Cogito uses LinkSquares to respond quicker to business needs and reliably assess the risk profile of contracts with confidence. Learn how this translates to cost and time savings for them.

A few years ago, Cogito was grappling with a problem, but it was a good one to have: how to manage the growing volume and complexity of its client base. More companies were discovering the benefits of its call-center software, which uses AI to guide agents during phone calls and analyze customer perception of those conversations in real-time.

Cogito was using a manual system that relied on spreadsheets and weekly in-person meetings to track customer and vendor agreements. The rising volume made it hard to stay on top of renewal dates, resulting in last-minute contract evaluation that took up a lot of time and money.

In addition, keeping tabs on non-standard terms was an uphill battle. If a client asked for something out of the ordinary, or management wanted an assessment of the variability in our client commitments, it took four or more hours to find which existing contracts contained the relevant variations. Cogito tried to corral these provisions into a Word table, but it wasn’t an effective solution.

LinkSquares worked through two use cases with Cogito to illustrate the solution’s value: tracking vendor agreements and renewals, and creating a reliable way to query contracts with non-standard terms. LinkSquares was able to quickly improve both. With LinkSquares, Cogito now runs a report on all of its vendor agreements once a month, sorting them according to which ones are coming up for renewal.

“LinkSquares enables us to be proactive, which gives us time to discuss whether we’re still leveraging a contract significantly and if it’s worth whatever we’re spending on it,” said Shawn Hoyt, Vice President, Legal and Deal Management at Cogito Corp.

“This more efficient vendor analysis process translates into money—conservatively saving us $50,000 a year. This is in addition to the time savings we see as a result of automated contract analysis.”

Handling non-standard terms has also become easier. Cogito focused on 10 key terms and developed a way to determine whether contracts contained the standard term, the first or second approved fallback position, or an escalated exception. This enables the company to understand its risk level, which is essential when things are changing rapidly, as they are with COVID-19. 

“LinkSquares saves us several hours every time non-standard contract terms arise, which allows us to gain insights and report findings to other departments faster,” said Megan Szabo, Senior Commercial and Corporate Counsel at Cogito Corp.

Cogito is also more efficient in handling new contracts with the LinkSquares’ Smart Values capabilities. If a potential client is asking for a most-favored customer clause, it’s easy to use LinkSquares and quickly identify existing contracts with that provision. The legal team has also started taking advantage of LinkSquares’ clause library, which offers a major benefit. Cogito can redline client templates faster by pulling pre-approved clauses from the clause library in only a few minutes.

The hard benefits of enhanced efficiency and savings in time and money easily confirm the value LinkSquares has brought to Cogito. But LinkSquares also offers a welcome intangible benefit: peace of mind.

“Thanks to LinkSquares, I know I can provide a reliable answer to a question from my executive team, or reliably assess the risk profile of our contracts, with confidence in the result,” Hoyt said.