Conga
The New Standard for Contract Management

The rain had just picked up in Orlando as Conga kicked off its first Conga Connect User Conference in March of this year. It was a memorable day for the user community, who have embraced Conga as a vital partner in business to optimize efficiency, automate processes and streamline workflows. Taking center stage, Conga CEO Matthew Schiltz captivated the buzzing crowd of Conganeers from around the world with insights on how to accelerate the sales cycle and boost efficiency in contract management through automation. As Schiltz concluded his engaging keynote, it was evident that Conga is rapidly setting the new market standard for contract lifecycle management (CLM).

Contract management is a critical process for organizations today as they seek new ways to drive revenue. Outdated contract processes can hurt the entire business: sales teams cannot close deals fast enough, finance teams lack visibility into critical obligations, and legal teams are forced to handle heavy workloads with manual tools. Even the speediest sales and legal teams can be slowed down during contract negotiations. These delays are frustrating, even more so when they involve multiple teams. Everyone involved wants nothing more than to get across the finish line, sign the agreements, and move on to deliver or receive goods and services.

Conga gives organizations the ability to manage their entire contract lifecycle, from request to approval to expiration and renewal, while providing the information and tools necessary to drive business forward. Conga Contracts, the newest release from the company, helps organizations streamline and accelerate the contract negotiation process. Available on the Salesforce AppExchange, Conga Contracts connects a busines’s sales and legal teams, minimizing contract-related delays for sales though an approach that adds value and mitigates risk.

"Leveraging our extensive experience in document generation and the Salesforce ecosystem, we create a powerful experience for sales contracts, helping companies accelerate the contract process with shorter negotiation cycles and faster time to revenue,” says Schiltz.

The Synergy with Salesforce

More than 8,000 organizations have embraced Conga as a trusted partner that helps them optimize efficiency, automate processes and streamline workflows around contracts. Today, Conga’s customers include 41 percent of the Fortune 100, and a major part of users consider Conga as “mission critical” to their businesses. “We are the highest volume downloaded application in the entire Salesforce ecosystem,” states Schiltz.

We bring our hands-on experience to care for our clients personally, and the customized approach that we take to support their success is what makes the difference

This success did not happen by chance. Conga has a proven track record of over a decade, excelling as one of the early ISV partners that developed solutions for the Salesforce AppExchange. Being a Salesforce Platinum ISV Partner with more than 600,000 users in over 45 countries across multiple industries, Conga has also received funding from Salesforce Ventures. “We intend to use this strategic investment from Salesforce Ventures to evolve our product suite and become fully committed to addressing the needs of the entire customer lifecycle in Salesforce, by seamlessly automating Salesforce tasks,” states Schiltz.

Built on the Salesforce platform, Conga's contract management technology also complements Salesforce CPQ to enhance the contract negotiation experience. A sales team can draw on the Conga Contracts library of approved clauses or the Salesforce CPQ quote term library to generate contracts for negotiation. By choosing from these preferred clauses, a sales team can create and amend contracts while respecting the constraints established by the legal team, thus ensuring smoother and faster close of deals. One of the most powerful aspects of the application is its ability to employ automation to analyze where clauses and data in the documents are updated during the negotiation process.

Unlocking New Levels of Innovation

According to Schiltz, contract management requires diligence and an eye for detail when it comes to creating, negotiating, or maintaining contracts over time. Conga’s standalone contract management solution, Conga Novatus, makes this possible for enterprises by streamlining contract creation and automating the drafting, negotiation, and execution processes. Leveraging this contract lifecycle management application, organizations can reduce their administrative burden and reinvest that time in more valuable activities, such as sourcing support, contract collaboration, and negotiation. Conga Novatus’ analytics and reporting capabilities can combine several reports across contracts so that organizations can gain insights about contract types, teams, departments, and the enterprise. With these insights, companies can also track their contract status, interactions, and cycle times to facilitate faster negotiation.

“The technology that we built for Conga Novatus has unlocked new levels of innovation," says Schiltz.

The advanced features have seamless integration with Salesforce, as well as other CRMs, ERPs, and CPQ systems, so that clients can accelerate their contracting processes. Structured to meet diverse contracting requirements, Conga Novatus can also support any contract type, team, or business.

“Proper visibility, control, and analysis are critical in effective governance and overall contract management best practices; Conga Novatus makes this possible for all businesses,” affirms Schiltz. He points out an instance where CDI, a technology and engineering staffing solution and service provider, deployed Conga Novatus to gain visibility into their contract processes, reduce processing costs and speed up negotiation time for active contracts. Like many companies, CDI began by managing its contracts in a home-grown system consisting of a shared drive and an Excel spreadsheet. With increasing business demands, these spreadsheets grew from dozens of columns to thousands of lines of data without an efficient system to house, manage, and track that data. CDI wanted to bring visibility and control into the contract lifecycle management process without standing in the way of revenue. By leveraging Conga Novatus, CDI gained significant time savings, increased control over contract processes, and accelerated contract initiation to support the sales process.

To an Exciting Future

Schiltz points out that success demands not only new skills but also new perspectives. Conga is committed to keeping pace with the trends of predictive analytics and machine learning to help companies streamline and make smarter decisions around their documents and contracts.

"We create a powerful experience for sales contracts, helping companies accelerate the contract process with shorter negotiation cycles and faster time to revenue"

While focusing on innovation, Conga also brings a personalized approach to each customer interaction. "We bring our hands-on experience to care for our clients personally, and the customized approach that we take to support their success is what makes the difference," states Schiltz. Conga understands the fundamental truth that even the best customer service strategies can derail if customer-facing employees do not do their part. "We need to make sure that we are centered and grounded in who we are and what our culture represents, whom we hire and how we hire them— so that they focus on doing great work for the user community in the future,” asserts Schiltz.

Following the success of their first annual user summit, Conga has announced two more Conga Connect events, one to be held in London in September, and the other one at Las Vegas in October—making it an exciting time for the user community that has embraced Conga as a vital partner in their business. “We are problem solvers with a passion for excellence. And we continue to handhold our clients by solving mission-critical problems with ingenuity and simplicity,” concludes Schiltz.