Concord at the TechGC National Summit 2018
Concord joined the TechGC National Summit that took place at the New York Stock Exchange this year to gather and learn alongside GCs across the country. With business moving faster and insights needed quicker, GCs are becoming more and more valuable to executives by providing the business foresight necessary to have a competitive edge. From technology to teams, here are some of the things GCs were talking about at the event.
1. Forming a partnership between Legal and Sales/Procurement is critical.
Legal is not always seen as a strategic partner, and sometimes will spend the majority of their time in contract review and management. This causes a push for more headcount to help with these challenges, but organizations often fail to invest in a business process to can help scale their time. Successful teams are partnering with Sales and Procurement to get buy-in on overhauling their current outdated business process. Without buy-in from other teams to truly transform business processes end-to-end, the cycle of asking for headcount and putting band-aids on contract processes continues.
2. Technology should help scale the team and optimize time.
Great technology is out there to help scale the team that is already in place and maximize their time. Getting the leaders of a company to accept that the business process for contracts must change is the first step, then finding the right solution that fits for an organization in every way will help kick off the process.
3. Leverage the network to solve common problems.
A recurring message among GCs at the event was that their main problems, frustrations, and processes are something others have typically solved already. Reaching out for tips and referrals on how others are actually using tools transformed how leaders thought about technology and allowed them to save time while finding the best solutions. When going through the search process, specificity with vendors about how documents and processes are handled helps provide a better idea of how the technology will look in each individual organization.
In addition to strategic partnerships, technology, and networks, GCs talked about the large impacts they saw after they made these changes in an organization. The ability to increase compliance allows for simple audits and contract reviews, speeding up processes to free up time elsewhere. The Legal team is able to have more visibility across the organization that gives them insights other business leaders want. Working more effectively with other teams opens up communication and builds trust that is currently lacking in many companies.
The strongest themes from the event were the benefits of building a strategic partnership with both Sales and Procurement, as well as leveraging technology to scale teams and save time. With these two points in mind, Legal teams can enhance processes in their organization to ensure all teams are working faster, smarter, and more effectively through contracts.
