Before using Nomio, we had a fairly good system for getting signed contracts in a named Google folder that related to the client. You know, what we weren’t doing was capturing those contract data points. So although we knew where they were and could find them, it was a real struggle with kind of making them accessible to the rest of the business. These contracts sort of followed you around forever, and if there was a question about the contract, it was always easier to go to the lawyer who did the deal.

The cost is opportunity cost, right? So actually, all the time your lawyers are spent revisiting contracts that have been done, you’re losing the opportunity to be doing good work now that moves the business forward. Nomio was a bit of a kind of first foray into sort of embedding some technology like that into the way we work. And I think there is always the bit of: “Does this do what we’re being told it will do and kind of what we expect it will do?” There’s always that element.

And I think, you know, for someone who advocates internally quite strongly for these things, you know, there is almost the personal reputation element. Legal teams need to adapt the way they work a little bit as well, to fit technology that’s available and not just expect that every bit of technology will slot neatly into the way they work. How easy will it be to do that change bit internally? Because the worse thing to do is buy something that is then not adopted.

You know, I think that’s a very close working relationship that’s been established there between, you know, the Nomio team and our team here to make sure that it is working and it is being used. I couldn’t fault the implementation and how it was done. You know, it felt very hands off from our side, which was great. We just upload a contract, the team at Nomio do all the stuff they do to get it into the database and make it all searchable, and both kind of within the contract and more broadly across all your contracts.

You know, a question came up about a vendor partner we work with on a number of accounts, and it’s so easy then just to search across all the contracts by the name of this vendor partner. I think we’ve really seen a great response from, the finance teams in particular. They were wowed, I have to say, I think they, you know, there’s no more of these: “Can I have this contract and can you tell me where I can find these points?”

You know, they just jump into Nomio themselves, they find them themselves, they read the things themselves. Every year as part of our audit process, the auditors will come along and ask for copies of certain contracts. And even though we were organised by having a Google Drive, there’s always that work of: “Right, I’ve got to go in, I’ve got to go and find the folder, got to go through all of this.”

This year, using Nomio, it took a quarter of the time. It’s those small things like when people say: “Well, what does a contract say about this?” And you can link them to the clause in the contract, right? Not just go: “Oh, here’s the PDF and scroll to page 92, and the bit you’re looking for is here.” It’s a snowball, right? You suddenly start to accumulate more time back that you can spend on other things.

Some of the ambiguities that Nomio threw up, right, you went: “Oh, actually, that’s an issue with a template, or that’s an issue with just the rigour at the point of signing.” It flagged ways we were working that we can improve, and we had the time to then go back and improve them. You’re creating the efficiencies and those efficiencies just scale, right, I think is the main benefit for us, especially in the current environment, right?

Which is how do you get more out of what you have, and I think this is absolutely part of the solution. So if you have a problem now with contract management and where you store contracts, and you’re missing deadlines etc. etc., that will only get worse, right? You know, something like Nomio very directly and immediately can solve that problem.