Name: Biz case your higher-ups will buy
Uploaded: 2025-09-16T16:48:17.025Z
Duration: 55 min 46 s
Description: Biz case your higher-ups will buy

Transcript for "Biz case your higher-ups will buy": appreciated. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening to everybody. Thanks so much, for joining us. It's a thrill to be here with Mona. I've learned so much from Mona over the last couple of years, and I know you're going to learn a bunch from her as well. Mona, thanks so much for joining. So so much fun. My pleasure. Alright. Thank you for having me. Of course. So what are we doing here? We're talking about making a value case. So before we dive into the agenda, let me just set the scene. K? As I'm really hoping everybody knows, Agiloft, is a provider of contract life cycle management software. So we help people to manage their contracts from, as it were, from conception through through, you know, the point where they end. And what we have learned, over the course of our our time doing this is that sometimes it's not about technology. So I wanna reassure everybody, I'm not even gonna talk about software today. What we're gonna talk about is how, as a professional, getting ready to improve the, the experience that you're having, within legal and legal ops, sometimes we have to make a case that goes beyond let's do contract that. And so what we're gonna do, according to our agenda is, first, we're gonna just talk about why. Why do we need to make a case for value? We're gonna talk about how we can translate efficiency in the business speak. Right? Get beyond, I'm going to save some hours and towards how we're really making, a value for the for the company. We're gonna talk about how perspectives change with the roles. Right? What you're doing really changes your perspective. Gonna introduce a really simple model for how we can build one of these value cases and actually do an example, bring it to life. And then I'm gonna introduce you to a little tool that, Agiloft made in conjunction with some partners a little while ago called the value map. And I'm gonna give you a QR code to it. So if you want to follow along, at home, you're gonna be able to do that too. Alright? So that's that's the plan. And as we go, I will, introduce the topic, and then I'll ask Mona to give us, her, color on it. We'll we'll see how that see how that runs. Okay. So let's start by by asking, why do we need to make a business case? Right? And logically, it goes like this. Marketing, funnily enough, much like much like legal is a cost center. Right? I I'd argue it isn't, but I'm told by the CFO that it very much is. Right? And so when we put in solutions, we'll always leave what I would with what I would call notional ROI. Right? I've got 10 people here. I'm gonna save every person two hours a week. That's twenty hours a week. That's no. It doesn't happen here. Thousand hours a year. It costs us a $100 an hour to have a person. Look at that. You save a $100,000. Right? It's the it's the classic cost center notional ROI concept. Unfortunately, the business operators, the COOs, the CFOs, the CEOs are looking for countable ROI. Right? So they love productivity. Productivity is great, but as the investment you're going to make gets higher, you have to look just a little bit further to get the interest of the, you know, the people who are who are, like, kind of running the operation. Now, Mona, I know that you not only are the chief legal officer and the COO and all the rest, but you you also operate as a chief operating officer for for elements of of business. Tell me a little bit when I say, you know, we saved a ton of hours isn't necessarily that persuasive. Does that does that resonate? Absolutely. And I think a lot of times legal is seen as a cost center, fairly in some instances. So you have to show the value add, and legal, in order to do that, has to go beyond thinking in very rigid black and white, I'm here to put on safeguards and guardrails. You really have to learn the business and learn to think like the business. And to do that, you have to say, here are my pain points from a legal perspective. Yes. But these pain points that cascade into other aspects of the business, they impact the bottom line. And, you know, I can go through the litany of issues with before we implemented CLM that just really it was such a manual process and then to be able to showcase what is you know? And and typically, legal is not seen as tech savvy. Legal is not seen as an innovator. Legal is not seen as someone who's gotta automate processes. And so to build that case that you're talking about, the business case and the persuasive arguments, you better have some metrics ready. You better be able to showcase real life examples and the impact it's gonna have on overall revenue. And and as you're gonna you know, to forecast a little bit, how is that really drive the strategic objectives of the organization? Brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. I I think you're right. And like I said, I sit in and also often seen as, as cost centers. And I feel I feel the pain. Yes. Alright. So so then let's talk about translating efficiency into business speak. And because, I'm not only a marketer, I'm also an English major, I, of course, found a piece of poetry. But it's it's it's kind of the way that we can think about how, how we're gonna go about this process. Right? So for one of a nail, the shoe was lost. For one of a shoe, the horse was lost. And for one of a horse, the rider was lost being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for want of care about a horseshoe nail. A little bit martial, a little bit sad, but, the point here is efficiency can equal business value. But you need to know why you need why why you already know why you need the solution. Right? You wrote down why you need it. Now we have to work out, well, what happens to everybody else if I'm inefficient. Right? And so, you know, I I know that you've had some experiences with this recently, actually, Mona, up here in my beautiful San Francisco Bay Area, where your increased efficiency really had a a has had some really very tangible benefits out in the field. Yeah. I'll give two examples. One, particularly, we actually, partnered with the San Francisco Goodwill and and are responsible for them now last summer. And in the last twelve to fourteen months, what we discovered with their fleet, for example, is there were duplicates, there were inefficiencies. Everybody was signing contracts. There was no budget adherence. And to be able to come in and really focus and see where the operational gain was as well as the legal efficiency we could add. We were able to reduce their fleet by 20 to 25 vehicles, which is a huge cost savings and, actually decreases liability. I think a lot of times the business doesn't realize, fine. You can save me the cost of this lease or this vehicle, maintenance, insurance, etcetera. But long term, people who shouldn't have been driving or didn't have the authorization to be driving a company off a vehicle worse. So you're saving liability, which is a hidden cost many times, so you have to stress and and emphasize where that is. And the second example I would give is throughout the entire organization, retail is a huge component of what Goodwill does. And to run a store, a physical brick and mortar, there's a lot of facilities components to that, doors, repairs, etcetera. And when we step back and looked at what is the business really submitting to legal, it was a lot of repeat SOWs, a lot of repeat purchase orders, and where we stepped in and said, look. We have a master services agreement. You don't need to submit all these various, subparts, if you will. We can really make it more efficient, less time, less burden on everybody. You can get that door repaired in twenty four hours instead of waiting on us to run it through the system. And so it's, you know, it's almost counterintuitive, but we actually save the business by saying this is it's a an exercise of likelihood of risk versus gravity of harm. Is a door repair that's $250 worth spending $2,500 in payroll? No. Clearly, it's not. And how likely is it that a repair of a door is gonna cost the organization a huge amount of risk? And so to be able to really step back and have this kind of 30,000 foot view of what's driving the business forward, what's a true risk, what is gonna happen if, god forbid, the door doesn't get fixed on time, That is not what is critical to the overall objectives of the organization. That's not what the board is gonna hold us accountable to. So really having that elevated view of here's legal, but how do we fit in into the entire, business case is really, really important. And so you have to have that broader lens, I think, to not be seen just as legal but as a true business partner. Yeah. I that's so true. And I I I do actually want to restate the brilliant phrase you just used there. I wrote it down. I just thought I was checking. I wrote that down the other day. It's one to remember, risk balanced against gravity of harm. It's such an important concept. But also, I think, you know, the thing I would pull out from your first story there is, initially, one can look at that at that automation system as making us more efficient. The measure of our efficiency to some degree is how many trucks are actually or how many vehicles, I should say, are actually out there that we are paying for. So the so the the efficiency translates into something that isn't obvious, but is really important to the business and really helps to build a case that we've we've made a great investment. Right? Yeah. It's a measurable thing. Many years ago, so I I won't cite the source because it is a bit dated and I frankly don't remember. But, there was a citation I read once in my trainings for the business, internal trainings that I used, that poorly written contracts or a very poor contract management process, so, you know, something very manual, very basic, can actually cost businesses five to 10% of their annual revenue. So using my company as an example, if we're 400,000,000, you're talking upwards of 10% of 400,000,000 that you're losing simply through the contract process. And that's, in my perspective, inexcusable. You know, the the CEO, if he heard that number, would be like, you better fix this and fast. No kidding. Right. But it's but as you say, it's invisible. And I think that the, you know, sort of the point we're making, at this stage is we have to help our, our colleagues to understand this. The the general in the army that the poem is about isn't thinking about horseshoe nails. But once he understands that a poorly shot horse may not get there, your message doesn't get there, bad things happen, Then he goes, I understand now we must make sure that we have appropriate, let me see, barriers. I had to think about that one. But we have barriers available, to make sure of that. And that's that's part of the process. Right? It's working out how your efficiency measurably impacts the rest of the business. Mhmm. Now part of the challenge. Right? And and I think you mentioned this a moment ago, Mona, is and this counts for me as well as those few in many of many of our organizations, whether it's legal, whether it's marketing, many many of our sort of support organizations, we don't tend to buy a lot of software over time. Right? The IT people, I think, quite reasonably roll their eyes when we turn up with a a suggestion of what we wanna buy. They're like, you don't know nothing about this. And we go, well, it's true, but even so. But I also think that, you know, when we drive these, these decisions for making our departments work better, we tend to come at them from the perspective of the practitioner, right, of the the the individual. So one of the things that, comes about as we start to build these value cases is making the, active decision to kind of respect the different perspectives, the folks with different responsibilities have. Right? And I because I'm in the marketing and I have to make everything be three things, I've split I've split it into three things. Right? The practitioners. Right? People who need to see that the work they do is gonna be more smoothly achieved, Their efforts will be reflected in greater success, that the system that they now have to use will help them achieve a business initiative. The GC has said to the legal team, you've gotta be able to do more contracts better without adding people and without spending, my entire budget on outside accounts. Right. I understand that. I'm a go buy me some software. But in order to get that to work, we also have to get the folks who are signing checks to understand it. Right? So the next level, I I call executional leaders, kind of your VP levels. They need to understand that that business initiative will solve that the project's gonna solve for is gonna contribute to a key business strategy. Right? They're thinking one step up. Right? They're not thinking how can I not not not just thinking how can I spend less on renting vehicles? They're also thinking about how am I gonna drive, I don't know, whatever you wanna call it, supply chain management. Right? And above them are our executive leaders. So they're really not thinking about the horseshoe nails, if you will. They're thinking big picture. If we've got $400,000,000, how are we gonna make it $440,000,000 next year? If we've got a, I don't know, an 11% fee I have no idea. I don't want to. But, like, you know, if we have a 10% EBITDA, how do we have 11% EBITDA? If we had a couple of, you know, dicey interactions undertaking are gonna contribute to the corporate strategies, which is the highest level, the highest level stuff. Once we recognize that people have different perspectives, it makes it easier for us to build the case because we know that we're gonna have to explain it in different ways to different people. And and you were just starting to talk about this a couple of slides ago, Mona, so really understanding the business and understanding the sort of the motivations of the different kind of people within the organization. I think that's spot on. You have to kind of cater your persuasive arguments to the target audience. And so for the practitioners, yes, your job's gonna be easier. We do have limited resources, but by automating and using these tools, we can accomplish that. And then when you get to the VP and the executive, you have to showcase why is the investment worth the ROI, what is it gonna do to really, as you said, you know, contribute to the corporate strategies. And not only, you know, we're I think we're one of the things we're proud of. We don't just look twelve months ahead. We're constantly doing a three to five business year plan. We're constantly looking ten, fifteen, even thirty years into the future. So you can't have this kind of narrow tunnel vision of, okay. I'm gonna implement this. How's this gonna solve my problem for 2026 budget? Right? It's much, much bigger than that, much, much longer. And you really have to showcase how is this cohesively gonna advance our goals, not just my department, but the entire organization. Everyone has to collaborate. Everyone has to have buy in. And I think you said something, Simon. I wrote down, you have to look at the problem that you're solving for. My CFO, how do I convince her? I know that she likes to do kind of a puzzling exercises. Here's the problem. From a financial perspective, how do I back into it? And so how do I cater my arguments to her? I say, here's the problem. Here's how I'm solving for it. Let's puzzle this together. She's bought in. And so, really, it's it's even, quite frankly, an exercise in understanding personalities. And you said this already. What motivates people? How do I, as legal, make my colleagues in other departments look great? How does, that help them, and how does that make them look good? See, now I'm taking notes from you as well. I really They're really interesting. Well, I but now but now I'm gonna ask you a question I didn't know you would ask because I didn't know you were gonna say what you said, which is really interesting. You talk about the CFO and sort of, you know, she likes to puzzle things out. Do you find that it's easier to be persuasive by, I don't know, focusing on a a future that goes from today, which is neutral to tomorrow, which is all happy smiles and unicorns, or does it work better to say, here is an issue that is causing us to be less good than we could be. Let's solve that issue, and then we get sunshine. In the spring. Oh, absolutely the latter. You have to be transparent. You have to be honest, lead with integrity, and, you know, saying everything's rosy when it's not is only gonna lead to deeper problems. It's just gonna create a bigger hole that you're digging. And so coming to the table and saying, here's the issue. I've come up with these resolutions, but I wanna brainstorm with you as to other options you might be seeing that I'm not. Let's collaborate. Let's figure this out together. Let's puzzle this out as as she says. I think that way you're really showcasing, I want your perspective. You know, it's right there on the slide. Here's your role. Here's your perspective. We have a mutual target in mind. This is the end goal. So let's put our heads together. Let's put our teams. Let's figure out what the talent is, what the strategy is, what the finances are, really, what are the resources that we have so that we can accomplish this. And I think many times, you don't realize the perspective that someone else may have. A lot of times, I know when I first started at Goodwill, they saw legal as kind of the department of no, and I worked really, really hard to say no. Come to me proactively. I wanna help you solve a problem. Don't come to me after the problem exists. It's much easier to solve together before. So that same philosophy applies when you're trying to kinda proactively solve for how can I make the business case to have a CLM or whatever automation in the legal department that's gonna benefit the organization as a whole? Yeah. It's almost like you're on the other side of my my coin. I've always said I have always said, since someone told it to me and I stole it, I've always said, try to be an aspirin, not a vitamin. Yes. Vitamin, if you take it for three months, then you'll feel a bit better. You know, maybe I eat well, maybe I will, but aspirin solves a headache. Mhmm. And if you got a headache, you really want an aspirin because nobody uses aspirins in America. But it's it's, you know, it just it just flows better than Tylenol or whatever. Alright. Great. So what we we've established that, efficiency isn't enough. We have to translate it to help other people. Other people have different perspectives. And so what we thought we'd do is, like, the baseline of a really simple model, a way of thinking about how to build a value case. Right? Because we tend to start up we are all human beings. All human beings do roughly the same thing. That's not a 100% true, but nothing is. We all start by saying, well, our problem is we can't get such and such done quickly enough. We need to do it quicker. There's not really a value case. That's just a statement of a problem and solution. So the simple model that we put together for you goes like this. And I'm only and I'm happy because I got to use the word proximate, and, I don't get to use it very often. But you start with approximate 10. Today's problem, what is the thing you need to solve and the events that made you recognize the urgency? The reason I say the events that made you I I know I like to say catalyst, but there's too many big words on one screen. The the event that made you recognize the urgency is really important. Right? So we had a company turn up some some time ago who said, oh, my word. We just, also renew the contract for a large number of dollars, and we really didn't mean to, but nobody knew that it was coming up, and we missed it, and now it's done, and there's nothing we can do about it. That's when we realized that we don't know when contracts are about ordering. Right? So the proximate challenge is we gotta stop ordering contracts, but we also know that there was an offense that they just notice it which was one debt. Right? That that that piece is important because you're gonna use that in the value case later. But now we've got approximate challenge. Now we have to work out a business initiative. And a business initiative is the, as it were, operational downstream effect of that box in the balance. How is your headache hurting the operation? So the easiest level, my my poor people who we we need that thing, they're like, they're spending money, they're getting water. Right? So the the business initiative is don't spend money on things you you should. We'll get we'll get to some better wording on that later. Then you gotta think, well, what business strategy is that gonna contribute to? In other words, how is fixing that operational gap gonna fit into bigger goals the organization is trying to reach? Right? So think of it as we've gone from sort of six feet above the ground to 10,000 feet. Now we're at 20,000 feet. Right? Now we're now we're thinking about what are the the strategies that we're running through the business this year. Most most companies will have something that they're focusing on this year. Right? We have a thing called VCP, which I I have no idea what VCP means. Please don't tell my boss. But it's a like, these are the big rocks we're going after. Right? And then you're gonna attach that business initiative to this strategy. And then you think to yourself, how does that business strategy reach the corporate objective? Right? And I I I like the way I think of corporate objective is how the CEO explains their big strategic direction to the board of Wall Street. They're not talking about, oh, you know, we have to fix up our internal systems to to make them work better. They're saying we're gonna build top line revenue. They're saying we're gonna reach the, you know, we're gonna reach the rule of 40 if they're in a PE driven place. We're going to, you know, get to cash flow positive. We're gonna make a 15% EBITDA. Once I could hook these all together, all of a sudden, I have this wonderful picture of how I can start to pitch this to a variety of different people. Now I'm gonna show you an example. Before I do, Mona, what do you have anything you wanna you wanna add in here about any of this or just say proximate? It's so fun to say. Proximate. But, anyway, again, some of the challenges so before we did implement some of these changes and automations, I just have a a list. I remember I walked in and I thought, wow. They're really working in a on a skeletal budget, a skeletal staff. I was the first GC after a long time. So when you talk about, you know, the auto renewal example is a great one. That was happening left and right within the organization. We had zero budget adherence to contracts. Anybody in the department could or anyone, pardon me, anyone in the company actually had authority to sign. There was no limitations on level position, dollar spent. There was, you know, a free for all. We did not have fully executed copies of a lot of contracts, which, of course, creates a a ton of liability when there's a dispute. We weren't tracking when a contract was expiring. We weren't tracking cancellation requirements. We weren't able to check for duplicates, in terms of do we have two vendors performing the exact same task, which is a a huge concern. So in essence, there was zero accountability from the business side as to what was happening, with contracts and other legal aspects. So we had several approximate challenges. And when you start at the base, I love this chart because or this slide because it really shows you how does the approximate challenge actually build up to the actual corporate objective. And so something as small as why do we have all these manual unsigned contracts running around? Well, because, again, it costs money at the end of the day, and that's money that could be poured back into the business. In our case, opening more retail stores, adding more mission services, really, enhancing our brand overall, perhaps growing the business, outside of the territories that we have. So it really has that cascading effect, if you will. And so I really think you have to have that. And we've talked about this before, but you as legal, you have to learn the business. You have to learn what that corporate object what is the end goal, and then you can work yourself backwards and say, okay. How does this then create KPIs that I can use to sell the business on why legal has a true seat at the table? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's also how you know, back to sort of the the the purpose of this of this conversation is, like, this is why you need that value case because you're not going to get to, oh, yes. Let me please sign a large check from the CFO with, yeah, we need to be more efficient. We need to have a better view of things. You need to have that that connection. Alright. I tell you what, let's jump on to our little example, and then we'll we'll we'll come back to that thought. So I just wanted to have an example, and I chose one that I didn't use during the last slide. So we'd have a little variety. But this is one that comes up all the time. Right? It depends on the business. We we hear from business all the time. Like, NDAs are a particular pain. Right? They suck up until our approximate challenges, we are spending a blowload of time dealing with NDAs. And on top of that, salespeople keep circumventing the process. Right? This is like, I don't wanna have to deal with legal. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna make a copy of the one I have and change out the names, which has two problems. Right? One is they might type it in wrong or they may mess up the, they may mess mess up something else in there. The other problem, of course, is if they go themselves, then it's not in the system. So we don't know where it is. So that's kind of the process we're gonna do this. So then we say, well, what's the business initiative? Why does this matter? Who is implicated in this? Right? Well, this is you know, if MBAs are inefficient, they tend to lengthen sales cycles. I literally talked to someone just the other day, who said that that her business partners are saying we're getting them out half a day earlier, which puts us in a much better position in the sales cycle. So I can say, okay. My business is just I'm gonna help shorten sales cycles because we're gonna get MBAs and deals quicker and move deals along. Now I've got I got a little something to hang my hat on. Right? That's that's bringing in my friends in sales to go, okay. I can solve the problem for you. And there's a strategy there. I look at the VPs who may have said, well, this year, one of the things we gotta do is we gotta optimize sales. Optimize sales is a thing that marketing people say. What I mean by that is we have to deliver more revenue from the same people. Right? We have to have to have the average person sell more this year than they did last year. Right? So we can make make better budgets. Well, we can get to that if we shorten the sales cycles because the sales cycles are shorter, then we have more salespeople sign and we're being more effective. And then I can lift that one level higher to the corporate objective where we say, well, growth. Well, very few businesses that don't want growth. I'm fairly safe with growth. Right? And so if we are optimizing our sales teams by shortening our sales cycles, then we're contributing to delivering growth. Now fair fair to all of a sudden, is it does it always work? No. Like, life isn't entirely linear. But this gives me a a series of steps I can take to acknowledge and respect the different perspectives of the people up through the chain to have them understand what it is I'm trying to do and why it matters for their goals. So that's kind of a result. And I will tell you, I always tell this anecdote, but I've spoken to, like, half a dozen people who started off with NDAs being a problem. This spans a lot of different industries. It's kind of shocking how many NDAs we put out there at the beginning of the sales process, I gotta say. Almost every one of them has said one of the signs that it's working is they get asked for more NDAs from the Houston, because people have stopped cheating, and now they're in the system and and life is good. I don't know. I think do do you do a lot of NDAs at Goodwill, Mona? We do. More than you would expect. Even though we're not for profit, we do have kind of a for profit mentality. And, I'm proud to say that we've really kind of instilled a compliance oriented, you know, process of of the way we do things. And so, you know, kind of a broader view of this is relationships are critical. If you're gonna try and get the buy in, something as simple as NDAs, which is, as you know, minor point in the big scheme of things, but very crucial to protecting confidential and proprietary proprietary information. And so when you can show why is this important, what's gonna happen if I don't do this, that's how you're gonna get the win. And it has to involve all departments. I think you touched on this earlier, but legal has to work a lot of times with procurement, which is part of finance. And, again, it all bleeds all the way up. So having that corporate objective in mind is how you've worked backwards to why should I have the NDA process be streamlined. I love the example you gave. Now that the business is actually coming and asking for more NDAs, that means that's working. That means they're listening. They understand the risk associated with not doing it or or going rogue, if you will, which we've had in the past. But once you get that buy in, it works beautifully, and then the business strategy becomes very, very attainable. Yeah. Very much so. Very much so. Alright. So we're gonna move on to another thing, but I'm gonna ask you, the audience, give us a challenge. Tell us tell us a thing that you're trying to fix up, just sort of the approximate area. What's the thing that's that's making you batty right now? Pop it into the q and a. We won't we won't tell on you. I promise. And let's see if we can fit it into the model. We'll come back to it, after you've given us a little bit of thought. Okay? Now what we've done is we've shown you a really simple model. Right? And I and I actually think it's it's the sort of thing that genuinely I think about all the time. So I'm always trying to think about ways to understand what people trying to do and what you know, so communicate with them. But we at Agiloft came up with a more complex model, that we call the value map, which is designed to sort of operate in a way that hopefully helps you to build this out a little more, in a little more depth. Right? And it looks a little bit like this. Now in a minute, I'm gonna share my screen so we can see the whole thing because if you can read the words off of that picture, I would like to swap eyes with you, please. That's great. But before I do that, I'm gonna pop this give you just a second. If you want to follow along live, if you wanna see this thing live, you can use the QR code. And I I think it's pretty clear, that, that we're gonna send the PowerPoint out. So if you don't wanna do this right now, it's totally fine. You can do it right now. And I just got a note just before I pull it up. We actually got a challenge, down here, moment from Jane. So we're gonna come back to that. Jane, I I see you, and we're definitely gonna come back so we can fit into model. Okay? Thank you for sharing that with us. Let's get some more. In the meantime, let me just open up. I'm gonna share my screen. I hope I get this right. And I'm gonna show you the value map. Right? Okay. I don't want isn't this, like, the whole thing of, I feel like this is the whole thing of life post pandemic is trying to share screens. Alright. Are we seeing it? Hold on. Yes. Although I have a different view, so let me adjust my Oh, okay. Alright. I can see what's in. Okay. Great. So look. Here we go. Here's here's our here's our value map. We did it in conjunction with our friends over at MGI Research. Okay. So what we talked about before, right, business initiatives, business strategies, corporate objectives. And the way that we've designed this map is someone said to me, is it left to right or right to left? And I said, no. That would be far too easy. It's middle out, which which turns me a lot of hard stairs, let me tell you. But the idea is you work out what your proximate challenge is and you look for your business initiative. Okay? And and they run down the middle. So you might say our issue is oh, I don't know. I mean, increase legal automation's a bit easy. Right? So expand m and a. Just a fun. Right? If I click on here, I can see kind of why CLM automation might work. That's that's just me. I've got some pain points. I've got some improvement benchmarks. PFI is potential financial improvements. And then I've got some functions of our folks who I'll probably have to talk to to really come to, a good plan to to make things work. But now I've got this thing. Right? I'm helping to expand m and a. So maybe somebody said, or maybe my proximate problem was, well, gosh, you know, it's really difficult to get all of the contracts from an acquired company into our system and and organized and usable, and it's slowing everything down. But if I could get those in quick and easy, then we could help to expand our m and a efforts. We'd have capacity to do more. And I go, okay. Well, that's great. So then I'm gonna go back to my business strategy. So now my VP should go, hey. You've been tasked this year with increasing our acquisitions. I I talked to a company the other day. I do not remember who it is. They acquired, like, seven companies a year. It's crazy. You know, they're like, well, we'd like to be able to do nine, but it takes time. Right? So now I can go, okay. So now I can tell the guys who are out there looking at the deals, we can get them done quicker. I can tell their boss, we're expanding your ability to make m and a a core part of our business. And because we're doing that, you can tell the CEO that you are going to contribute to the growth of the company with inorganic revenue. So I've managed to get myself all the way back here fairly easily. Now, obviously, from my perspective, you could also, in this direction, start asking yourself, what is it that I need to do to deliver that solution that, that I just pitched over here? Right? So this pitch gets less and less specific the further you go left. Right? On the right hand side, now I'm getting more specific because I gotta go and find someone to help me do it or probably someone. Right? I probably gotta find some software and some consulting and whatever. So over here, I can now start to think about the different elements that would that would come in. We've used the Harvey ball. Everyone loves the Harvey ball. And I'm not gonna I promise I wouldn't book that software. So I won't show you too too much about that. But what you can do is click on this nice little maturity link, and it's gonna show you basically where most people are along this line. So there's expand m and a side. Right? It'll show us where people are from a maturity level on the various elements of CLM, and then it'll show you best in class. What I love about this is it doesn't show best in classes. They totally aced it because that's not really where we are with with with legal automation just yet. We're getting there, but, this gives you a sense of kind of what you can aspire to. K? Now the other thing that that you'll get from this, and again, if you wanna open it up, you could you could use it forever, is from our friends over at MGI. We were able to derive some potential financial impact. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I wanna be very clear. This is based on twenty years of research that MTI have done. I don't have any backup data for it. Right? It's this is this is what they have seen, nicely summarized just so you can get a feel, but it gives you somewhere to start. Right? So if I'm talking to my m and a people, they have seen over the course of the last twenty years that a well automated legal support for m and a can can cut the time for due diligence in half. Right? It can improve compliance for 25%. It can reduce m and a integration time by 35 and increase the efficiency of our closing by 30. Now do I guarantee you these results? I don't much do not. However, these give you somewhere to start, and they give you an idea of the sorts of things that we can start with as we're building that value case. So I'm not only discovering ways in which to describe it that meet the perspectives of our colleagues. I'm also starting to put some numbers on it. Deeper down, we have critical capabilities, which, again, I promised I wouldn't talk software, so I shan't, but you can read this through on your own time. So it'll let you know what's in each element of this maturity model, and that's about it. But I I think that everybody I've shown this to goes, oh, that's kinda interesting. And it's worth taking a moment to think about your proximate challenge and start building out even if you only get as far as business initiative to start moving back quite fast. Alright. And let's stop sharing that for a moment. I'm gonna go back over here. I'm gonna reconnect with Mona. Oh my goodness. Look. Now now we've got some now we got some questions. Mona, thoughts, comments? Yeah. I know you've seen this before. So Well, let's start with the one we got first. Heavy edits to form contracts that require extensive time to negotiate. So that could encompass a wide variety of things. I'm gonna take it as you perhaps have routine contracts that maybe it's your template or even the vendor template. But either way, there's negotiations on both sides where small points probably get pretty escalated and you go there's multiple, multiple back and forth. So how do you make the business case to the organization that either you need? There's multiple ways to solve for that. Right? So if we look at what's the approximate challenge, it's that we've got these contracts. They're really taking a long time. Can we get a template? Can we how do we solve for this? And then how does that you know, fast forward, how does that lead to the corporate objective of actually helping the business not be delayed, not be bogged down by, gosh, this contract's been stuck in legal for two weeks. We're gonna risk losing the deal because our vendor's getting frustrated with us. That leads to, oh, no. They went with a different partner. That leads to, now we don't have this contract. We're not gonna hit our target revenues. So I think the business case there is figure out what would it cost in terms of budget to either add staff or ask, for some sort of automated system that will give you, for example, put in a plug for Agiloft, they have a clause library. Our clause library is gonna be the way to go so that you already have this built in menu, if you will, of here's indemnification clause, here's a venue clause, here's, you know, fees clause. If you've got those tools at the ready, you can just simply, kinda steal from those, if you will. That's one way to kind of, simplify the process. I just went to a client advisory board meeting where they showed us this glorious tool that uses AI in a very safe, prudent, logical manner. That I can tell you, not having used it myself, but the wave of the future, as we all know, is probably gonna be AI is gonna play a greater role in all aspects of the legal function, probably particularly with respect to form contracts. That tool is gonna save a ton of money. There's the a, Agile community. Again, I have not had extensive experience with it, but that's something that is gonna show you how are other businesses dealing with these particular, negotiations, these particular clauses, verbiage, and that will save you a ton of time. So, again, if if you start with that approximate challenge and figure out how is it gonna impact the corporate objective, work backwards, build your business case. And I would have numbers. I would say, this is what it's costing me in terms of man hours. This is how long it's taking me. And if you're not at that automated level yet, so one of the beauties of Agiloft is it creates all kinds of charts and metrics and KPIs that you can take to your business. But if even if you're doing it manually, I would say this one contract with we're going back and forth seven, eight, nine, ten times, whatever that looks like. Yes. The other side's being unreasonable, but many of our vendors are business partners. This is how much it's costing. This is what the automation would save. Here's my business case for it. So having numbers the business is driven by numbers and legal oftentimes is not. That's not how we were trained. But, again, that goes back to learning what the businesses, how does it function, what is your budget, and and making the case from there. I hope that's helpful. I'm not sure if I, you know, grasped the exact example you were looking for, but in a very broad sense, that's how I would approach it. Yeah. You know, I I would add to that, the and and we well, we we don't get in the back and forth because we're we're in a webinar. But, the next question you ask yourself from the initial question, Jane, is why does it matter? Who's who's who's in pain? Is it are these contracts that are, associated with buying things or selling things? Stop that. Right? So if you start with that, you go, okay. It's I don't know. It's buying things. So now my business initiative might be and now I'm gonna have to go and check my I'm gonna go and check my value map over here. Bear with me. If it's buying things, then, normally, it's going to be something like, oh, gosh, improve supplier payment accuracy or improve onboarding. Right? Find who the problem is. So maybe you say, trouble is we we need I have no idea where you work, and I'm not gonna look. But you might say, oh, we really need to buy all of these bags of chemicals in order to make our aspirins. Right? And it's taking so long that that's causing us to have slowdowns. So my business initiative is improve efficiency of in in the supply chain. My business strategy is get more product market product into market quicker, and my corporate objective is is growth. Right? On the other hand, it's selling. It might be the business initiative is, you know, improve its shortening sales cycles. We're back to where we started. Right? I'm gonna get this done quick because you need more deals quicker, better, which optimizes your Salesforce, which improves growth. So the next question for you to ask yourself is, who is hurt by this and why do they care, and then how can I build that up? It's a great question. I really appreciate that. That one thing I would add, Simon, too, I think you and I maybe in the past have shared this. It also depends. You know, I've been practicing for over twenty five years. I know I look terribly young, but it's been a hard time getting believe a word of it. But it also goes down to your experience level. Number one, as an attorney, I know a lot of junior staff that has been on my team, their tolerance for risk is way different than my tolerance for risk. And that goes back to what we talked about what is the likelihood of risk here. Also, talk to the business units. So let's pretend this is, a facilities contract. When I sat down and I talked to facilities and you you have to speak business, you can't say, hey. Here's legal jargon. I'm gonna toss your way. Talk to them individually about each clause or whatever the pain points are that you're experienced on a recurring basis and say, from a legal perspective, I'm trying to mitigate risk by arguing for this. What are you willing to live with? And you might be very surprised what the business is willing to live with versus what legal is willing to live with. And once you've at least established, okay, legal has cautioned you, but the business is willing to live with this risk, that delta can be accounted for. And that may be the very, very simple cure to this. I know I'm probably I'm oversimplifying it, but I have witnessed that in my own organization. And when I came from private practice, we're we're taught CYA. Right? Memo for everything. Give every single option that might happen. In house, particularly, you have to be a little bit faster and a little bit more risk tolerant. So I think that was a learning lesson for me is figure out what is what is it that the business wants. Am I really truly being an obstacle on a very simple clause? Can they live with Arizona law versus New York law or, you know, something very, very basic might help facilitate a lot of that. Yep. Alright. We have one other scenario. Thank you, Anna, for I'll just use the first thing to be to be discreet. Anna gave us a challenge as well. Manage cost of outside counsel. Legal fees are so very high, how to manage them effectively. And I don't actually I don't know if you're just asking the question or if you're asking us to put it into the model. So I I tell you what, why don't you, Mona, take answer the question, and then I'll take showing you how to use the Mac. How about that? If I had a crystal ball, I would not be sitting here today. How this is a struggle. I talk to GCs, large, small, for profit, not profit all the time. This is a pain point for all of us. Doesn't matter if you use a boutique firm, big law, legal fees are outrageous. I and, again, it depends on is this a litigation driven cost? Is this just simply, a compliance cost? It there's so many different, you know, options as to what this could be or could be a totality of this. For me, it's a totality. And what I tried to do this kinda goes outside the scope of this presentation, but I've asked the firms that I really give a lot of business to. I said, in my outside counsel billing guidelines, I expect x number of pro bono hours per year. I expect you to use the lowest, you know, cost associate reasonable. I'm not gonna pay for two attorneys, three attorneys to review one document. So there's there's built in things you can do like that from an automation point or standpoint. I think it goes back to, you know, sort of the last question in a way, having these automated tools, when you are negotiating contracts, use Agiloft's community, use tools that are already in place so that you're not recreating the wheel every single time, especially if it's repeat issues that you're seeing. If it's a novel like, I have one case. I swear to god, it's been litigation for many, many years. I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. I may have to take that work away from the firm simply because they're not advancing the ball and we're incurring sky high fees. So that's a very broad scope question, but, Simon, I'd love to hear your take on sort of how to use the model for it. Yeah. No. That's that's absolutely. And I you just taught me, like, three new things. That's right. I have no idea you had to tell them not to put two or three people in one document. That's terrifying. Anyway, so if we imagine this so really the question is how do we build this value case? This is actually pretty, normal normal. I I'm trying to find a way to say it's not unusual, but I'm not I'm not being mean about it. But, like, yeah, this happens all the time, where people say we're spending a fortune, and we feel like if we automate it, we wouldn't spend the fortune. But when we come in, that that that it's not as persuasive as we thought it was going to be. So the way I would do it on the value map here is, we'll tell it's not that. We have two ways we could do it. Right? Depending on where you're at, you either go to increase legal automation. Right? So we say, if we automate, then we will spend less on outside counsel. And so our our initiative, right, is increasing legal automation, which can, contribute to a digital transformation business strategy. Lots of businesses today are committed to business. It's a digital transformation. I'm tempted to say because of AI, but I I I I don't wanna say AI again. I said it 87 times this week. And then it drives you to growth. Right? You say if we can do this, we can do do growth. I don't think that's where you're at, though, when it's spending less. I think we're actually down here where we say we're going to improve our own efficiency, which once again gets us to digital transformation, which takes us to cost reduction. So that's how I fit it in there is to say, we specifically need to stop paying so much outside counsel, so we need to invest in automation, which will help our efficiency, which will contribute to digital transformation and and will drive cost reduction. So when we go back to the CFO and say, can you pitch in for a copy of of of CLM product, they go, I see cost reduction. Got it. You're doing the CIO who doesn't want any more software in their building, and they haven't met your CIO, but I guarantee you they don't want any more software in their building. You go, it's going to help you with digital transformation and bring us into your into your world. They're gonna like it. And when you come in and say we're improving efficiency, you know, your sort of, operational leader's gonna like it. That's how I go about it. And I would if I may add to that to get back, Simon, make sure you're keeping track of all of that. Every year, budget season is an internal fun time. Of course, I'm being facetious, but every year I go in with what does the past five, six, seven, eight years look like, how my forecasting with 2026 and beyond looks like. And, of course, with legal, it's a shot in the dark. You don't know what claims you're gonna have. You don't know what litigation is gonna hit you. But having that number, and that budget adherence is really, really appealing to the business and, of course, how they, drive the business forward. And so when you do implement these tools, do a look back and do a presentation, whether it's in some sort of executive session, leadership meeting, and say, here is how legal has saved money. Here's how we're driving the business. We've cut down we do this all the time. Thanks to Agiloft. We say, here's how we've cut down the contract, life cycle. Here's how many days it takes us to process a contract. Here's how many we have in queue. And it really gives, kind of a light into the legal world that most people don't see from a business lens. And when I told them how many I have in queue, they were all surprised. Like, oh, we didn't realize that many contracts per week, per month, whatever your data shows. And so that really gives them kind of an, behind the curtain look at what you're working on and kinda gives them, okay. I can justify the spend because I see how it's gonna give those cost savings. And that that's advocating on your own behalf. Look. I saved the business a lot of money, cost savings, and that's only gonna be a feather in your cap. Yeah. And that's right. And I'm gonna I'm gonna leave my final comment is get that data. The data is so important. Mhmm. And then find yourself one really good story. I I was on stage with with one of our customers a little while ago. Actually, it's about a year and a half ago, but it's really stuck with me. Where she said, we had this one person, she spent thirty hours a week shuttling forms around the business. She now spends three well, actually, the amount of time needed has gone down to three hours. And because it's only three hours, she's been able to pass that off to the administrative staff and is now working full time as a paralegal. And, of course, you know, the whole audience is, like, cheering and happy and excited. But it's it's important to have the data because you never get past the CFO and the CIO without data. And then it picks up just one little story that makes people go, oh, love that. Mhmm. Well, I can't believe it, Mona, but we've come to the end of our time. This has been so fun. Thank you so much. I have learned so much. I love that we're both taking notes from each other. That's that's so fun. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us, for sticking with us. As I understand it, the, the presentation will go out, the recording will go out. You had the link for the value map. Please, use it. I think I stuck to my promise not to talk too much about software. And if you have any further questions, please just follow-up follow-up with us, and and we'll connect you with people who are wise in the ways of all of the things that, that might help you. Lana, good to see you. See you again soon. Ben. Thank you everyone. Bye bye. So much. Bye, everybody.