Revolutionizing contract life cycle management with generative AI and Azure

Driven by a shared commitment to customer success, Icertis and Microsoft have partnered over the last decade to reimagine contract management as AI-driven contract intelligence that empowers customers to extract insights from their contract data and better realize the original intentions of every commercial agreement. “30 percent of the Fortune 100 use the Icertis platform for their global contracting needs because Icertis helps customers increase revenue and efficiency, reduce risks, and ensure compliance. We attribute much of our success to our close, longstanding relationship with Microsoft,” says Deanna Lanier, Chief Strategy Officer at Icertis.

The groundbreaking introduction of generative AI, fortified by the security of Microsoft Azure, is now poised to further transform contract intelligence with the release of Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) Copilots.

Applying generative AI to contract intelligence

ICI Copilots provide customers with assistive and generative natural language capabilities that cut through legalese and turn contracts into interactive assets to deliver insights and automation that drive businesses forward. “Icertis has been at the forefront of AI innovation since 2018, and we’re the first to market with generative AI contracting solutions. For years, Microsoft and Icertis have made it easier and faster for customers to discover cost savings in their contracts while minimizing risk and bolstering compliance,” says Lanier.

As Icertis expanded its AI solutions portfolio, the company took advantage of Azure OpenAI Service, proprietary Icertis AI models, and the Icertis Data Lake to address specific business problems or vertical challenges. The Icertis Contract Data Lake includes more than 2 billion contract metadata and transactional elements from over 10 million contracts across multiple verticals, and it’s believed to be the richest, most complete curated contract database in the world. With this data, customers can harness the power of generative AI and address key user scenarios.

ICI Copilots expedite contract reviews, saving valuable resources and time while supporting strategic outcomes. For example, the ICI Risk Assessment Copilot guides legal users to focus on problematic terms and earmarks contracts that don’t require further review, enabling enterprises to more effectively manage risk by ensuring that required clauses and approved language are present in every agreement.

Additionally, Icertis is helping customers uncover potential revenue leakage due to financial terms hidden deep in volumes of legalese. Customers are now using the ICI Interactive Insights Copilot to extract nonstandard payment, auto-renewal, and rebate terms that were previously buried within lengthy contracts. Using both predefined and freeform prompts, decision makers can easily engage with contracts through ICI Copilots to instantly gain answers to critical questions about their business.

“We expect customers to see contract reviews accelerated by up to 40 percent,” says Monish Darda, Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer at Icertis. “Perhaps more importantly, they can also discover and manage their risks better than ever before and then take it a step further by suggesting mitigation of those risks.”

Delivering continuous customer value with generative AI

Microsoft and Icertis have a 360-degree relationship as both customer and partner, which is deeply rooted in the shared goal to deliver continuous innovations with customer value. The combination of Icertis and Microsoft technologies results in platform security and scalability that customers across all industries can trust. “Icertis and Microsoft, in collaboration with our other partners, are delivering a step change in contract efficiency and insights by responsibly harnessing the transformational power of generative AI,” says Darda.

The Icertis Contract Intelligence platform natively runs on Azure and uses Azure AI services. Icertis natively interoperates with Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Azure AI to empower users to create, view, manage, and collaborate on contracts in the tools and applications they use every day. This ensures they have better access to critical information, enabling more strategic decisions right within the enterprise application environment of their choice without losing productivity by switching applications.

Now, customers can use AI-based tools that will recognize contract language and then build algorithms to automatically choose the right approach based on the content of the contract. This can help mitigate risks and uncover potential opportunities. The platform also delivers speed, performance, and scalability to ease work processes across the enterprise.

“We’re very proud to see that our collective hard work has paid off in service of our mutual customers,” says Alvaro Celis, Vice President of Global ISV Commercial Solutions at Microsoft. “The growth rates that we’re seeing with the Icertis Contact Intelligence platform are really inspiring, especially when you compare those with mature markets like ERP or CRM.”

The ongoing collaboration between Icertis and Microsoft aims to further solidify their positions as top-performing partners that are driven by customer success. “We’re committed to keeping customers at the center of everything we do, and we’d love to help regardless of where a customer might be in their journey with contract intelligence,” says Lanier.