Introduction

Cloud Academy is a ‘Skills Intelligence Platform’ that is designed for tech teams of all sizes and provides the best hands-on learning for Cloud, DevOps, Software Development, and more. Their platform allows customers to personalize everything they need in their paths, roles, and skills.

CloudAcademy wanted a better way to manage their contracts and identify potential risks involved without the need to manually review each contract. So they decided to look for a solution to achieve this.

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The Story of Cloud Academy and SpeedLegal

In terms of contracts, Cloud Academy majorly dealt with Master Service Agreements (MSAs) which were reviewed manually and needed a lot of cross-functional communication between various departments.

With the growth of Cloud Academy year over year, the number of contracts and agreements that needed to be dealt with also grew. These could no longer be handled manually as it took a minimum of 3 days behind each contract.

Another problem they faced was the continuous back and forth changing of minor terms to finally come to an agreement, and since these contracts were negotiated over email, it took weeks to get both parties to agree and sign a contract.

They wanted a better way to manage these contracts and identify risks without the need of spending days behind each contract.

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Challenges Before SpeedLegal

Cloud Academy had 4 major pain points before using SpeedLegal

1. No structured process for contract reviews.
2. Lengthy and time-consuming process of manually reviewing each contract when dealing with clients or vendors.
3. High billable hourly charge of outside counsel.
4. Lengthy negotiation process preventing them from closing transactions faster.

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Why Cloud Academy Chose SpeedLegal

In the very beginning, Cloud Academy tried to use Google Drive. They sent Google Docs as contracts to clients, vendors, or external counsel during contract negotiations and reviews. ‍

Problem with Google Drive:

• ‍Lack of central repository to maintain a record of all the changes done to a contract, and keep them all in one place.‍
• Hard to track whether everyone's signing on the latest contract, since contracts were mailed to all members.

Then, they tried Nomio, which is a contract repository tool that helps to store and find contracts easily and get a summary of them when needed. Even though it solved their central repository problem, Nomio had it's own limitations.‍

Problem with using Nomio:

• No risk analysis feature that Cloud Academy needed.
• No use while contracts were being negotiated, as it only stored executed contracts.

That’s when they came across SpeedLegal. Once they had a walkthrough of the product, they immediately realized that it was a holistic solution to all their contract management challenges.

They could identify risks, get automatic summaries and manage all their contracts in one place without the need of using 3 separate tools, which would have again made it a complicated process.