In the hustle and bustle of the business world, imagine possessing a secret weapon that can help you stay ahead of the competition, navigate stormy waters with ease, and unlock hidden treasures of success. Fortunately, with the rapid advancement of technology and the proliferation of data, that very weapon now lies within your grasp: data-driven insights in contract management. In this episode of the Contract Heroes Podcast, we feature the team from Intel who have successfully implemented a CLM tool, and they have been actively using it. Joining us today are Gerald Wright, Senior Manager of Contract Solutions at Intel, Donovan Bell, Director of Information and Contract Experience (Global Legal Operations) at Intel, and Kuan Yu Liu, IT Product Owner at Intel.
During our conversation, we gain valuable insights into Intel's journey of successfully implementing a contract management tool. We emphasize the importance of clean and organized data as the foundation for effective contract management. We delve into the significance of data-driven decision-making and involving attorneys in the process. The team from Intel highlights the importance of metadata and prioritizing active contracts. They also give us insights into some of the challenges they faced during implementation and the importance of data cleanliness and integrity. We also touch on scoping the project, engaging internal teams, and involving end users in the design process. Finally, we discuss the flexibility and challenges of the chosen CLM solution by the Intel team, as well as the future phases and the potential of AI in contract management.
Intro [00:00:05] You're listening to the Contract Heroes podcast. Your one-stop shop for all things contract management. And now here are your hosts, Marc and Pepe.
Marc Doucette [00:00:14] Well, Donovan, Kuan and Gerald, thanks so much for joining us today. We're really excited to have you on the podcast. And before I flip things over to Pepé, he's going to give us a little bit more information about what we're going to be chatting about. Donovan, maybe you could just give us an understanding of how the team has gotten to this point where you have implemented a CLM tool and you're actively using it. What does that journey been like?
Donovan Bell [00:00:36] Yeah, it's been a great journey and one that's built off of learning from history, if you will. This is our second approach, if you will. Second time around with our CLM implementation. And so we've learned a lot and we've gained some of those learnings. And I think one of the key things about it is we focused on our foundation, foundation being the data, but also a premise of partnership. And so that's why it's such we're fortunate to be able to speak not just with me, but also Gerald, who's writing our contracts on our team, and Kuan who is our I.T partner. And that cohesive bond between IT and our business global operations aspect is really critical to the success of what we do. And so back to your point on that. It's the foundation is what's most important. And in a world where a lot of challenges are being driven on a point by point basis, falling prey to the tyranny of the urgent, if you will. And so here's the one specific problem that we're trying to face. Having a firm foundation of understanding what our data is and making a data centric mindset approach towards how we solve our challenges when it comes to contracts is of utmost importance.
Pepe Toriello [00:01:57] Yeah, that's awesome. So guys, this is going to be our first time that we have three amazing guests on the podcast. So this might be a little bit longer because there's a lot of information, especially from a company like Intel. I mean, we are very, very honored to have you guys on the show. And I love that introduction, Donovan, because I think we've been discussing this a lot in our previous episode, because that foundation, some people like our friend Lucy, we like to call it CLM readiness, right? Because a lot of the time people just jump straight to technology because they think it's just like a magic wand. Like if we hire a CLM, then our problems will be solved. And it's not like that. You got to know what do you want to automate? You want to you want to understand those processes, those templates, those pro workflows, all the homework, the previews will come working before starting and implementation is like it's of the assets because if you don't have that clear, you'll be only automating broken processes and you will never see the benefits of having a tool that it's, you know, focused your help, not just that the legal team, but also the other commercial departments. So let's start Donovan, like you said, there's a lot of will right now in the business landscape, like data driven businesses. It's like right now I like a very buzzword and I will like to start our conversations on how can any organization leverage data and metrics to establish a solid foundation for contract management? And what are the key benefits of adopting that data driven approach? And just by the way, this is maybe Kuan and Gerald, if you want to also jump into this question, please feel free to do it.
Donovan Bell [00:03:51] Yeah, great question there, Pepe. And again, appreciate you, Marc, having us on. In regard to data driven metrics and the approach to data is going to be king in terms of understanding, how can we then make a business decision. At the end of the day, the data should produce the ability to make a decision in regard to where you are taking your business and the approach you're going to take with it, and hence why it's so important to start with the end in mind of making sure that your data first is clean and sound and the approach that we take to get there. But ultimately your data should tell a story, and in that story it determines where the velocity of the business goes. It surely should be a force factor in the decisions that are being made at a senior leadership level. And so again, that's one thing that's really paramount. Hello, Gerald, if you wanted to add to that.
Gerald Wright [00:04:57] Not. That's fine, thanks. But let's just add I actually, but I'll hone in on one point on that data cleanliness piece in the very beginning. You've got to know what the data looks like just to start. Right. A lot of people we made the mistake of, oh, well, we've had, you know, the contract system for years, right? So, and our contracts have been placed in that system for years. So let's just move it all into a nice new CLM. Now, do you think your data is clean? It's not clean. It's not organized the way you're going to need it to be or want it to be when you move to a CLM solution. So that has to be a massive part of your project, is to think about you as is state of your data. But beyond that, once you fast-forward to getting that data cleaned and organized, our experience was, okay, now we've done got through that time and expense and we've moved on into our CLM and you've got to have a process in place for keeping it that way because the CLM isn't going to keep it clean for you, right? So you have to have resources and people and processes established to help make sure that that remains clean as well. So that has to be a massive part of your project. So a little bit of job security for me there. And you do. So yeah, I just want to hone in on that data, that data piece, because when you're talking about metrics, your metrics are really open and this is a captain obvious statement, but your metrics are really only as good as a clean your data is. And so, you know, it's so important to focus on that piece.
Pepe Toriello [00:06:31] Right. And before I turn things to Kuan, because we are very interested in how you get the data right. So when you were building that foundation, you're like, did you already know what was that data that you needed in order to start the implementation? Or do you think that was part or maybe during the implementation now you knew, okay, maybe this these kinds of data will be useful for our commercial or procurement or the legal department. Like how can you prioritize that data during that foundation stage?
Donovan Bell [00:07:13] Yeah. So for us it was just a matter of sort of analyzing what we had, looking at what information we did have about our contract records. And it was minimal because we didn't have a CLM system. We had a traditional management kind of document management system. So we had some metadata, but not a whole lot. So we started with just looking at what we had and then, you know, bringing groups of attorneys together and analyzing, grouping the data and analyzing the attorneys and saying, okay, what's what's missing? Right. What would you what are you not seeing here that would be useful for you? And that's what we used to sort of for our first CLM solution to sort of establish that our taxonomy for building that first CLM solution at the very ground level, we knew we were going to grow from there, but we had to get started somewhere. So that's how we got started, which is like, you know, we're a company that's been around for over 50 years. We had a lot of contract data to look at, and so we were very quickly were able to see trends and get information that the attorneys could look at as well and say, okay, you know, let's build from here. That's our experience.
Pepe Toriello [00:08:26] And was there maybe a specific department that, you know, or types of contracts that you started with their stuff that, you know, the team knew, we really want to make sure that this is the data that we're getting in the system first. Sometimes, you know, I mean, typically it's active contracts, right? But was there maybe a large amount of a singular type of contract that you knew that you needed to pass those documents to make sure that it it was in the system and up and running when you went live?
Gerald Wright [00:08:49] Absolutely. We obviously tried to. We left behind our agreements that were to have been expired or terminated. And they've been they've been in that status for about a decade or more. We basically didn't look at those. We said, let's just bring in things that we think people will want to have access to. We still brought over expired records, but records that, you know, they're not decades old. So that gave us a little bit of a filter and allowed us to leave some things behind, not have to worry about in terms of sort of like, you know, topical which ones we were focused on. So we didn't really do a filter beyond that so that if we were managing in our prior file room as what we called it and it was relatively recent or active, we were going to manage it and I guess the CLM. So we brought it all over at that point.
Donovan Bell [00:09:40] Just to kind of add to that to I think, you know, we talk about it from a perspective of the data, right? And they want to take it up a notch to the metadata aspect of it. Right. So we knew that there were certain categories, certain types, certain, you know, that that aspect, that kind of fed to the taxonomy is just alluding to that becomes really important because when you have a really strong and flexible and nimble CLM, you almost operate off of it. If you build it, they will come take philosophy. And the key is are you able to generate the speed, turnover, efficiencies and quality that's necessary to provide the value that the business needs to be able to, you know, whether it be revenue generation, credit risk or cost of goods, those type of things. And so it's having the understanding of what's the type of information that we need to make sure we're centered on that gives us the flexibility that when the contract types come in or the different types of contracts that we're able to support.
Pepe Toriello [00:10:41] Right. I think that's a very smart move. And before I jump to Juan, to how you get that data, let me just give you a brief story of one of our previous interviews with James Donald from Accor. He was also at the clock event. He told us that right now they are moving from a failed implementation to a new one. One of the main mistakes that they did when the first implementation was of course importing that legacy documents because when they started the implementation part, they just asked somebody who may be in the legal team is like, okay, so what kind of information do you want from your contracts? And they said, We want 400 data points for all of our contracts. No, I can see your face.Kuan. So, like, can you imagine, like, how long that could take and especially for a franchise agreement, there are like over 200 to 100 pages. So with that background storyline, can you tell us a little bit because I think this is a lot like this more and more like starting with an MVP or a like that's main problems right now. And so Kuan can you tell us a little bit on how do you get that kind of data and how do you clean it up?
Kuan Yu Liu [00:12:07] Sure. Maybe I can share a little bit our experience how we build the cultural repository, Right, Because that's the container where we stored data, which is going to give us value and give us insights for decision-making. But that's the container. So when we started, actually I would say it's a twofold mission because we look back, you know, to what we have done right. We know, what do we have already? The contract related data, no matter the format where it could be, you know, in maybe a legacy system, we may have some, you know, documents stored in offline repositories. It may be spread in different places. Right. Look at what we have. Right. And understand those limitations. Okay. Because probably we live with the limitations and that's how the historical data are captured. And now the other parties. Okay. We look toward the future. Right. What's the objective? You know, what's the goal we want to achieve? Right. Knowing that, okay, we are in this transformation journey. We are implementing a CLM, Right? What do we want to accomplish? So these two parts are the foundation for our repository design. Because we need to make sure what we design, meet our needs, and then it's scalable and it can satisfy our future growth. But we need to make sure we cannot forget our history. Everything that we have need to be able to fit into the repository we design. And normally there is a gap we need to close. Right. But the objective, The goal. Right. In the future, the look of the repository is very important. And now we talk about, okay, what are the different gaps we need to close? Right. In a very close partnership with our business partners. In our case, you know, with Gerald is crucial because from the business side, they are the ones that are giving us the resource for us to clean up our data. Right. So we know, you know, under which circumstances we may have duplicates. Right. We may have redundant information in also in some cases we also challenge our business decisions because and just so the example of the 400 bills, right, from the systems perspective, when we are designing something, our performance is one of the aspects we really take into consideration. So even though we can have, you know, a very detailed business rules, transformation rules, but sometimes we do collaborate with the partners asking what are those rules necessary? Right. And maybe by implementing those, we may have different implications, consequences in the system. Right. So it's probably a very, you know, rich conversation, understanding the business need the rules and the systems capability. So it's like a whole mapping, you know, your historical thing, your new repository, how you align the data, how you align the documents in the end and start, you know, doing those data transformation. And of course, we develop scripts, you know, to automate those tables, data transformation. And also one thing to take into consideration and that's we talk about it is not that you implement and you are done, but you need to maintain the data and make sure your data continue to be clean, you know, through years. And so that's why when you are doing this repository design implementation, take into consideration the business rules. Right. Ideally, you should have those also implemented into the system validation. So the past mistakes of having, you know, 30 data because we didn't have the ability to control the quality. Now those rules validations are in place in your new system, so you make sure you don't run into the data integrity issue anymore. So I think it's a long journey. It's very rich, very interesting, but it's a lot of partnership, conversation and negotiation between both parties.
Pepe Toriello [00:16:41] Yeah, And I think you said a couple of things that right there, the performance, the goals, the rules that we're putting in place, there are a lot of things that need to be done as part of this groundwork to make sure that the implementation goes smoothly. And I think the first phase of that is, you know, what we would call the scoping process. So I'm kind of curious, you know, what did that look like, what in terms of internal teams were involved? And how did you make sure that the folks that were really boots on the ground for this implementation were all on the same page and that their goals aligned for that first phase of the implementation. You know, obviously set the foundation for what that your CLM is going to look like in the future.
Kuan Yu Liu [00:17:19] Yeah, definitely. So in our case, actually, it is very important for our system analysts to understand the business knowledge, the business process. Right. Because I think we talk about it is not just the implementation of a tool of a technology, but the business process is actually the foundation, right? If the business process is not solid, if the business process is not efficient, and you just try to use a tool to mimic a broken business process, it's not going to give you efficiency, right? So the first thing we do actually a lot of, you know, requirement meetings with a with Gerald who patiently explains, you know, every business goal because what we are doing is we try to achieve a business growth through these contracting process. Right. And after we have done that, of course, you know, sometimes it is just a huge project, but we need to really identify first MVP, right? So maybe the question we ask Gerald always is, okay, Gerald, what's the minimal thing we should have in the system for us to go? That means, okay, you are comfortable, we can open it for end users, right? Maybe it has limited functionality, but sufficient for us to start collecting data. Right. So I think that's that's our starting point. And then we may start prioritizing features functionalities through different phases based on the business that. So it's probably like, okay, what's the impact? You know, what are the user population we are talking about? What's the data volume, right? And based on all these different aspects, we can make a prioritization code, right? And that's how we start, you know, grouping different feature functionalities into different offices or releases. I think that's a very special phrase from Gerald. You remember we prefer progress over perfection.
Gerald Wright [00:19:22] Perfection, Yes, absolutely. That partnership is so key. Our first implementation failed largely because we didn't partner with our I.T. organization like we did with our segment Second implementation. And so that was the chief reason why we failed. We, as a legal department, we felt we could do it all without bringing in big internal I.T Organization, which is a massive organization. And so we changed our our mindset, our thinking as we started partnering with our IT organization in a different way, especially from the legal perspective. And, you know, I believe that that is one of the chief reasons why we were successful by where we're heading towards that success in our journey on CLM today is because of that partnership. And on your point about, you know, getting the business requirements and saying, okay, what are the minimum viable requirements? But she failed to say it was we would give her that. And then she would say, now we can pair that back some more. And she was right every single time, because a business is always going to ask for more from the beginning because it's a it's a new client. And we saw and when you're looking at CLM all the features or, you know, promise to a note, you'd feel like you should have those on day one, right? Like you buy a video game, you should be able to play the full game on day one, Right. Not the case for the CLM. So you need your IT partners to help address all of those issues because MVP is so important, you know, integrations with other systems in your company. All of that stuff, you know, DocuSign, E-signature, all of those things, you know, as a business person, a business process person, you're thinking that's just table stakes that should just be turned on on day one. Well, it's not. It has to be, it has to be established. It has to be set up. Not saying it's impossible, but that's a requirement that just totally made our second implementation a success.
Donovan Bell [00:21:31] And if I could just echo on top of that, there are those who aren't represented on this call as well. And that's your, you know, the, you know, vendor partner that you may work with. In some case, you may have an implementer or whatnot. You have your procurement partner that's helping you drive that. And then you also have your attorneys and business clients and whatnot. That collaboration and work also happens upfront, early and often. And so all of that is essential if you want to succeed. And so. Gerald, Kuan rightly highlighted the extreme value of having a strong business I.T. partnership going in because we're all seeking the same thing and charging towards the same goal. But it's so critical because you don't want to find out missing parts later on in the game, but you want to know upfront what are the. So hence you may reach out and get that consultancy, whether it be your choice or your goals helping to implement. So those are the things that you may not know. Here 's's industry experience that I didn't have that's helping us as we're moving into this as well. All of those pieces form together like Vol tron, if you will, and make them stronger. One stronger superhero there.
Gerald Wright [00:22:58] And don't forget, executive sponsorship was also key for us. You know, our leadership's belief and our ability to get this done, even though we had a past failure, was hugely important for us. But for that, we wouldn't be here today. So. So you absolutely need to get that executive sponsorship on day one, 100%. Yeah.
Marc Doucette [00:23:24] I mean, I think it's important, right? If you can get the entire team to buy in it, it definitely helps. And it's great to hear that the team was on the same page as for this project. And you know, one thing or one word, that or phrase that I heard a lot of right, is MVP right in my project. Managers love, love that phrase. So the same thing is, you know, crawl, walk, run. You know, you got to start somewhere. I think that's exactly right. And, you know, I'm curious to hear on your team side. Was there a dedicated project manager? Did they have experience with legal technologies in the past or what did that look like?
Gerald Wright [00:24:00] I sort of led as a program manager and I relied heavily on clients project manager skills. So she was a dedicated project manager, skilled on the Intel side. And then we relied on our implementers, project management expertise for our implementation as well.
Marc Doucette [00:24:18] That's very interesting as well. The other thing about the executives is not just that you build this, this, this project because you get their approval, but also Mike Haven told us you got to talk to these guys, to the podcast. It was also of big sponsors, too, to bring your guys to this podcast. He was a guest a couple months ago before the clock event. And I think that, you know, that's that's one of the things that I love about these types of associations, like they're they're promoting all these new, let's say, skills that as lawyers, you know, that we don't get at and at law school, you know, there's no one maybe few schools right now that they're trying to do something like that. But I think those type of skills, like legal project management and how can you become more efficient that's something that you get on the fly, like when you're starting to face all this type of different, you know, issues or how you can make the team way, way more efficient. Just change a little bit on the data, but let's go a little bit back to the basics. Right. So in talking about those processes, like how during this foundation stage did you guys already have like all those processes in place, like diagrams on how it works or you have to make them where you started with this, with this, with this journey on the CLM? I mean, with processes I mean, like, you know, contract lifecycle processes for procurement and for sales for maybe compliance. Like how, how did that work on the early beginning?
Gerald Wright [00:26:07] Well, for us, it was a lot of me talking and Kuan and team recording and our implementer recording and we found it to be efficient to just walk through our processes. Here's how it works today. Here's what we do and talk through it and have those conversations recorded. And then the teams would go off and come back and say, okay, this is what we've heard, This is the design and how we want to approach it. We didn't spend a whole lot of time diagramming creating complex visio breaking down the processes because like I said at the beginning, we're focused initially on our on their authoring functionality, our excuse me, our repository functionality as we speak, driving towards our authoring for the full CLM functionality and from request to assemble to negotiate sign files. So maybe we'll have a follow up podcast, let you know how that goes.
Marc Doucette [00:27:05] Sure. That sounds great, Gerald. And you know, I think I kind of want to go back to a little bit what we were talking about earlier as far as and this too. Right. So the process as the team continues to evolve and you get to more comfortable with what's going on inside the application. Now, of course, of course there's going to be changes that need to be made. Your processes are going to change and it's going to continue and grow and scale with the organization. Kuan maybe a question for you, but how did you handle maybe some of those change requests that were coming from Gerald and his team during the implementation process? Were there any things that Gerald maybe after you really had an understanding of what the system was capable of, A light bulb went off and you go, Oh, you know what, I actually want to do that this way instead of the way that we had originally thought about doing it.
Gerald Wright [00:27:49] I think she blocked me at work.
Kuan Yu Liu [00:27:55] So yeah, that really happens a lot. But for good reasons, right? Because we all want to evolve and it's a journey. It's a progression because probably initially we build something and then we know this, that there is a better way to do things. So I think what it is very important is we need to make sure what we have in production continue running in production without interruption, right? So keep the business running. That's one. Sometimes, you know, these enhancements or features that actually change the way people work. Definitely, we need to be very careful. And I think there are two parts, not just the implementation part, you know, from like our team making sure, okay, we have a new design, we have the new concept, we develop it, we configure it, we tested the other parties, the transition change management. From the business. That's also important, but sometimes we just forget about it. Right. If we are doing foundational changes on the process, then we need to make sure what we are proposing makes sense for end users. Because maybe we already part of this world. We feel this is a better approach. But how about our end users, is that really their voice? So I think constant demo and evolving really the real users, you know, to give us early feedback to where we plan to build is important, And once we confirm that and we are ready to roll out this new change to the process, I would say communication, you know, trainings are very crucial. And that's, you know, exactly this partnership IT has with our business unit because we help to make the system the tool ready. But the rollout, the transition and change management are, you know, actually the business play an important role because they are the ones that actually talk to the users, get user feedbacks and then we can really be connected and have these successful rollouts. So I think that's why we have been, you know, trying to do and have been giving us good results.
Pepe Toriello [00:30:13] I think that's very important, especially when you said that there is there was really a failed implementation because when that things happened, it's like people thinks like not again, right? They got to learn how to use a different software now. Now I think that's the EQ part, right? Don't know, like how can you get them excited about something because they can know about the benefits. And one follow-up question point about this is that of course, all this MVP is, let's say like phase one of the implementation, but as the product keep escalating, you know, keep scaling. I mean, of course, there are some changes that you need to do. Like, how do you handle that? Like, do you have any internal admin that is working with those changes or is it something that you do maybe 50/50 with an external consulting or any recommendations to make those things more efficient to other companies looking to implement the CLM.
Kuan Yu Liu [00:31:13] I think maybe just sure our use case right we do have a team. It's within our I.T organization so we support probably the keep the business running, you know, the K T B R, the maintenance enhancements and also you know, new features. But sometimes we have more demand than our capacity, So it comes probably negotiation with the, the different business units that have initiatives to do things with the CLM. . Sometimes depending on the priority right and the criticality of the project. If funding is possible, then we also look into working models to have like implementation, third party implementation partners to work with us. They can help us to probably get some of the backlogs going, maybe specific project specific implementation for a specific business unit. So I think we are, you know, kind of flexible, we feel we have a fixed capacity internally, but depending on the demand, we may have some type of burst capacity, you know, taking advantages of third party implementers. So I think we have been, you know, experiencing different type of implementation and I think it's giving us good results and maybe Donovan and Gerald,you would like to add to this working model we have been doing?
Donovan Bell [00:32:43] Yeah. I think the key there is being conservative in what your base capacity is and holding to that and making sure that you have a level of budget to handle some of the flex to scale as you need. I think that's been the real key behind that, which makes it a lot more palatable in how you're able to adjust. It also means that at the onset you're not over engineering, you're not taking so much time to go live that you've exhausted a ton of funds, money, effort, time and credibility. Quite frankly, you know, with your business where you're able to show them here are some wins, here's some actual working aspects and how we're leveraging the CLM in this fashion to where it again builds that credibility of I know you're able to deliver, you're able to be consistent. And so because of that, yes, I'm going to trust that if you if I'm on the docket, I'm on the docket and it's going to be addressed in a timely fashion. And that takes again, relationship inclusion in the conversation. Here's our roadmap, here's where we're going. Here are the things that we're trying to do, but also the very real family conversations, if you will, of here's what we're able to do, kind of as Gerald has been alluding to and Kuan has been confirming as well, where sometimes it's those internal conversations where we say, yep, let's go aggressive and do all this and we kind of need to slow down. Here's what we're actually able to do and make those adjustments accordingly. But having that in a transparent fashion to drive that across your business is going to be key.
Pepe Toriello [00:34:27] Now that's great. And, you know, I think my last question is, and this is for everyone is have since the implementation and you're using the application now, are the gears turning at all to say, hey, here's what we want that next phase to do. Is there any must have, you know, functionality or use cases that you're thinking about building out next?
Donovan Bell [00:34:45] All the time we've picked a solution. It's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is amazingly flexible. If you can think of it, you can pretty much do it. But that's a good thing. But the bad thing is now you're thinking of everything and you're wanting to do everything. So to Don point, we asked and we have to prioritize and something that we're constantly looking for, for improvement. And we're already getting feedback from our users about, you know, it would be great if we could do this. And I love those conversations because the answer is also every time yes. And then not a yes six months from now. Yes. As soon as I get on to unblock me and talk to me again, help me get it done. So, yes, absolutely. We have a lot of future phases in mind. As I mentioned, authoring is one of them and excited about this first time we're mentioning A.I., which is amazing for a phone call and contracts, but yet folding in the components of our CLM as well as the future of A.I. for what can be done with respect to putting contracts in place as well. That's a future phase, I'm very excited about that. I think we all are, but I'll stop there. And Gerald on anything else?
Gerald Wright [00:36:00] And I think that's a great job. And I think it's just it's a matter of finding where the greatest value lies and honing in and addressing that. That becomes really critical. And as you go through, you see all these fun things that you can do. What's going to yield the greatest value for a company? And so knowing what our being very much aligned to our top level business strategy and figuring out, okay, where is our where is our company heading, and what's more, what's paramount to Intel? Okay, well, if this is paramount to Intel, how can we be a force multiplier for that and providing that assessment and being able to then go and execute accordingly. So it's kind of taking a test and learn approach to what you're doing, but also making sure that you're able to quickly pivot and be nimble to align to where your business strategy is taking you. That highlights the point Gerald made earlier of having your executive sponsorship that's saying we support you, we're behind you. And also here are the things that we need. And so we look at that as the imperative piece and it also makes it an easy conversation because it aligns to our corporate strategy on the things that we're doing.
Kuan Yu Liu [00:37:20] Maybe one small thing, I think it was mentioned integration, right? So definitely the integration of the CLM to the rest of the world, you know, the company data is very important, but integration cannot be done in a very quick way because it is not just to establish integration. What are you going to do with your historical data? Right? Your historical data is not connected now. Your system is connected, but you cannot just leave your history disconnected. And so it's a whole lot of effort. So definitely in the horizon, we have all different data domains. We plan to establish integration and also we prioritize really what are the most critical domains. Actually, we have already established integration into areas. I think our work, our data, our department data is being refreshed constantly, but we are planning to integrate, for example, to our customer data for your data, It is not yet done, but we have those in the roadmap and of course we will keep adding more and more integrations. So we have these streamlined data flow not only within CLM but across the company.
Marc Doucette [00:38:32] Right, Right. And I think that's huge. And the more data that you can connect, the more you're going to be able to pull from that single source of truth, the deeper those reporting capabilities that are going to go. So that's that's very exciting. Guys, I want to thank you all for joining us today. This has been a fantastic conversation. So Kuan, Donovan, Gerald, thanks so much for coming on to chat with us today.
Donovan Bell [00:38:53] Thanks for having me.
Gerald Wright [00:38:54] Yeah, absolutely. It's been fun.
Kuan Yu Liu [00:38:56] Thank you.
Marc Doucette [00:38:58] Well, thank you so much. And thanks, everybody, for listening to another episode of Contract Heroes. This episode of the Contract Heroes is sponsored by Koho Consulting. Koho helps organizations of all shapes and sizes, find employment and manage their chosen CLM tool. Whether your project is buy or sell side led, Koho can help you navigate the waters of the CLM space to make sure that you're getting a product that's going to fit like a glove years to come. If you'd like to learn more about Koho, visit their website at Koho Consulting dot com.