Icertis has announced a strategic alliance with another major global SI and one of the big four accounting firms, KPMG. The agreement sees the KPMG contracting practice deliver Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) to customers. It also sees KPMG deploying ICI within its organisation.
These two initiatives will deliver the contract team valuable experience that they can take to help shared customers connect the data from their contracts and identify unique insights to help increase revenue, reduce costs, manage risks and ensure compliance.
Working with KPMG
KPMG will work with Icertis across its commercial and public sector advisory groups and through its contract intelligence practice. They will help customers bring all contracts across the value chain and internally into a single repository for further analysis. It includes supplier and partner contracts from ERP systems, customer and reseller contracts from CRM and employee contracts from HCM. KPMG will then assist customers in driving automation across the contract lifecycle and extract insights and value from the contract to boost revenues and business growth.
KPMG and Icertis will work together across the different industry verticals in which KPMG is aligned to support existing customers and target net new customers for both organisations.
Dipan Karumsi, Principal, Procurement and Outsourcing Advisory Practice Leader, KPMG Consulting, KPMG LLP, said, “Contracts play a central role in enterprise-wide digital transformation and establishing this relationship with Icertis is a tremendous opportunity to help our clients modernize this essential part of their business.”
“KPMG and Icertis bring a vertical industry lens to contract intelligence to address unique contract needs across key sectors, utilizing contract data to help businesses better manage obligations, reduce costs, and improve compliance while increasing top-line revenues. These objectives are critical for all decision-makers in the current economic climate.”
Deanna Lanier, Chief Strategy Officer at Icertis, commented, “In today’s competitive and fast paced world, leaders are looking for new ways to help their companies stay ahead of macro challenges and rapidly changing market dynamics. They need insights they can trust, and contracts provide that on a significant scale because they offer a wealth of untapped structured and unstructured data, right at your fingertips.
“Contracts offer a pool of vital data, which has never been digitized or mined. This offers new ways for businesses to increase revenue, reduce costs, manage risks, and ensure compliance, making contract intelligence a must-have in an unpredictable and dynamic economy. KPMG’s industry expertise will complement our unmatched ability to deliver these outcomes for enterprises as Icertis transforms the foundation of commerce through contract intelligence.”
Working within KPMG
KPMG plans to implement the Icertis Intelligence platform within its organisation, notably across the legal and procurement departments. It will enable the consulting firm to better understand its obligations, risks and value of its contracts and ensure that it captures every dollar of value within them.
Toby Yu, Principal, Procurement and Outsourcing Advisory at KPMG LLP, commented, “KPMG selected Icertis because we see the value in our shared customer base and the opportunity contract intelligence offers to accelerate revenue, reduce costs and bolster compliance.
“Icertis is recognized as a leader by multiple analysts and demonstrates a deep understanding of contracting differences across industries. In collaboration, we can help more organizations realize the strategic benefits of contract intelligence as they look to overcome new challenges in the years ahead.”
Why this alliance matters
The contract lifecycle management market is huge. ResearchAndMarkets predicts the market will be worth $30 billion between 2022-2026, rising to $8.06 billion by 2026. While the level of adoption of CLM is currently modest, the analyst firm expects adoption to accelerate over the next five years. Icertis is a recognised leader in the sector, and with this new partnership with KPMG, especially if it moves beyond the US, it will hope to capture a significant market share.
Enterprise Times asked both Icertis and KPMG why the new alliance matters. Deanna Lanier, Chief Strategy Officer, Icertis, replied, “Both KPMG and Icertis support the Fortune Global 500, positioning our alliance to enable data-driven transformation for some of the world’s largest enterprises.
“There is mutual trust between our organizations rooted in our shared vertical approach, KPMG’s well-established contract management practice, and our demonstrated leadership in delivering AI-powered contract intelligence that integrates contract data into core operations. KPMG’s delivery methodologies also complement our strategy at Icertis, creating significant opportunity for us to speed time to value and accelerate bottom-line performance improvements for our customers.”
Yu said, “The alliance relationship with Icertis is important to KPMG LLP because we see the value in our shared customer base and the opportunity contract intelligence offers to accelerate revenue, reduce costs and bolster compliance. Through this collaboration we can help more organizations realize the strategic benefits of contract intelligence as they look to overcome new challenges in the years ahead.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Icertis already works with Accenture, Deloitte and PwC, and adding another global SI to its partner list is significant as it demonstrates the leadership position in CLM. The strategic alliance will initially focus on the US practice of KPMG. However, an intent and long-term vision exists to expand to other KPMG member firms globally.
It is interesting to note that KPMG already has its own CLM solution, which it predominantly sells from its German arm. Will Icertis replace this, or will it look to create an upgrade path?
What matters now is for KPMG and Icertis to work together to make this partnership successful. This means expanding services revenue for KPMG and implementing ICI for new and existing clients. It will be interesting to see whether most sales are cross-selling opportunities for KPMG or net new customers.
The final question, is whether Icertis can also add EY to its partner list to complete the set.
