The YMCA was established more than 165 years ago as a place where community members could find growth and support. Today, the YMCA of Metroplitan Chicago is comprised of 14 community hubs, 5 camps and nearly 100 extension sites, making the Y one of the largest social enterprises in Chicago. More than half a million Chicagoans rely on the Y each year for health, wellbeing, and individual empowerment. The Y’s mission is to strengthen “the community by connecting all people to their purpose, potential, and each other,” and its vision is “to be at the forefront of advancing society by serving as a trusted convener, connector and catalyst for all communities.”
The organization turned to Contract Logix’s contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform to centralize and secure its contracts, mitigate risk and help the YMCA’s legal team optimize processes. It needed a CLM partner that could help them maximize resource efficiency and help guide the digital transformation of its contract management process, allowing it to focus on its core community mission.
Business Challenge
The YMCA of Metro Chicago partners with numerous corporations, foundations, philanthropists, research institutes and more. It needed a solution that would allow it to easily, securely and accurately store and manage more than 7,600 contracts and more than 43,000 related documents, as well as be able to provide a holistic and accurate view of all its contracts and grants for auditing and compliance purposes.
“We needed a way to just keep everything as digital as possible,” said Justin Shlensky, Vice President of Legal & Risk Management at YMCA of Metro Chicago. “We were looking for a very utilitarian tool to help digitize some of [our] processes, manage the contract data and keep it in a secure location. The Contract Logix platform’s contract versioning, business continuity and reporting capabilities,in a very user-friendly interface, have been incredibly useful.”
The YMCA of Metro Chicago’s legal department consists of a Contracts Manager/Paralegal, General Counsel, VP of Legal & Risk Management and Legal Counsel who orchestrate contracts as part of its portfolio of work, working with different departments within the organization on both contract review and creation.
The team collaborates with IT, the VP of Continuous Improvement and Audit, a 4-person Grants team and many other executives, directors and managers across the organization. The Y needed a more robust CLM platform to help streamline its contracting activities while ensuring business rules were followed in a compliant and automated manner. It also wanted to ensure that contract requests, reviews, approvals and signatures were routed to the appropriate person in the organization, with the correct access permissions, every time.
The Contract Logix Solution
The YMCA of Metro Chicago chose Contract Logix because the data-driven digital platform allows the organization to have instant visibility into contract data, provides out-of- the-box templates, automated workflows that allow them to execute contracts faster and frees up legal resources to focus on the core mission. In addition, Contract Logix’s robust security options and the ability to standardize and centralize contract documents in the cloud-based repository with real-time reporting, analytics and visibility, were key differentiators.
“The Contract Logix platform allows our Contracts Manager to establish new files, notify assigned attorneys, show any intake data of what’s requested and attach relevant files and supporting documentation such as someone’s certificate of insurance,” said Shlensky. “The attorneys then work with our internal department clients to make sure we meet their needs and understand all the stages and status of each project. It’s a very precise way to keep track of all that data so we’re not searching in various folders trying to find items. We are becoming more efficient with our time management, because it is a very easy and clean platform to use.”
The Contract Logix platform has provided YMCA of Chicago Metro with:
- A powerful data-driven repository to store, search, and analyze all contracts and contract-related documents securely. All contractual details including facility licenses, vendor agreements and insurance certificates are at their fingertips. The ability to automatically compare contract versions to ensure that changes are never missed was also a key differentiator.
- A centralized process for requesting and reviewing contracts throughout the organization, saving significant time, money, and freeing up legal resources and grants teams to focus on strategic activities Automated workflows to accelerate the progress ofcontracts throughout contract creation, reviews, approvals, tasks and notifications.
- Role-based and feature-based security to ensure employees can only access contract-related information that is appropriate for them to see.
- Integrations with the Y’s key business applications, including ISBE for grants.
Results
Digital contract transformation and process automation has delivered considerable reduction in time and resources spent managing contracts. Without Contract Logix, the Y wouldn’t have been able to accommodate the additional 1,000 new contracts they’ve executed in the last 12 months.
The platform’s reporting features also allow the legal team to graphically demonstrate where contracts are throughout each stage of their process including request, draft, negotiation, approval and signature.
“We have had great collaboration with our VP of Audit whose job is to make sure that everyone is compliant with both business and external rules,” added Shlensky. “For example, he asked us to export the data fields of every contract we reviewed in 2023, and then he looked at how many of those contracts resulted in purchase orders being made. The Contract Logix platform allows us to show that the invoice matches the fiscal data. We were also able
to quickly show him how many contracts we have with each vendor. The platform has been a tremendous help in complying with audit requests.”
Perhaps the greatest value the Y achieved by using the Contract Logix platform was freeing up the organization’s growing Grants department. The in-platform E-Signature integration has resulted in a tremendous increase in contracts signed electronically, enabling the Y to execute contracts much faster to secure more funding and provide additional and improved services across Chicago.
“The grants and legal team can work within Contract Logix to review terms and conditions for grants they are applying for, as well as any unusual clauses,” noted Shlensky. “It always allows routing for signatures, version updates and corrections. This enables the team to mitigate risk, ensure compliance with the terms and obligations associated with grants, and automatically maintain an audit trail.”
“It’s hard to quantify the ROI. Contract Logix cuts down on the use of time and internal resources that it previously took to manage all the data. Before we would be asking the questions, ‘Do we need a temp? Do we need a second? Do we need someone part-time to help with this?’ If we didn’t have Contract Logix or a system in place, people would be pulling their hair out.”
The YMCA of Metro Chicago plans to continue rolling out the Contract Logix platform to assist additional departments in the future.
Published June 19, 2024.