How global company BISSELL enhanced transparency and efficiency to boost revenue, mitigate risk, and guard against compliance

The challenge

Being a global company with employees spread across the world, BISSELL deals with contracts from various countries. Despite its global reach, the company has a small legal team consisting of approximately eight individuals responsible for handling contracts on a global scale. This limited team must navigate a high volume of contracts with quick turnaround times.

Compounding the challenge, contracts are managed using different platforms such as Excel, Outlook, and SharePoint, leading to inconsistencies and inefficiencies in the process. This lack of streamlined contract management has resulted in costly mistakes, such as the accidental renewal of a $60,000 contract for a product that went unused.

Implementing Agiloft has really been a game changer for us, and allowed us to work faster, and smarter, and spend less time on emails, and doing administrative work—the stuff that we’re not necessarily trained to do”

– Samantha Sharbaan, Senior ITS Project Specialist at BISSELL

The solution

When BISSELL first implemented the Agiloft CLM Platform, they thought of all the stages of the contract process and where things could go off track.

“We had very strong processes, so we talked about how we would merge Agiloft with our process,” said Heather Drouin, Commercial Counsel at BISSELL. “So we put up some guardrails. Guardrails help from transitions that were really important. So we looked at when a contract is requested. We looked at training first. We looked at when it’s requested reviews and negotiations, signing, and all the way to the repository, and each step we were intentional with the guardrails that we put up.”

So when BISSELL gave all their employees from around the world access to their new Agiloft CLM Platform, they implemented “guardrails” to ensure only the right people have access to the right information. BISSELL implemented restrictions and limitations on their user’s accounts by creating three different roles: the alternative business user, the approvers, and the legal team.

“Agiloft has been really helpful for me since we’ve implemented it, in allowing me to be able to really get contracts from around the globe, whether it’s in China, or Dubai, anywhere that we have.”

– Samantha Sharbaan, Senior ITS Project Specialist at BISSELL

BISSELL also sought to establish best practices to protect the beginning of the contracting process where the most things can go wrong: the contract request. As a result, BISSELL ditched their previous method of fielding contract requests via email and ensured that all their contracts be requested via Agiloft, ensuring a 100% adoption rate.

The impact

BISSELL implemented another crucial safeguard by introducing “Contract Types” within their contract request form. This feature prompts users to provide specific information based on the type of contract requested, allowing for a tailored risk analysis. Contracts deemed low risk are expedited through the approval process, resulting in significantly reduced legal review turnaround times, sometimes as short as two days.

“This is where we’re really looking out for the risks, before we even start the negotiations, and we’re aware of these things, but there are certain tools within Agiloft that even help us because as a legal team, we need guardrails sometimes, too,” said Drouin. “We handle a high volume of contracts, and we have a very quick turnaround, so we need our own guardrails to keep us on track and balance speed and risk.”

Additionally, BISSELL fully utilized Agiloft’s Data-first Agreement Platform, expanding their contract repository beyond contracts alone. It now houses comprehensive records, including emails, approval notes, general remarks, and status updates. This wealth of information includes valuable insights from past negotiations, facilitating informed decision-making during renewals or renegotiations.

Automated reminders were also integrated into the system, streamlining the approval process and alerting the legal team to upcoming renewals or expirations. Furthermore, BISSELL leverages Agiloft’s reporting and dashboard features to capture and visualize contract data effectively.

To further drive efficiency in their contract workflows, they utilize Agiloft CLM to generate status time reports, tracking the duration of contracts from initial request to signature. This data informs the team’s understanding of contract turnaround times, enabling them to optimize processes accordingly.

Challenges

Large volumes of contracts to process with quick turnaround

Contracts managed across different platforms by team spread across the globe

Inefficient contract request and approval workflows

No alerts for renewals or expiration

Benefits

Streamlined approval workflow

Single repository accessible by global team

Automated reminders for contract renewals or expiration

Status time report indicating how long the contracting process takes, from request to signature

Reporting and dashboard capabilities to capture and visualize data stored in contracts

Reduced turnaround time to as low as two days

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