Last week’s Agiloft Advisory Council meeting brought together a diverse group of customers from all walks of industry from large financial services enterprises to non-profits. The proceedings got off to a nervous start – at least for the organizers – with a dinner on the patio of Mistral’s restaurant in Redwood City threatened by rain and wind. Luckily the “atmospheric river” held off until after midnight. If our customers were disappointed by the lack of California sunshine, they made up for it with their enthusiasm to network and learn from the other council members. It was exciting to hear from some of our most visionary customers on how they’ve been using Agiloft to automate their companies’ business processes and their ideas on how to improve the platform.
Wednesday morning at the Pullman Hotel, Agiloft CEO Colin Earl kicked off the day with an update on Agiloft’s strategic direction including a preview of AI enhancements to the platform in 2019.
First up was Fraser Health’s Hardeep Chaggar, who wowed the room with a demonstration of how the Vancouver healthcare network integrates with Tableau to visually show administrators available beds across their network in real time. The system has decreased the time patients spend waiting for care from weeks to hours.
Next was Doosan Bobcat’s Donovan Bell who described how implementing Agiloft brought order to the industrial multi-national’s contracting process. The platform’s flexibility was a key benefit, allowing different business units to customize the process to their workflows. So much so that some departments are using Agiloft for processes not originally anticipated, notably HR for recruiting.
One of Agiloft’s large enterprise customers took the floor after Donovan. Administering over 25 thousand contracts every year requires a user-friendly solution for preparing, reviewing, approving, executing, storing and reporting on contracts. She found that in Agiloft, but also found analytics that unearthed unique insights. For instance, discovering that what they though was the busiest time of the year for contracting was way off. Her most important benefits were risk mitigation, having a single source of truth, and analytics.
Patrick Farrell of Project HOME, a Philadelphia non-profit that’s dedicated to fighting homelessness gave the final customer presentation. Calling pre-Agiloft the pell-mell period, he was impressed with how well Agiloft “systematized” contracts and grants. The greater visibility and analytics led to huge increases in efficiency. He measured a 25% reduction in time spent on preparing contracts alone. As a non-profit, Patrick appreciated the platform’s open framework which allowed him to access other applications such as help desk with no increase in cost.
Next, Agiloft’s VP of Engineering and Product Development Christian Thun presented Agiloft’s product development process. He went over the current product roadmap and showed an interesting chart on how the product and engineering teams spend their time. Details on Agiloft’s AI core and how it translates to functionality in the upcoming releases were especially popular. Senior implementer Craig Gordon translated Christian’s words into action with a live demo of the features in the upcoming April release.
The unenviable slot right before lunch fell to Rob DeSantis (Founder of Ariba) and Nancy Haussler (CFO for Houston-Galveston Area Council). They proved up to the task with an eye-opening session on calculating value for Contract and Commerce Lifecycle Management.
After lunch Christian and Bridget Conrad, VP of professional services led a discussion to garner customer feedback on the product features and enhancement requests. These were documented in the ideas table and will make their way through product development
Michael Ford, head of customer success provided an overview of the customer support and Implementation teams. Takeaways are we’re hiring across geographies to provide 24/5 availability now and 24/7 in Q3 for enterprise support. Interesting statistics on Implementation from Michael’s presentation:
- The Implementation team grew by 75% in the last 12 months. Average tenure is still four years.
- Testing is rigorous and selection is competitive. Just 0.75% of applicants are offered a position.
- Overall, 99.6% of Implementations are successful.
- In the last two years 98.6% of customer went live at or under budget.
In the final session, Bridget and Michael brought senior implementers Craig Gordon and Jack Wicks on stage for Q&A. There were lots of questions and spirited discussion, but no-one stumped the Agiloft experts.
Customers had excellent feedback and suggestions, including Jeff Brown from Seattle & King County Health Department.
After the event, council members and Agiloft staff attended a happy hour for more networking.
What we learned from the Advisory Council:
- Attendees valued the opportunity to network and learn from each other during the structured presentations as well as casually between sessions. Some have requested each other’s contact info so they can continue their conversations.
- Everyone had feedback and great ideas to improve the Agiloft platform, including requests for AI extraction for insurance certificates, new Views to allow users to see nested subcontracts, and many more great ideas.
- Most customers did not know they could request platform enhancements at any time through our Ideas table in Customer Support.
- Council members said they wished the Advisory Council meeting was longer, and we hope to fulfill that need in the coming months.
We are continually impressed with how our customers have made Agiloft their own and continue to adapt their systems to suit their business needs. Due to our deeply customizable, no-code software, companies from any vertical can adapt a CCLM system that fits their unique needs. As our customer’s companies have grown and evolved, Agiloft has been able to adapt with them.
We hope our customer’s received as much value from this council as we did, and we look forward to hosting another Advisory Council next year.
Join us for our webinar with IACCM; Beyond ROI: Calculating the real-world value of Contract and Commerce Lifecycle Management
Want to join in the conversation started at our advisory council? Stay tuned for big news coming in the next week.
