How National Geographic Society transformed contract chaos into financial clarity

Managing contracts for a 137-year-old organization isn’t always easy, especially not when your contract management system isn’t up to snuff.

That’s exactly where the National Geographic Society found themselves in 2021. Despite the Society’s rich legacy of geographic exploration and scientific discovery, the organization still managed millions of dollars’ worth of contractual agreements through email threads and static repositories. No integration, no automation, and no real visibility into financial commitments.

Today, the Society has completely transformed how they handle contracts, creating seamless connections between Agiloft’s Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) platform and their financial systems. Read on to see how National Geographic climbed their own Mount Everest of operational efficiency.

The challenge: Siloed contract data

Before 2021, National Geographic had never implemented a true CLM system. Jim Gallo, who has been with the organization for 25 years, puts it simply: “A lot of our contract management was done via email, which didn’t have a lot of control around it.”

The problems intensified. The team managed thousands of contracts, a volume that required more than just a basic repository to support it. The organization had used Workday as their ERP system since 2017, covering everything from procurement to human capital management. The missing piece was connecting a robust contract management platform to their financial operations.

“We looked to work with a partner like Agiloft that would allow us to fully integrate with our ERP and Workday,” Gallo explains. “Those are key requirements for us.”

The solution: Configuring a two-way integration

National Geographic built a sophisticated integration that connects Agiloft directly to their financial workflows.

The system works through two main types of connections:

Batch integrations

These scheduled updates pull essential data directly from Workday into Agiloft as frequently as every 15 minutes. This information includes employee records, management hierarchies, supplier information, and what Workday calls “worktags.”

What makes this approach so effective is that National Geographic now only needs to update information in one place. When someone gets promoted or a new cost center is created in Workday, that information automatically flows into Agiloft. No duplicate data entry and no version control headaches.  

API integrations

When a contract is signed inside Agiloft’s platform, the system immediately creates the corresponding financial transactions in Workday. For outgoing supplier payments, it generates requisitions that automatically convert to purchase orders. For incoming customer payments, it sets up customer contracts with billing schedules.

“None of these API integrations are possible unless we have a signed contract in Agiloft,” Gallo explained. “That’s certainly a control that we have.”

This real-time connection ensures that every financial commitment starts with a proper contract, and every contract automatically creates the necessary financial tracking mechanisms.

The result: Unprecedented financial visibility

National Geographic Society now has complete visibility into their financial commitments in ways that were impossible before.

“We always have a real-time snapshot of our financial commitments knowing what is still outstanding from a commitment standpoint,” said Alison Knight, Senior Manager of Financial Applications.

The Workday integration enables sophisticated reporting that connects contracts directly to financial data. When executives want to analyze spending by cost center or track commitments against budget, they can drill down from high-level reports all the way to individual purchase orders and, from there, directly back to the original signed contract.

This level of traceability was a game-changer for National Geographic Society’s CFO, who had been seeking this type of reporting for years.

“If you don’t have the data in Workday, obviously you can’t produce the report,” Gallo noted. “This was sort of life-changing for our CFO and our finance office.”

Automation with accountability

One of the most powerful aspects of the Workday integration is how it enforces business rules automatically. The system pulls signing authority matrices from Workday, ensuring that contracts always go to people with appropriate approval levels based on dollar amounts and organizational hierarchy.

Users can override the default approver, but only with someone who has the proper signing authority. It’s flexibility within guardrails.

How National Geographic Society did it

National Geographic Society’s success didn’t happen overnight. Their Agiloft implementation took about six months, with an additional three-month adoption period where using the system was encouraged, but not required.

“When we first went live, it wasn’t required to use Agiloft, but we made that required after about six months,” Gallo explained. “That sort of evolution or adoption period really helped us.”

Key success factors included:

• Executive sponsorship: The project had support from the CFO, Chief Legal Officer (CLO), and Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
• Cross-functional involvement: Users from different departments helped shape requirements and participated in testing.
• Gradual adoption: Agiloft was rolled out on a voluntary basis before moving to mandatory adoption.
• Focus on user benefits: The team was able to see immediate value from day one.

The team’s technical approach was pragmatic. Rather than trying to build everything perfectly from the start, National Geographic focused instead on core functionality and continuously improved the system over time.

The journey continues

National Geographic isn’t stopping here. They’re currently implementing Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud with Agiloft’s Integration Hub, which is powered by Workato to create even more seamless connections. This integration will allow grant managers to work in Salesforce while automatically creating contracts in Agiloft without ever having to learn a new system. The team is also exploring Agiloft’s AI functionalities to drive additional efficiencies, and plans to migrate their existing custom integrations to the more standardized Integration Hub platform.

What started as a contract management problem became, with time, an opportunity for National Geographic to greatly improve their financial visibility and control. By connecting Agiloft CLM directly to their ERP system, National Geographic created something much more valuable than the sum of its parts.

The lesson for other organizations is clear: contract management platforms shouldn’t exist in isolation. When they are properly integrated with financial systems, they become a strategic tool for visibility, control, and planning.

Gallo reflected on their journey, saying: “Everything that we went through honestly wouldn’t have really mattered if the legal team was not happy with the product.”

But with the right system and the right integrations, everyone wins. Legal gets better control of their contracts, finance gets unprecedented visibility, and executives get the reporting they need to make informed decisions.

Ready to transform your own contract management chaos into financial clarity? Start a conversation with us today to explore the endless integrations available for your organization.