Seal Software announced that Ascend Performance Materials, a premium provider of high-quality chemicals, fibers and plastics, has gone live on its platform to increase the return on investment (ROI) and user adoption of its cloud-based business commerce system. By fueling Ascend's system with the contractual insights it needs to generate maximum value, Seal Software empowers the global materials company to run a more profitable business.
When Ascend made an investment in Ariba to foster better collaboration among its many different trading partners, the Texas-based company needed a way to supply lifeblood to the new business commerce system in the form of contractual insights.
Ascend selected Seal Software Contract Discovery, which automatically located all of the company's contracts no matter where they resided across the enterprise. It then extracted key contractual terms and clauses, and migrated the data to Ariba for easy review. The solution addressed the critical need for Ascend to transform its hidden unstructured contractual data into readily accessible, actionable insight.
An otherwise manual process that would have consumed a tremendous amount of valuable time and resources – enough to offset any ROI realized from Ascend's purchase of Ariba – Seal Software was up and running in just a few short days. It then quickly completed the discovery and data migration of thousands of contracts.
Speeding the Path to ROI
Each quarter, Seal Software processes contracts for Ascend, reducing months of manual process time to hours. It activates the Ariba system with necessary contractual intelligence for uncovering opportunities to reduce costs, mitigate risk and grow revenue. As a result, user adoption of Ariba has improved among Ascend's legal and procurement teams, who gain unprecedented levels of contractual visibility and intelligence.
"Without Seal Software, our path to ROI for our Ariba environment would have been severely delayed, and likely even derailed entirely from the onset," said Karen Moore, Contracts Administrator and Legal Specialist, Ascend Performance Materials. "Seal Software made achieving ROI with Ariba quicker, cheaper and possible in the first place. It's the catalyst that fuels our engine with the contractual intelligence we need to accelerate as a business and evolve in new, profitable ways."
Ascend also benefits from the following efficiencies created by Seal Software:
- Automated Processes – Contractual documents are automatically identified wherever they exist. PDFs with searchable text are created. Key terms are extracted and integrated into Ariba.
- Captured Revenue – Legacy contracts are crawled for promoting a better understanding of past Ascend payments, and for revealing opportunities for cost savings and revenue growth.
- Ongoing Data Governance – Consistency is maintained across all Ascend contracts, both historic and future, to ensure information is onboarded according to a uniform set of criteria.
- Enforced Objectivity – Human subjectivity is mitigated, and greater objectivity, consistency and workflow are instituted throughout Ascend's entire contract process.
- Continued Compliance – Audits are easily performed to determine which Ascend contracts are impacted by changing regulations, prove compliance and determine any required action.
"Our goal is to provide industry leaders like Ascend with the tools they need to effectively manage growth and sustain sound development," said Ulf Zetterberg, Founder and CEO, Seal Software. "Contracts are the backbone of business. With our technology, Ascend will be able to supercharge the investment of its business commerce system and pave a more profitable road for the future."
