Automating contract management at Microsoft

Icertis’s Contract Management platform is helping Microsoft to reduce the costs and administrative burden associated with managing partner and customer agreements worldwide

By Rebecca Gibson on 08 September 2016

Automating contract management at Microsoft

This article first appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of The Record.

Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft is a multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licences and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices.

Microsoft has around 90,000 employees, 650,000 partners and countless customers worldwide, and consequently manages a high volume of information exchange agreements. However, managing the contracts was a lengthy and time-consuming process for both internal and external parties, particularly because Microsoft had fragmented processes and decentralised storage across operations in 100 countries.

To make it quicker and cheaper to issue and manage contracts compliantly, Microsoft decided to implement a contract lifecycle management that could be scaled for a potential global user base of more than 200,000 people.

Turning to Icertis, Microsoft deployed the cloud-based Icertis Contract Management (ICM) platform across its sales and marketing, IT, retail, original equipment manufacturers, and worldwide licencing teams.

The ICM platform provides enterprises with an end-to-end contract management solution to manage any type of contract. Icertis built the ICM platform on the Microsoft cloud platform to leverage its platform-as-a-service infrastructure capabilities. ICM can be integrated with all leading enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management solutions in the market.

Secure, scalable, flexible and deployed to the global enterprise user base, ICM features an intuitive user interface and it allows users to automatically create, approve, store and access contracts in one platform. A smart feature prevents contracts from being duplicated, while the search-and-retrieve functionality allows users to locate an agreement quickly. DocuSign integration enables users to create e-signatures. Reports can be audited easily and users receive compliance notification alerts so contracts are managed according to legal requirements. ICM offers a mobile application.

Since implementation, ICM has helped Microsoft eliminate most of the manual steps involved in creating and managing contracts, reducing administration costs by 40% and accelerating the speed of contracting by 60%. The platform has also improved auditable contracting compliance and, most importantly, enhanced customer, partner and user satisfaction.

“As a global business executing hundreds of thousands of contracts annually, Microsoft needed a solution that was scalable, easy to use and readily customisable to our unique processes,” says Michel Gahard, associate general counsel and general manager at Microsoft. “Of all the vendors we evaluated, the Icertis product had the best architecture, the most inspired user interface, and a compelling and innovative approach to managing the contract lifecycle process. We have deployed ICM globally, including in India, with great user adoption and high satisfaction.”