How Smiths News plc uses Nomio’s contract repository
“Nomio did all the heavy lifting”
Smiths News plc is the UK’s largest news wholesaler, delivering newspapers and magazines to retailers across the country every morning. When Penny joined, contracts were spread across SharePoint, inboxes, Teams channels, and individual contract owners, with no single source of truth. Speaking on stage at Crafty Counsel’s Legal Tech Buyers’ Club in November 2025, she explained how that changed.
Here’s where Nomio helped:
“I would describe it as contract chaos. What it wasn’t was a single source of truth.”
Where are all the contracts kept?
“There was some electronic capture on SharePoint, named very personally, very bespoke. A new person like me couldn’t really work out exactly what was going on except by searching a company name.”
Scattered across the business
“The rest of it was with supplier owners, contract owners, inboxes, Teams channels, you name it. I would often be sent, ‘Here’s the contract to review’, but it’s the Word version and it’s got markup in it.”
“I didn’t need a massive, extensive CLM solution. I had a particular problem: I needed a contract repository which is a safe, reliable and searchable data source.”
Establish your core problem first
“Establish your core problem first. Just look at the problem you’re trying to solve and don’t be distracted by too many functions. You must concentrate on what you need, because you’ve got to demonstrate to the CFO, to the board, whoever you answer to: is it actually doing what you promised?”
The repository is often an afterthought
“Many of the CLM solutions, for which there is clearly a role, I’m not denying that, but often the repository part is an afterthought, or can be. If that’s your main problem, then I need to look for that problem to be solved, and not spend too much.”
“Nomio was promising a human-led service, and I was thinking: are they going to be trained?”
Human verification is non-negotiable
“There must be some form of human verification offered by that supplier, because you’re not going to be able to do it all yourself. Had it just been an AI-powered tool, there would have been hallucinations all over the place.”
Tested properly, and it outperformed
“We did really test this properly. I did come with a bit of cynicism, but actually it did really outperform and impress a few people in our business.”
“Nomio did all the heavy lifting. I had no time for this, and I made that really clear.”
Just hand over your documents
“I wouldn’t be able to do much other than hand over a load of documents. I literally dumped whatever I could find.”
A team that labels everything for you
“I was literally able to just take the documents out of my files, upload them, and not see them again. There’s a physical team looking at it, and they can work out what type of agreement it is very easily, despite the random heading in the file name.”
That easy, and that quick
“I didn’t even have to watch a single training video. I’m really not a tech-savvy person particularly, but it’s been that easy. The implementation process was quick. That was us holding it back, not Nomio. Nomio would have done it in, I think, under 12 weeks.”
“One of the biggest things is being able to live answer while you’re on a Teams meeting.”
Unpicking a contract stack for a director
“Some huge corporations just present you with web links to all their terms and conditions. Unpicking the immense amount of contracts in the order of precedence, very quickly for a director: I can now do that, because it’s all in one place. When I search up that particular contract, it’s all there in order.”
The business hands contracts over willingly
“Part of the problem of our lack of data was that supplier owners were holding on to their contracts. Now they’re just willingly handing them over, because they know that the notification process will happen without them having to diarise it. The system will take that over.”
“It’s got to feel like a partnership, not just a piece of software. That sounds quite trite, but it’s so rare that that happens.”
A record response time under a minute
“We were given an account manager who is, and continues to be, incredible, really reactive. The team themselves are very fast to react. I think the record was under a minute. Someone came back and I just couldn’t believe it.”
Not dumped after handover
“I’ve bought quite a bit of software, and they tend to dump me once it’s been handed over. That hasn’t been the case with Nomio.”
Why there’s nothing better than Nomio on the market.
“There is no one else on the market that offers this level of customisation with a repository”
