The COVID-19 pandemic has completely transformed how businesses carry out their day-to-day tasks, writes Dinesh Sharma, as he explains how digital transformation in corporate firms can support the work culture and team collaboration during this period

The whole world celebrated 2020 with a bang and everyone had exciting plans for their personal and professional endeavour. Came March 2020, Covid-19 changed life for everyone starting with a sudden complete lockdown forcing everyone stay at home but ensuring that they work from home and deliver the best despite pandemic and challenges of operating from home.

While every business had a “so called” Business Continuity or Disaster Recovery plan in place but Covid-19 lockdown was the father of all. A situation never happened, never thought about in 100 years. Everyone was sitting at home trying to figure out how to maintain sanity of working while at home connecting with colleagues, vendors, suppliers, employees, manager etc.

What is digitisation In the current pandemic scenario, it means every business process of an organisation requires immediate conversion to digital mode to stay in business. Say for example, if banking transaction were done through visiting banks, in Covid-19 situation banking transactions needs to be done using net-banking. Or if the business was preparing invoices physically and sending it by courier to clients, during covid lockdown all invoices required to be prepared using digital solution, digital signature and sending it through emails. Take another example, if business meetings with clients, vendors, internal team which were happening physically, come pandemic, physical meetings are no more an option, so use of digital meeting options is only way out.

How to go about digitisation That’s an interesting topic. Struggling with lockdown, the CEO gives target to all business heads and CIO to digitise everything. That can be really disastrous. I would also like to caution here that digitisation has to be done in very systematic and gradual way. It is just not possible to digitise everything by approving a financial budget and giving mandate to all functions. Many companies burn their fingers losing lot of money, efforts and drive due to failed digitisation attempts. One must start with non-critical processes, function and implementation also to be done only for one or two division to start with instead of going across. Companies also make the mistake of building software in-house. Now, that’s a terrible mistake. Now-a-days there are many good Enterprise Product SaaS companies having products very much in line of specific business need which comes at almost at 5% of cost of building in-house. In addition, Enterprise Product companies are very focussed and come with best practices, innovative solutions, state-of-art technology, seamless product support and feature upgrades which is not possible for in building in-house or making tailor made product. It’s important to be very careful while selecting technology partner so one can do a reference check from existing client and ensure security certification (like ISO). It definitely helps in building trust.

While it is always good to subscribe to readily available SaaS solutions in the market, however, just to test the waters, there are free tools available for basic digital solutions which allow users to get a feel of the solution and whether it would really solve the problem. Many a times, a lot of businesses purchase a technology solution or build solutions, however, they end up not using the solution either due to the choice of wrong partner, not been able to spend enough time in scoping the technology solution or clear intent issue which means resistance to change.

Why technology fails Some businesses use technology firms to build customised solutions like Invoicing Solution, CRM Solutions, Contract Management Solution which comes with its own perils like you end up spending 20 times money and ultimately realising the product which got build has taken into consideration an idealistic scenario with advance level of digitisation. Life does not really move that way. It is critical that a strategic initiative group should be formed for digitisation purposes with clear agenda, roadmap and responsibilities fixed. At times it happens that Strategy and Innovation along with CIO decides on one technology for a business function which do not take into account real life situation resulting in complete waste of money spent.

Managing stakeholders internally Digitisation & Technology deployment in business can not be done by one person. Taking all stakeholders on-board and ensuring the product meets expectation makes a lot of difference. In any business, normally CIO, CFO, Business Head and Strategy & Innovation Head are relevant stakeholders for a high level decision making process. Once the business decides to go for technology solution, the real stakeholders are business users, technology team to ensure that the product is in line with business expectation and it gets installed within the organisation without any major change management. The whole process has to be coordinated and require acceptance from all stakeholder.
Another important thing is digitisation should also be done based on level of readiness. Say for example, if you plan for digitisation of invoicing function, it’s ideal and simple to remove print, sign and despatch steps. So you can make invoice as per normal process, use any of digital signing functionality using Digital Signature (Dongle) or Aadhar Sign feature to sign and email the Invoice from your official email ID. This is very basic process but will help the organisation reduce at least five days of time and cost of despatch and invoice printing to zero and improve collection time.resistance to change.

Global trends Globally, digitisation and using technology solution has been a way of life. For example, while in India many businesses still do not use technology for invoicing, contract management, CRM and business operations work-flow, in countries like US, UK, Europe and Australia, the level of digitisation has been very high. The reason for this is high cost labour, availability of skilled labour, value for technology and long term business vision. Globally, businesses go for ready SaaS products for CRM, Contract Management Software, HRM Software and ERP unless the business is fairly big and has complex processes, which require specialised technology solution. Even for those companies, they first start with basic level of technology solution and gradually move to moderate and advance level automation.

Covid pandemic accelerated the digital transformation journey The COVID-19 pandemic has completely transformed how businesses carry out their day-to-day tasks. Every aspect of business is getting digitised and digital channels have become the sole media of communication for some. Every business was seemingly forced to accelerate itself as the digital strategy was still a part of the corporate world that had the potential to become a primary in the future. Businesses that were already thriving seemed to have seamlessly converted their channels of communication online after a point of time, yet most businesses are still struggling to keep up with the pace. Digital workplace has become the new normal.

This digital transformation in the coronial era caused businesses in almost all industries to leap over several hurdles in a short time. It demanded business owners familiarise themselves with the digital world as quickly as possible and forced them and their employees to learn new skills on an alien medium. This on-going process has led to several changes in the work culture and team collaboration of businesses.

Covid pandemic accelerated the digital transformation journey It is important for businesses to make sure that the working of the business can continue smoothly. So certain ready solution which are useful for key business function and easy to deploy can work really wonders. For example, board meeting management software having video-conference facility in-built, provide several benefits to the company and help it to flawlessly communicating amongst one another. Using these services could prove useful to companies in these uncertain times and can also allow people to support other upcoming businesses. Same solution can be used to conduct senior management meeting or collaborative meeting with stakeholders from multiple businesses across geographies. These solutions can be customised according to the company’s specific needs, which can further improve the efficiency of the business.

Similarly, concerning the issue of physical documents and digital documents, digitising the paperwork is unavoidable. Replacing physical documents has been an issue for a while now, however, this is the perfect time for companies to shift to electronic documents. Using digital documents also help reduce the spread of covid and ensure a safer working environment.

To improve efficiency in this aspect as well, companies can use solutions such as Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) as they can be customised to fit the business and can greatly improve the working of the business by alerting the business for any risks in the contract. A CLM software allows an organisation to manage all its contracts on cloud and easily communicate with all its stakeholders in one place. Such software are not only necessary in this coronial era, but can improve productivity and profitability of a business.

Digitisation of businesses has significant positive outcomes for businesses. Digital businesses empower employees through transparency, learning opportunities, and open communication. If the communication channels are well organised and are familiarised with the workforce, it can allow everyone involved in the company to be informed about the decision with just one click.

Unlike the usage of emails as we did pre-corona, a communication channel allow information to be without any disruption. Employees can be anywhere in terms of location but they can collaborate and discuss using meeting tools like Zoom, Microsoft Team or Google Meet. The concept of office is slowly fading away. The cost elements have changed and spending is more into digital assets like software solution for business function, cloud storage, cyber security, data protection insurance cost is being replaced for earlier cost elements such as infrastructure costs, rental, office maintenance cost, travel cost etc.

Usage of the previously mentioned services involving board meeting management can also ensure that all members are kept up to date with the workings of the business. Moreover, to replace the informal interactions that took place in the workplace, workers can virtually talk in the middle of meetings to discuss their achievements and how they have been adjusting to the world after the pandemic. Since they are not in the physical workplace, they can also take breaks to interact with their family, which could ease their mental stress in between meetings.

The whole concept of digitisation has to be imbibed into the DNA of the organisation and should be embraced across. If senior management does not get accustomed to digital platforms and expects the whole organisation to adopt digital platforms to perform office work, it will be highly inefficient and ineffective. If businesses are successfully able to implement these changes and utilise this digital transformation, it can help them improve team collaboration and support the work culture.

The writer is CEO & Founder, Volody


Read more at:
https://www.dailypioneer.com/2020/sunday-edition/digital-be-the-way-forward.html

As Blockchain technology based on incorruptible ledger principle, it has tremendous potential to change contract management process big time.

Technology, automation & digitization have been touching every aspect of business process. Be it customer engagement, product marketing, business operation transformation, HR processes, payroll, accounting, invoicing or legal contracts. CIOs across companies have top KRA to digitize each and every part of business.

Special attention is being given to all elements of a business transaction to ensure that transactions cycle move smoothly. A legal contract, which is essential for every commerce, however was one of the late entrants in digitization journey. The reason being since legal contract signing, execution and storage was done at the backdrop hence never got attention of top management including Business Heads, CIOs and CFOs.

In addition there were certain typical complexities in the process of agreement drafting, negotiating requiring usage of Microsoft word, emails and broken approval processes across organizations & verticals.

Covid 19 changed life for every business in Mar 2020 making them to shut offices for months still to run business, show business growth, and profitability and manage expenses in such torrential times. As they say “Necessity is mother of invention”, covid19 made CIOs, General Counsels and CFOs running for Contract Management Solutions, to enable legal contract management process completely digital.

While Contract Management Solutions were available in market for many years, however, the acceptance and penetration level was quite low for various budgetary and prioritization.

Contract Management process using technology has really evolved in last few years and gone are the days when every contract finalisation was requiring multiple meetings, emails, manual approvals, paper print-outs being sent to every signatory for physical signing, storage, retrieval and managing renewals & termination of each and every contract.

Today there are highly sophisticated Contract Management Solutions available with features like creating legal contract using ready templates, seamless integration with Office365 for document review & edits, flexible work-flows, communication platform, electronic signing using government authorised e-sign technology, managing renewals, pricing, obligations and digital storage.

Latest trends in Contract Management Solutions also includes machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence features for giving alert for risky clauses, Chabot to build contract using bots as part of automated on-boarding of customers and smart clause library, slice& dice dashboards for early alerts, management information and risk management, which makes the case to have Contract Management Solution as must for efficient running of Legal Department.

You really don’t need to execute contracts in paper form, store it in a secured cupboard or using a traditional scanner to keep one scan copy. All that has become completely redundant. All you need a smart Contract Management Solution which make life easier for Sales, Procurement, Legal, IT and Finance team in terms of co-ordination working as team, faster preparation of contract, review of contract by all stakeholders, approval and signing. All that on a single platform!

Smart API integrations with various CRM platform, ERPs, Procurement Solution & Office System also makes Contract Management Solution as very integral part of core business and reduce data feeding requirement to almost nothing. A good Contract Management Solution makes process efficient, digital and reduces cost of contract preparation by almost 40% and improves time to revenue by few weeks.

As Blockchain technology based on incorruptible ledger principle, is evolving and being curiously explored by BFSI, logistic, supply chain, Healthcare, Pharma, Retail industry CIOs, it has the tremendous potential to change contract management process big time.

The writer is CEO & Founder, Volody


Read more at:
https://cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/strategy-and-management/how-technology-is-transforming-the-contract-management-process/78159233

Legal tech startup Volody met with many challenges of awareness and traditional mindset while trying to streamline and digitise corporate legal processes. Can the Covid-19 tailwind prove to be a turning point?

Digitisation of legal and compliance functions, contends Dinesh Sharma, has historically been the last thing on the minds of companies. Having worked with corporates such Deutsche Bank, Crisil, Fidelity Information Systems, and Ingenico for over two decades, Sharma knew the pain points of legal and compliance departments.

Sharma turned first-generation entrepreneur in May 2015 when he set up the legal tech startup Volody. Back then, his top challenges included the lack of awareness about the need to digitise and acceptance about moving to the cloud. The traditional mindset of legal professionals was also a constraint. Singular focus on doing work manually, budget constraints and lack of interest in digitising processes hindered widespread adoption of technology. Covid-19, he underlines, has turned out to be an inflection point for businesses. “The pandemic has made everyone realise that one can’t run legal segment of business without technology,” he says in an interview with Forbes India. Excerpts:

What is digitisationQ. The legal sector was ripe for disruption in terms of digitisation… No one really thought that legal agreements are the core for every business and that delayed digitisation of the legal contract management can disturb the whole process. Though senior management across organisations were increasingly focussing on governance, risk and compliance (GRC), without technology there is no way you can have assurance that GRC are of the highest standard in the legal segment. Just imagine, you have thousands of legal contracts signed and no idea of the content, pricing, obligations, liability and jurisdiction you have signed for. The problem was huge.

Q. What were the initial challenges faced by Volody? The biggest challenge was to have a product with a right market fit. I come from a corporate background of over 20 years. So I had good idea about the pain points and the gaps. Having a non-tech background and starting a tech venture was also quite challenging. It took me a bit of time to conceptualise products, hire technology teams and put the infrastructure together. We built our first product in eight months, and then went ahead with customer meetings for product demo. It took us almost 75 customer meetings to figure out that our product didn’t have a perfect fit and required changes.

Another big challenge was reluctance of the companies to accept cloud hosting. Legal and compliance functions are very important to every organisation as it holds the key information in terms of their businesses, costs and compliance standards. So SaaS on cloud was a big no. But we didn’t give up. For the first three years, our revenue hovered below Rs 1 crore every year. Last year, business picked up and we posted Rs 1.7 crore, and for March ended fiscal 2019-20, we have almost doubled to Rs 3.2 crore.

Q. And how has been the uptick post lockdown? Interestingly, it has done extremely well. Digitisation of legal and compliance function has the become top agenda for CFOs and CIOs in a bid to stay ahead of the curve and ensure smooth running of the business. Companies have started thinking about digital solutions for contract management, compliance management and conducting board meeting. It’s a welcome change.

Q. A full transition to remote work is another important change. Can Software-as-a-service (Saas) companies make most of the tailwind? SaaS companies have to really remain innovative to ensure that they respond to every situation. While the buzz around work from home has become loud now, hot desking was there for almost a decade. Now with social distancing becoming an essential part of life for safety reasons, it became quite imperative that all businesses look for technology solutions to remain on top and ensure business continuity. As we enable work from home, businesses definitely need digital solutions for managing legal contract management, conducting business meetings, and managing compliances. The key here is that every SaaS solution should be able to talk to other SaaS or any other technology product within the organisation and ensure there is no missing link. I can confidently say that next year will belong to SaaS companies.

The writer is CEO & Founder, Volody


Read more at:
https://www.forbesindia.com/article/special/pandemic-has-sped-up-digitisation-of-legal-sector-dinesh-sharma/62371/1

New Delhi [India], Aug 13 (ANI/NewsVoir): Volody, a leading on-cloud enterprise software product company, has recently introduced a video conferencing feature on its Board Meeting app.

The brand is known to provide a bouquet of products best suited for legal and compliance functions and is seen paying heed to the recent COVID pandemic as it is not possible to meet in-person to conduct Board meetings.

Volody understands the communication gap that's hindering the growth of an enterprise as social distancing has reduced personal interaction among board members for Board meetings. This has inspired the company to introduce the new feature, enabling the board members to stay connected and have virtual conferences, discussing elaborately the company performance, internal issues, social challenges and a strategic road map for the future growth.

The video conferencing feature intends to aid the businesses and help the board members to carry on growth agenda of the business just by click of button.

Volody, over time, has observed that the board meetings require extensive paperwork that needs to be read, analyzed and deliberated and the traditional process of circulation of bulky agenda documents, meeting discussion papers is not convenient, in-secure and full of logistic nightmare, especially in the current pandemic.

The conventional approach to handle the document is to either send the physical book by hand, courier or send the document through emails - which, due to the current outbreak, is becoming impossible.

This is where the Volody Board Meeting app steps in; it's a secure solution to communicate with board members and the business leaders can easily access documents digitally, make comments, notes, cast vote and communicate with companies virtually.

The Volody Board Meeting app, when incorporated with the new feature, ensures a safe and smooth conduct of board meeting including video conference ensure secure documents transmission digitally and allowing the members to have all their in-person options on the virtual platform without missing out on anything.

Understanding the gravity of the present scenario, the companies are adapting to new approaches and adopting the latest technology to digitise their approach to survive the storm and keep their boat afloat.

The crisis is eventually turning into an opportunity for businesses as they adopt virtual solution as their new normal and make senior board members not just tech-enabled but also connected and in-sync to make the difficult decisions without any hindrance or obstacle.

"We are very proud that Volody Board Meeting Software comes with in-built feature of video-conference collaborating with leading players. I am confident that board members will have lot of ease in attending and participating in board meetings to discuss business operations and deliberate on strategic decisions virtually," said Dinesh Sharma, Founder and CEO, Volody, while commenting on the launch of the new feature.

The writer is CEO & Founder, Volody


Read more at:
https://www.business-standard.com/content/press-releases-ani/volody-launches-video-conferencing-feature-to-digitally-empower-the-businesses-during-covid-120081301145_1.html

Even as Indian businesses start bringing parts of their operations online and digitise their ways, there’s a long way to go to catch up with tech-mature markets. For instance, India has only 0.1% penetration when it comes to contract lifecycle management (CLM) software usage, whereas the US market has about 53% penetration.

Even so, the US figure is considered to be low, particularly compared to other enterprise tools and applications. And even in this market, it’s largely the large corporates that are adopting CLM and other legal tech solutions, according to Volody founder Dinesh Sharma.

Now, with uncertainties caused due to Covid-19, and remote working in place, enterprises are realising the importance of legaltech platforms, as the majority of the physical legal documents and contracts are stuck at office locations.

Mumbai-based Volody is working towards automating the legal process for businesses across various departments. From drafting legal agreements to negotiations, approvals, signing and managing data, it also provides compliance management-related solutions.

Furthermore, the founder said that in the last four months, the company has witnessed an increase in enquiries from prominent players including Reliance, Hindustan Unilever, and Mahindra Group among others, and not just small businesses looking to digitise and automate legal processes.

Besides contract management solutions, Volody currently has developed new solutions for enterprises, which includes board meeting, insider trading compliance management, litigation management, secretarial automation among others. For instance, its board meeting software automatically records and documents minute-to-minute updates of the discussions, agenda, stores data securely, voting polls, report action, attendance management and more. Insider trading compliance tool, on the other hand, helps company securities and compliance officers to monitor, follow and track all the compliances related to insider trading.

Founded in May 2015, Volody is a brainchild of Sharma, a non-techie and an industry veteran with over two decades of experience in finance, accounting, legal and compliance functions and has handled global acquisitions, cross-border loan syndication and mergers. Prior to this, he has worked in senior leadership roles at CRISIL, Techprocess Solutions, and Hypro Real Estate Bank, Deutsche Bank among others.

Covid-19 And A Paperless BusinessBesides social distancing and remote working, one of the things that people are worried about today is touching a piece of paper, and there isn’t a technology that can disinfectant hundreds and thousands of paper while singing a contract, and the only way to eliminate this fear is to leverage digital software and tools and automate workflow, shared Sharma.

Further, he said that a majority of corporates have about tens and thousands of paper contracts, and it becomes difficult to make sense of the information. Volody said that it has a unique feature where the user can upload the documents online, and its machine learning algorithm built on PHP-ML will churn 80-90% of unstructured data into structured data so that businesses can make informed decisions. “This is where we are bringing innovation, process automation and new solutions,” he added.

Volody’s automated contract lifecycle management system solution includes features for governance of documents, onboarding offline contracts, obligation management, risky clause detection and risk management among others.

Further, a chatbot-like virtual wizard assists individuals and teams in building legal agreements and contracts on the go. The contract lifecycle management application is also available on Apple App Store for convenient use. The company currently follows a subscription, per-user model for team size lesser than 10 employees, and above that follows an enterprise model, where it charges on a per team or department basis.

Volody claims to guarantee seven-day implementation time for enterprises, right from building a personalised platform for agreement templates, clause library, approval flows, user access rights, digital signing and management of executed contracts. It also uses machine learning-based algorithms for onboarding of legacy contracts, API integration for third-party enterprise tools, cloud, big data platforms and document management.

In terms of the target audience, Volody caters to the need of general counsels, compliance officers and CEO offices at large enterprises, startups and corporations. Its clients include SIDBI, Wellness Forever, 91Springboard, Cipla, Centrum, Mannapuram, Embassy Group, Dr Reddy’s. L’OREAL, Nykaa, Flexi Loans. Overall, the company claims to have about 65 clients currently using its CLM software.

Optimistic about the market post-Covid-19, Sharma said that Volody is on track to add ten new clients to its portfolio by December 2020, with expansion into the US, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Japan, and other Southeast Asia regions in next two years. In March 2019, the company claimed to have seen revenues double from the previous year.

SaaS Market ExplodesSharing plans to acquire new clients, Sharma said that the company is aggressively marketing on Google ads, email campaigns to boost digital reach. “In addition to this, we have also started partnering with players who are selling complementary products like procurement software and CRM software.”

According to a MarketsAndMarkets report, the global contract management software market is expected to touch $2.9 Bn by 2024, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 13.5%, from $1.5 Bn in 2019. The growth is said to be fueled by the demand for efficient contract management tools that let businesses manage the ever-rising contract volumes across the globe.

Supporting the digital transformation, several enterprise tech companies are burgeoning in the CLM landscape, where both native and global enterprise tech players like Volody, RevvSales, Newgen Software Technologies, Icertis, Ultria, Sirion Labs, Optimus BT, Adlib, SpringCM, Symfact, Apttus and Zycus among others, are offering cutting-edge technology solutions to digitise contract management system.

As for the edge over the competition, Sharma said that Volody’s integrated do-it-yourself (DIY) features makes contract lifecycle management systems usable as per business needs so it can be customised according to scale.

The writer is CEO & Founder, Volody


Read more at:
https://inc42.com/startups/volody-aims-to-make-legal-compliance-paperless-in-the-post-covid-world/

Blockchain has tremendous potential to change the technology framework for organisations managing their business applications. Here’s how it can revolutionise how we conduct business.

Blockchain, the incorruptible ledger, has the tremendous potential to change technology framework for organisations managing their business applications handling business transactions, contracts, supply chain, inventory, remittances, money transfer, etc.

Before talking through the advantages of blockchain technology for Smart Contract Management, it is also equally crucial to talk about misunderstood facts about blockchain. In plain English, Blockchain is an electronic database, which maintains information, records, and data in a structured way, and allows various stakeholders to access and share their relevant confidential data most securely.

As you go deep in understanding the technology infrastructure, setup, and the multiple layers and processes, you will be overwhelmed to know that the advantages of Blockchain technology are huge and it is poised to completely revolutionise the way we conduct business.

Blockchain smart contractsA smart contract is a self-enforceable legal contract written in computer language managed through Blockchain technology of distributed ledger. The computer code contains a pre-defined and agreed rules under which all the counter-parties of that smart contract agree to transact with each other.

The enforcement, delivery, payment and performance of the contracts are done when the predefined rules are met.

Blockchain smart contracts have the potential to benefit all industries, including banking, insurance, manufacturing, retail, real estate, and services, etc.

Transactions like settlement of securities can happen in a fraction of time as compared to days and weeks in a normal contract format. Manufacturers and distributors can get instant updates and instant transaction settlements for the complete supply chain, which can help inventory management, raw material planning, movement of goods, production planning and growing sales.

Businesses also can manage commercial contracts smartly and swiftly to ensure there is no heartburn with vendors, suppliers and internal audit and compliances.

Building scalable smart contract management solutionsFor every business transaction, every party to the contract engages and put in extensive efforts in finalising legal contracts and managing them over the contract lifetime. This process remains largely the same for every commercial contract.

To make it Blockchain-enabled, the process involves all stakeholders, steps and revisions, and enable itself to Blockchain for complete transparency, ease of enforcement, etc.

Basically, using the distributed ledger concept — where all relevant stakeholders have access to their relevant data and information — all parties to a transaction will share the same view of data and information that has been agreed and time-stamped as it is added to the ledger.

What to do with legacy contracts Blockchain-enabled smart contracts will take existing contracts (paper or digital form) and upload them on a Blockchain database accessible to all relevant stakeholders for respective contracts to allow all stakeholders based on legal access rights to securely view contracts, revise and accept changes, take action, make payments, etc. on a distributed ledger.

As the subject speak, its truly an incorruptible digital ledger that is programmed to record every event and transaction with complete transparency with all stakeholders. All stakeholders get email, notification, and alert for every action and update the blockchain shared ledger to everyone to see the latest status.

The process makes it completely legal and the documents are definitive contracts, stored electronically in one location accessible by only the parties with access, and with recorded versions and activity.

Highest levels of security Leading smart contracts platform uses the highest levels of security and multiple layers of encryptions, enabling restricted data access. While they allow uninterrupted access, it’s absolutely based on rule-based access rights.

The solution provides access to every party to contract with access to executed contract along with various versions with tamper-proof framework.

Partner with domain experts Tech-enabled businesses looking to transform the process of contract drafting, execution, and management look for the right partner with domain expertise. Blockchain has tremendous potential and has shown big success for large enterprises globally.

In the journey of digitisation of contract management moving from Document Management Software to Contract Management Software, the time has come to build the most trustworthy, scalable, secured, and transparent platform on Blockchain to enhance trust and transparency with all stakeholders.

As global tech giants and business houses looking to Blockchain to re-invent their technology infrastructure, it’s about time even CFOs, CIOs, and General Counsels remain agile and business enablers to contribute to the bottom-line.

The writer is CEO & Founder, Volody


Read more at:
https://yourstory.com/2020/06/blockchain-technology-revolutionise-smart-contracts-business

New Delhi [India], July 9 (ANI/NewsVoir): Volody, a prominent on-cloud enterprise software product company recently launched a new Chatbot feature in Contract Lifestyle Management System.

The brand serves to be one of its kind as it introduces chatbot to aid people in the industry in preparing the legal documents.Volody understood the hassle of having a human employee to deal with the simple legal agreements in a company, which were 90 per cent of the time standardised agreements.

Thus, the brand created a chatbot to save time and soar the productivity levels of the organisation as they could deploy the human workforce for other significant tasks and roles.

Volody is an on-cloud company, which has been known to provide a bouquet of products best suited for legal and compliance functions. Delving into the layers of concerns faced by the legal firms, the brand witnessed that most of the legal contracts in an organisation required basic information about parties, commercial, tenor and scope; therefore debuting chatbot, the latest advancement and the need of the hour in the legal industry.

This new niche technology will enable businesses like FMCG, Banks, Insurance and the NBFC sector to prepare legal agreements and contracts digitally while simultaneously empowering the industry as it smoothens the operations and functions.

Understanding the current scenario and the changing needs of the day, it has not only become imperative for the businesses to sustain themselves but to remain competitive and cost-efficient. The companies are advised to find ways to rationalize costs, scale up their efficiency along with eventually increasing their business and profits to create new opportunities amidst the pandemic.

This is where the newly launched feature steps in. The all-new chatbot by Volody will focus on augmenting the overall productivity of legal functions across organisation along with helping the businesses in cost-cuttings and being more efficient.

"We are very proud that Volody is the first company, which has launched a chatbot for legal agreements preparation. Volody is committed to giving the world-class product to businesses to digitize their businesses especially, legal agreement preparations and chatbot feature comes as very much handy and generates immense efficiencies," said Dinesh Sharma, Founder & CEO, Volody, while commenting on the launch of the new feature.

The writer is CEO & Founder, Volody


Read more at:
https://www.business-standard.com/content/press-releases-ani/volody-launches-the-chatbot-feature-to-scale-up-business-productivity-120070900903_1.html

With work from home becoming the new normal, companies are evaluating candidates on the basis of their ability to work independently without supervision, critical thinking, focus and discipline

Since March, Prakash Munavalli has hired 51 people for Manthan, a Bengaluru-based cloud analytics company where he works as an associate vice-president (human resources)—all virtually. One of the main criteria for selection was the candidate’s ability to work from home, with distant teams.

In today’s uncertain world, it’s essential to screen candidates for their remote working skills, believes Munavalli. “To make it as a home-based worker, you need to be able to be independent as you don’t have the luxury of co-workers sitting next to you," he says. Munavalli screened candidates for their communication skills, emotional quotient, critical thinking, self-motivation and the ability to work at home without distractions.

Such requirements are a result of an uncertain future about office and workspaces. Those larger-than-life work campuses, which employed thousands of workers in a single company, are a thing of the past. With the virus showing no signs of slowing down, companies are now seriously considering making work from home permanent.

This shift has changed the hiring process as well, says Unmesh Pawar, partner, KPMG India. “For decades, companies have been hiring the most qualified candidates who happened to be available in a specific location and could come to a specific office. But now, this is all redundant. Organizations now have access to the brightest and the best available anywhere," he says. It has also opened doors for new talent pools like people who have family commitments and cannot come to office, or retired people.

This situation has also put skills like trust and communication to the forefront, adds Pawar. “Attributes like empathy, relearning collaboration, managing hybrid schedules and staying connected to your people has become important," he says.

Keeping this demand in mind, Sunstone Eduversity, an edtech startup, has started a four-week certification programme, Work from Home for a Millennial Manager. The idea behind the course, says Sunstone Eduversity’s chief executive and co-founder Ashish Munjal, was the growing demand in the industry for skills like good communication, top-notch discipline, schedule management and mental and emotional well-being.

“While we won’t see a full-scale shift to remote employment, teams will be spread out geographically more post the pandemic," he says.

For all the 11 people that Shekar Sivasubramanian, vice-president (engineering and operations) of Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence, hired during the lockdown, his questions were related to one theme: self-motivation.

“My questions to prospective employees relate to their style of functioning, relative independence in working style, comfort in working with ambiguity, defining goals independently for themselves and attitude and emphasis on self-learning," says Sivasubramanian.

The reason for the stress on self-motivation is that mangers don’t want to spend time micromanaging employees. It’s important that a potential employee has a process-oriented approach and can manage their time effectively when working from home, says Dinesh Sharma, chief executive of Volody Products, an enterprise software company based in Mumbai. “People need a lot of discipline to stick to a time schedule, have a space at home to work from, so prior working from home experience is definitely a preferred skill for us now," he says.

Some of questions he asks in interviews these days are: Have you worked from home earlier in your career? What channels of communication do you use for your peers, managers and customers? How will you manage work-life balance if you work at home?

Disciplined approach to tasks is important, especially if the candidates are young, adds Amrit Jaidka Arora, who heads human resources at Digit Insurance. Arora, who has hired 54 employees since March, looks for candidates who are enthusiastic but can work in a disciplined routine. “I ask them about their regular work day, about a recent initiative they completed at home on their own. This is to understand how they make their own schedule, how they manage work-life balance, and their technology capacity," says Arora.

BE YOUR OWN BOSSBesides discipline and productivity, the other important traits companies are now looking at is how effectively you can communicate with the new team and take initiative and ownership to collaborate remotely.

This means, on one hand, you need to have a good knowledge of digital collaboration tools like Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams and Trello, and on the other, an ability to learn new tools as needed.

After a candidate is vetted for technical skills, Munavalli asks questions about the communication tools they use for different situations, how they handle their schedule, how they prioritize tasks and how would they handle lack of face-to-face contact when working remotely.

“Communication is a key factor when it comes to managing and staying in touch with remote workers," says Munavalli.

The communication skills also aid in team building and helping each other deal with the uncertainty around.

As offices move from physical to virtual spaces, it’s imperative that co-workers can build mutual trust using online tools, says Kavita Kurup, global head (talent and organizational transformation), at UST Global, an international digital technology company. “It’s important for people to be able to connect, converse and collaborate in the virtual realm and create trust for each other. All of which needs high level of emotional skills. Suddenly, soft skills like empathy, patience, communication and mindfulness have moved to the core category," she says.

Someone who has the skill to over-communicate, engage and be part of the team is a definite plus, points out Pragya Joshi, senior human resource business partner at ClearTax, a tax filing startup. “Who doesn’t need a glue?"

Other than being able to communicate on availability, the person also needs to speak up on challenges they’re facing or support they need, especially from a new team. “Engagement is important. Anything that makes us feel that a candidate is going to be more involved with the team, is a definite plus," says Joshi. “It’s not like employees will work from home entirely and for the future, but distant working has brought skills like agility, resilience, motivation and communication to the forefront.

The writer is CEO & Founder, Volody


Read more at:
https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/business-of-life/the-death-of-the-micromanager-11592497299649.html

Ample Market Research added by the latest report demonstrates that the global Contract Management Software Market will showcase a steady CAGR in the coming years. The research report includes a thorough analysis of market drivers, restraints, threats, and opportunities. It addresses the lucrative investment options for the players in the coming years. Analysts have offered market estimates at a global and regional level

This report is based on the synthesis, analysis, and interpretation of information gathered regarding the target market from various sources. Our analysts have analyzed the information and data and gained insights using a mix of primary and secondary research efforts with the primary objective to provide a holistic view of the market. In addition, an in-house study has been made of the global economic conditions and other economic indicators and factors to assess their respective impact on the market historically, as well as the current impact in order to make informed forecasts about the scenarios in the future.

Top Key Players Present in Contract Management Software Market Are : SAP Ariba, Coupa, Docusign, Icertis, Apttus, Zycus, GEP, Agiloft, Cobblestone Software, Clm Matrix, Conga, Concord, Determine, Jaggaer, IBM, Contractswise, Contractworks, Synertrade, Aavenir, Trackado, Highq, Volody

Different leading key players have been profiled in this research report to get a clear idea of successful strategies carried out by top-level companies. On the basis of geographical segmentation, the Contract Management Software Market has been fragmented across several regions such as China, USA, Europe, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia, South America. This Market research report highlights those leading players who are planning to expand opportunities in the global market.

Contract Management Software Market is presented to the readers as a holistic snapshot of the competitive landscape within the given forecast period. It presents a comparative detailed analysis of all regional and player segments, offering readers a better knowledge of where areas in which they can place their existing resources and gauging the priority of a particular region in order to boost their standing in the global market.

The Contract Management Software Market is gaining pace and businesses have started understanding the benefits of analytics in the present day highly dynamic business environment. The market has witnessed several important developments over the past few years, with mounting volumes of business data and the shift from traditional data analysis platforms to self-service business analytics being some of the most prominent ones.

For the future period, sound forecasts on market value and volume are offered for each type and application. In the same period, the report also provides a detailed analysis of market value and consumption for each region. These insights are helpful in devising strategies for the future and take necessary steps. New project investment feasibility analysis and SWOT analysis are offered along with insights on industry barriers. Research findings and conclusions are mentioned at the end.

Reasons to Purchase this Report:

1) To gain insightful analyses of the Contract Management Software Market and have a comprehensive understanding of the global market and its commercial landscape.

2) To assess the production processes, major issues, and solutions to mitigate the development liability.

3) To understand the most affecting driving and restraining forces in the Contract Management Software Market and its impact on the global market.

4) Learn about the market policies that are being adopted by prominent organizations.

5) It provides a detailed analysis of changing market trends, current and future technologies used, and various strategies adopted by leading players of the Contract Management Software market.

6)To conclude, the Contract Management Software Market report will provide the clients with a high-yielding market analysis assisting them to understand the market status and come up with new market avenues to capture hold of the market share.

7) Fully updated for 2020 including the impact of the Covid 19/ Novel Coronavirus.

If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report at a customized price.

Request a Discount on standard prices of this premium research:

Table of Content:
Chapter 1 Market Overview
Chapter 2 Industry Chain
Chapter 3 Environmental Analysis
Chapter 4 Market Segmentation by Type
Chapter 5 Market Segmentation by Application
Chapter 6 Market Segmentation by Region
Chapter 7 Market Competitive
Chapter 8 Major Vendors
Chapter 9 Conclusion

You can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report versions like North America, Europe or Asia or Country like US, UK, China and other.

NOTE : Our team is studying Covid-19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required we will be considering Covid-19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details.

About Ample Market Research

Ample Market Research provides comprehensive market research services and solutions across various industry verticals and helps businesses perform exceptionally well. Attention to detail, consistency, and quality are elements we focus on. However, our mainstay remains to be knowledge, expertise, and resources to make us industry players.

Our end goal is to provide quality market research and consulting services to customers and add maximum value to businesses worldwide. We desire to deliver reports that have the perfect concoction of useful data.

Our mission is to capture every aspect of the market and offer businesses a document that makes solid grounds for crucial decision making.

The writer is CEO & Founder, Volody


Read more at:
https://3wnews.org/news/1042043/positive-facts-one-should-know-about-contract-management-software-market-for-2020/

Consultlane Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (Volody.com) today announces signing a Strategic Alliance agreement with Marketplace Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Volody is a leading enterprise software company with solutions for compliance, legal and secretarial functions under the brand Volody. Consultlane has pioneered the concept of having a bouquet of software products catering to specific needs of corporate India. These products help corporates to digitize and automate compliance, legal and secretarial functions. Volody's products are already used by more than 1,000 businesses, including listed corporates, PSUs, MNCs, SMEs and start-ups.

Marketplace Tech Infra Services Private Limited (wholly owned subsidiary of BSE) is an established player in e-enabling the businesses in financial services sectors and a leading provider of cutting-edge IT solutions with a focus on commodities, banking and financial services markets in India.

Marketplace Tech and Consultlane are jointly on a mission to help corporates institutionalize compliance culture and bring in digital format to compliance, legal and secretarial function. Compliance is at core for all businesses with any non-compliance can even risk the existence of business; corporates are keen to have a digitized solutions for legal and compliance functions. The partnership of Marketplace Tech and Consultlane will help in penetration of Volody's products across all businesses in India and inculcate strong governance and compliance culture.

With ever growing 50 million businesses in the country, there is a strong need of robust, cloud-based enterprise software to fulfill the needs of secretarial, compliance and legal automation. With the Government of India also pushing for digitization and strong corporate governance, it is the need of the hour for businesses to adopt technology for managing compliance, legal and secretarial functions.

With products like Compliance Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Litigation Management, Secretarial Automation and Digital Board Meeting Software, Volody is at the forefront of meeting digitization needs of businesses. It can help businesses digitize their legal, compliance and secretarial functions in one go by implementing Volody's products.

"We are super excited to have an alliance with Marketplace Tech. Compliance digitization has immense potential. With the reach of Marketplace Tech, we are absolutely confident that Volody's products will reach to all businesses. We are looking up to implement our solutions to listed corporates, MNCs and SMEs in India," said Dinesh Sharma - Founder of Consultlane Business Solutions.

Shri Ashishkumar Chauhan, Chairman, Marketplace Tech Infra Services Private Limited, said, "Healthy compliance culture is a synonym for strong governance and goodwill of Indian corporates. We are pleased to join hands with Volody to offer robust compliance solutions to corporates in India."

The Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI), has come up with revised Secretarial Standards effective from Oct 1, 2017, and many of new Standards will require Company Secretaries of Corporates as well as Company Secretaries in Practice to adopt Secretarial Automation Software to meet requirements.