CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
30 November 2004
Product News
DETERMINE Software Expands Its Enterprise Contract Management Solution with the Release of an Innovative New Authoring Composer Module
DETERMINE Software announced general availability of its new advanced Authoring Composer Module. DETERMINE's Authoring Composer provides a peer-based authoring and collaboration tool that allows legal and non-legal users to quickly and easily configure contracts from pre-approved clause and boilerplate libraries. Combining the ease-of-use of Microsoft Word with a powerful set of features for setting legal editing guardrails, authors can track multi-party revision cycles and collaborate on tasks, discussions and reviews. Authoring Composer transforms the contract creation process from a frustrating manual exercise into a collaborative self-service process.
Integrating tightly with DETERMINE's centralized ECM Platform, Authoring Composer allows users to checkout and download contracts generated on the DETERMINE server into a powerful, easy-to-use desktop authoring environment-eliminating their reliance on cumbersome portal-based document editors and allowing them to take their work offline. Upon completion of revision and negotiation edits, updated contracts are automatically uploaded and synchronized with the server. This innovative new approach to collaborative contract authoring provides the best of both worlds-the control and global accessibility of a web-based platform with the ease-of-use and offline capabilities of a desktop work environment. DETERMINE's Authoring Composer compliments DETERMINE's Microsoft Word-based contract generation and 360 degree integration features.
"Companies are under immense pressure to make sure that their contracts comply with established legal and compliance guidelines and that they go through appropriate reviews and approvals," said Jon Corshen, vice president of marketing for DETERMINE Software. "At the same time, they need to accelerate time-to-market, relieve the workload on legal and provide business users the tools they need to develop the right deal. By adding Authoring Composer to our ECM Platform, we offer an unmatched level of corporate-level control, while providing users with an ease-of-use and intuitiveness that allows them to focus on what really matters."
Combining the ease-of-use and intuitiveness of a desktop work environment, Authoring Composer provides a powerful set of productivity and collaboration features that dramatically simplify and accelerate the contract creation and negotiation processes, while at the same time enforcing legal and corporate contracting standards. Key features include:
• Full Featured Contract Template Builder: Easily build and manage standard corporate-wide boilerplate templates by contract type
• Centralized Template & Clause Libraries: Maintain a centralized library of both boilerplate templates and approved legal clauses, with full version control
• Visual Document Content Map: Provide users with an intuitive map for navigating to different sections and clauses within the contract template
• Alternative Clause Controls: Provide for the use of appropriate alternative clauses to meet specific business situations, without sacrificing visibility and controls
• Clause-level Review & Approval: Highlight high-risk on non-standard clauses/language for in-depth review approval
• Offline Capabilities: Take the document offline to work wherever you need to without being tied to a central portal, when complete, simply check the document back in and synchronize
• Invite Participants: Invite participates to join in the collaboration via email while tracking changes
• Full Featured Redlining & Revision Management: Capture and track changes across multiple revisions with simple to follow audit trails
• Ad-hoc Task & To Do Lists: Prompt appropriate users with reminders of key tasks or to dos that need to be completed throughout the drafting and negotiation process
• Annotation & Discussion Threads: Create discussion threads and clause level annotations as an audit trail of the decision process
• Version Management & Compare Capabilities: Easily compare any two instances of the contract to isolate and audit specific changes without reading the entire document
• Integrated Activity Log: Maintain a complete audit trail of everything that happens through the process, and save it for future review
DETERMINE OnDemand Edition is a network-based, fully hosted solution offering that gets companies up and running in days, instead of months. Unmatched for its performance and reliability, the DETERMINE Application Network provides a secure, private 24X7 environment that is hosted and maintained in conjunction with IBM Network Services. While many competing solutions have price tags that start at $500K and may go as high as in the millions with requirements to purchase additional hardware and database licenses, DETERMINE offers all the power of an enterprise solution at a fraction of the cost through an annual subscription license. And, unlike traditional solutions which take 6-9 months to implement, the DETERMINE solution can have you up and running in less than 60 days.
DETERMINE's dynamic XML-based architecture and integrated Authoring Composer tools also make it easy for companies to configure and customize the system to meet their business needs, without relying on expensive and time consuming IT projects or the continual payment for Vendor Professional Services Staff. When you combine the Best-of-Breed features of our Enterprise Contract Management Solution, with these unmatched self-service Composer tools, DETERMINE can provide a total cost of ownership that can meet the needs of companies ranging from mid-market companies to the largest global 1000 enterprise.
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