PRESS RELEASE 30.6.2016
Finland-based ContractZen has launched international operations to begin helping companies worldwide resolve their governance and contract hassles. ContractZen offers an innovative cloud-based service for managing business-critical documents and executive meetings.
Business-critical documents are far too often misplaced, and critical dates are forgotten. This leads to missed profits and extra governance work for executive, legal and administrative personnel. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, approximately 10% of all contracts are lost, regardless of the industry. At the same time, research shows that the average number of contracts per company has increased 20% over the last five years and “among the Fortune 1000 companies, the average amount of current contractual files is between 20,000 and 40,000” (Institute for Supply Management). However, the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM) has estimated that ineffective contract management costs companies 9% of their annual revenue on average.
“It is no wonder that IACCM has stated that contract management software is failing to address business needs. This inspired our mission at ContractZen—to unleash the true value of companies of all sizes by helping them to resolve their governance and contract hassles with a modern solution that is as easy and inexpensive to use as e-mail”, says Markus Mikola, CEO and founder of ContractZen, regarding the company’s origins.
ContractZen was launched in the autumn of 2015. Since then, the company has gained traction with clients across various industries, ranging from multi-billion-dollar global corporations to small start-ups. Just recently, the company started co-operation with various international companies from the UK, France, Sweden and Norway among others. The company aims to reach half a million users before the end of 2018.
According to Mikola, the time was right for a service like ContractZen because of the current maturity of cloud and user interface technologies. “These technologies made it possible to build an easy-to-use, reasonably-priced and secure corporate governance and contract management service that fits companies of all sizes. One of the new technology components of the service is the advanced metadata model, which turns static documents into smart work tools and lets users find documents in seconds. This reduces contract-related risks and helps organizations stay audit and due diligence ready every day”, Mikola says.
Alder & Sound, one of the top Finnish professional service companies providing integrated legal, tax, transfer pricing and financial advisory services to multinational companies, has praised the new service. "ContractZen has succeeded in building a very versatile and easy to use cloud-based service. It helps us to provide the best possible services for our demanding customer base", explains Reima Linnanvirta, Partner at Alder & Sound.
From the beginning, ContractZen has partnered with leading technology and commercial partners like Microsoft. In February 2016, ContractZen earned Microsoft Silver Application Development Competency, placing the company among the top five percent of Microsoft partners worldwide.
“Microsoft Azure enabled us to create a service that was robust, global, scalable to millions of users and available anywhere 24/7 from day one. This could only be dreamed of just a couple years ago”, explains Mikola.
“Microsoft values innovative solutions that support businesses of all sizes around the globe. ContractZen offers compelling solution for managing contracts, board meetings and key financial and legal documents for businesses to be due-diligence ready,” says Nicole Herskowitz, senior director of product marketing, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Corp.
In the past few years, the world has also witnessed the rapid ascent of entirely new digital ad technologies such as programmatic advertising and scalable media platforms. “The rise of new data-driven digital marketing and sales technologies lets small companies like us reach potential customers worldwide with previously unseen precision. Combined with our disruptive pricing model of just $9.50 per month per user, we are able to move, learn and evolve faster to reach our goals”, Mikola emphasizes enthusiastically.
More information:
Markus Mikola, CEO
+358 40 533 4519
markus@contractzen.com
ContractZen is a turnkey enterprise-grade cloud service that enhances the management of business-critical documents and executive meetings for companies of all sizes. Secure and easy to use on any device, it enhances governance and business by reducing costs and risks. With ContractZen, your company is always prepared for due diligence and audits.
ContractZen was founded in 2015 with the mission to unleash the true value of companies of all sizes across the globe by helping them resolve their governance and contract hassles. The owners of ContractZen include several leading Finnish and international business lawyers as well as seasoned software industry professionals. The company is funded by Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation. www.contractzen.com