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Better manage vendor terms and client commitments

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Law firms are constantly struggling to keep up with the growing volume and complexity of client commitments. To stay ahead of the competition, firms must develop a strategy to properly manage these commitments and ensure they don’t conflict with vendor terms.

“Noncompliance could impact [your] client relationship [and] whether [you’re] going to get repeat business,” explained John Sharkey, Vice President and Practice Group Leader for Risk and Compliance at Intapp.

During the Intapp Terms webinar “A Holistic Approach to Managing Client and Vendor Commitments,” Sharkey spoke about how Intapp clients have traditionally used Intapp Terms as a central repository to manage all client commitments. After a few clients reported that they also wanted to leverage Intapp Terms to manage vendor contracts, the Intapp team began updating the software to include new vendor terms features and capabilities, providing users with the visibility they need to ensure compliance and client satisfaction.

“We think [our vendor terms functionality] really adds tremendous value to your ability to deliver on your client commitments … which ultimately is what Intapp Terms is about,” said Sharkey.

Intapp Terms, part of the Intapp Risk & Compliance suite, provides an extra layer that lets users view vendor documents and client commitments documents together in one place. “[With Intapp Terms], you can ensure that there’s nothing in a vendor agreement that is going to prevent you from meeting a client commitment,” explained Sharkey.

“A primary goal of ours is to ensure that Intapp Terms users have a holistic understanding of whether they can deliver successfully on their client commitments or not, and we know that having visibility into vendor terms of the critical part of that,” said Martin Armstrong, Senior Product Manager at Intapp.

Armstrong added: “You’ll also benefit from our dedicated API model that looks specifically at vendor term templates and — based on the data in your vendor contracts — [can] automatically suggest more precisely targeted language that’s commonly found in those sorts of vendor documents.”

Intapp Terms also leverages AI to help firms categorize all their client commitments, making it easier for professionals to quickly find the information they need. “You don’t have to go combing through a 200-page document when you want to find one specific term,” said Sharkey.

As part of our new vendor terms functionality in Intapp Terms, firms can leverage 17 out-of-the-box templates and streamline vendor management, including:

  • Uploading signed vendor contracts
  • Ensuring users see only documents and terms relevant to their work
  • Curating summaries of key contracts information
  • Analyzing changing trends in vendor terms that could impact client commitments

“The out-of-the-box options are designed to help firms handle up to 80% or 90% of the most common vendor terms that you see in agreements right away, with no additional configuration,” said Armstrong. “Of course, as with all our capabilities in Intapp Terms, you can always customize on top of those if you need to.”

Terry Sexton, Director of Risk Management and Client Intake Services at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, discussed how his firm is in the process of implementing the Intapp Terms vendor management functionality.

“We were already impressed with the capability of the Intapp Terms product,” Sexton explained. “I was glad to hear that Intapp had taken a separate track with vendors. [Intapp Terms] had some good out-of-the-box document and term templates, and I found those to be a good start for our review of vendor contracts.”

Sexton is confident that Intapp Terms and the new vendor terms capabilities will help his firm better manage client commitments and ensure compliance.

“[Intapp Terms] will give us better visibility,” Sexton said. “With email, it’s hard to track where things are. … [Intapp Terms will] better track what’s pending, what’s been approved, and what existing vendor terms are in place.”

Schedule a demo of Intapp Terms, and watch the full Intapp Terms webinar recording.

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