Panoram, the enterprise legal software solutions company founded by former Neota Logic managing directors Rick Seabrook and Greg Wildisen and Epiq Systems’ president Chris Olofson, has launched its own contract lifecycle management application, which is built in Microsoft 365 and surfaced in Teams.
Founded in 2020, Panoram started out as a reseller and implementation partner for Intapp Repstor, which is a document management system built on SharePoint. A large part of their business is based around advising corporate legal teams on how to leverage the Microsoft 365 suite, and their modus operandi is to create solutions that benefit the entire enterprise, not just the legal team.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Seabrook said: “We have been doing a lot of implementation work around Intapp Repstor’s software with a vision to fill in the gaps that they don’t solve, and one of those is around CLM. We have built our own software, Panoram Contracts, and our whole proposition is that it runs in Teams: it is native to Teams and Word and Outlook. We’re using Microsoft security and authentication so there are no separate logins, and all the documents stay in SharePoint.”
Users have access to their familiar Microsoft apps and Seabrook says that the focus has been simplicity and usability, commenting: “We’re not aiming to be the best-in-class CLM, but are exactly what we think the market needs.”
The new CLM solution is heavily no-code based with wizards to guide users. Seabrook says: “The part that we can control, we are making as easy as possible. We can’t control the state of your contracts or whether you need to work on playbooks, but the bit we can control is really intuitive.”
Seabrook says that this is the first of a number of modules that Panoram is working on to create a suite of legal and compliance applications. Its sweet spot are enterprises with between five and 50 lawyers, although currently at the smaller end of that scale. The intention is to extend the reach of the legal team and Seabrook says: “A lot of the design is around self-serve for the business: you can negotiate a contract in Word that using a framework that the legal team has specified.”
While a lot of CLM vendors are focusing on incorporating generative AI-based functionality for the likes of redlining, Seabrook says: “We think there are lot of basic foundational things you need around workflow and records management before you invest in AI. We haven’t started off as an AI play but we can go there.” Working within M365, Seabrook says that the Panoram team will be able to take advantage of Copilot, Microsoft Fabric and Azure AI Studio.
The CLM market is a very competitive space but Gartner has found that end users are being sold solutions that are overly complex for their needs and difficult to roll out. For many corporates, simplicity will be very attractive. It’s important to understand what is right for your business and Gartner in particular has some excellent research including a report on the critical capabilities for CLM here: https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/4874131
If you want to find out more about Panoram Contracts here is the new webpage: https://panoramdigital.com/our-solutions-panoram-contracts-clm/