Kicking off this week with the first of a number of interviews we'll be doing over the next couple of months with contract management platforms. This is a rapidly expanding area and it's gone from simply being repositories and authorisation / signature software into becoming a very diverse ecosystem over the past few years.
My guest today is Elena Mechik of Berlin-based startup Inhubber, which offers a blockchain-based solution for contract management and tracking.
I have to admit that I was very ignorant about blockchain and its multitude of potential different uses and applications until I started digging into this topic. If you think "it's just something to do with Bitcoin", then think again!
Elena explains that the way you track and store contracts should be treated the same way as you store money. With increasing risk of phishing and cyberattacks, it's important you understand, track and trace your contract management activities.
Contracts are encrypted from user-to-user with Inhubber, whereas most other platforms tend to encrypt just on the cloud or on the server. There is no need to send documents via email or any other less secure method of communication.
Blockchain technology can be used in various industries and use cases.
It works by saving certain information on various "nodes" (or "chains"). You don't save this information on your personal laptop, rather it's saved hundreds or thousands of times on a network of other, independent nodes. This gives the document (or information) immutability: the elimination of somebody being able to fraudulently change or doctor a document.
In simple terms, it eliminates fraud and tracks and records any changes or amendments for posterity. There is no need with blockchain to save different versions of contracts in MS Word with the latest version filename as a differentiator.
There is a complete audit trail stored in cyberspace. Nobody can falsify or overwrite changes to a document without it being flagged.
Elena answers that typically, companies that have experience of being hacked are usually keenest to bring this on board. Historically this was only very large companies, but this is now starting to change.
As cybersecurity becomes more and more central to companies' risk management strategies, the size of the companies responding favourably to investing in blockchain technology are becoming smaller. It's no longer an issue that only big organisations need to worry about.
From real estate, through to construction and most recently banks are all showing an interest in adopting this type of technology.
While they may be the most obvious example, contracts are just one type of document which can benefit from blockchain.
Purchase orders and receipts for example can also be stored in Inhubber, and access control to different documents within an organisation or within a network of core suppliers can also be regulated through the platform.
By taking advantage of encryption technology, confidential documents can also be transferred for example from a buyer to a supplier when collaborating on joint innovation projects.
As with many competitor CLM solutions, Inhubber also has an intelligent contract monitoring function which can track some standard metrics such as:
This can also be programmed according to individual requirements of...
