Marshfield Consulting Delivering Proven Outcomes on the DocuSign CLM
“Merchant of Venice,” one of the most prominent Shakespearean comedy and drama, is strongly built on the power of clauses in a contract. In the play, the titular character (the merchant) Antonio borrows money from Shylock—a moneylender, setting the security at a pound of Antonio’s flesh. When a bankrupt Antonio defaults on the loan, Shylock wanted to exact deadly revenge on Antonio. It was Portia, far and away from the cleverest of the play’s characters, who discovered the subtleties of the contract between Antonio and Shylock, which allowed the latter only to take a pound of Antonio’s flesh and not blood. And thus, Portia ended up saving Antonio’s life.
The plot of this play clearly depicts how a thorough review of a contract has always been considered necessary to indemnify the involved parties in case of any untoward incident. Even when it comes to today’s businesses, managing contracts can often be tedious, and any failure to notice the fine print of a contract can cost companies a fortune. Taking cognizance of such possibilities, many businesses have started to digitalize their contract management processes. However, despite their best efforts, their processes remain mostly tangled across fragmented, crossfunctional teams and outdated, legacy technology point-solutions. To help these companies bring their disjointed contract management processes under a single platform, Marshfield Consulting is reinventing the contract lifecycle management (CLM) paradigm with its strong focus on DocuSign CLM.
Founded in 2018, Marshfield is the brainchild of Scott Brooks, the founder and managing partner of the company. Marshfield’s contract management expertise draws from Brooks’ extensive, hands-on experience implementing CLM technologies for customers of all sizes with a multitude of different contract use cases. Leveraging that experience, the company is founded on the delivery models, best practices, training programs, and methodologies he pioneered during his 10-year career working in the CLM space. Brooks adds, “Our unique perspective and experience with implementing Contract Lifecycle Management solutions, DocuSign CLM specifically, allows us to guide clients through all phases of the implementation process.”
Marshfield, to this extent, takes a very detail-oriented approach to each of the implementation projects. And, it is not just limited to clients’ technical requirements. It also covers the aspects of change management and marries the technological solution with the users on the front lines that must learn how to use it effectively for the business outcomes to be achieved. Typically, Marshfield starts a project with a deep dive into the current state of how the client has been managing their contracts. The initial scrutiny covers aspects like contract templates, usage of dynamic content, data sources, accepted formats of third-party contracts, and the business processes that comprise the backbone of a company’s contract workflow. From there, the focus transitions from the current state to the future, desired state—from review and approval processes of existing contracts, right through to negotiation and execution. Once all these insights have been gathered, Marshfield looks at designing and architecting bespoke solutions that cover the entire contract process, including workflow processes, contract template generation, third-party contract capture, and the storage and reporting of executed contracts that have proactive reminders that notify when contract obligations come due. Additionally, Marshfield ensures that clients get regular insights on their processes to evaluate the performance of the contract process itself quantitatively. This added ability to manage not just executed contracts and gather insights on them but also the workflow processes that provide a repeatable and transparent way to move a contract from draft-to-execution all play a crucial role in the full lifecycle of contracts for Marshfield clients. “Our goal is to help clients understand their processes, and then make those more efficient than before, with better controls and risk management,” underscores Brooks. Notably, Marshfield’s clientele does not include only businesses starting their CLM journeys but also works with customers that have existing solutions in place to optimize their current setups by adding new functionality or by just streamlining what is already in place. Besides, Marshfield also offers Managed Services to help clients supplement their internal administrative capability with experts who are available and ready to jump in an ad hoc manner.
Having already established itself as a boutique consultancy with such extensive service offerings, Marshfield is now eyeing an accelerated growth curve for the coming months. The company plans on continuing to invest in the DocuSign CLM ecosystem and is active in expanding its footprint. As Brooks states, he will continue driving toward building a team of consultants knowledgeable and experienced to establish a leadership position in CLM implementation, “because that’s where our experience lies.”
