer and Research Chair. He has been in the legal technology industry and services industry for more than 20 years, most recently at Elevate, and before that as the Founder, President, and CEO at Sumati. Dubey will present on this topic at the 2023 SIG Procurement Technology Summit on Tuesday, April 18 at 9:05 a.m. EDT in the Innovation Hall. Click here to learn more about this session and about how Agiloft empowers procurement teams to drive strategic value at the world's largest organizations.

About Agiloft

As the global leader in agile contract lifecycle management (CLM) software, and the only CLM provider to offer a money-back guarantee on their software, Agiloft is trusted to provide significant savings in purchasing, enable more efficient legal operations, and accelerate sales cycles, all while drastically lowering compliance risk. Agiloft's adaptable no-code platform ensures rapid deployment and a fully extensible system. Using contracts as the core system of commercial record, Agiloft's CLM software leverages AI in a pragmatic manner to improve contract management for legal departments, procurement, and sales operations. Visit www.agiloft.com for more.

Media Contact: Jeffrey Miesbauer, Agiloft, 650-587-8615 ext 4003

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