South African legal-tech startup Contract Understanding has launched operations, providing an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution to transform how companies manage legal contracts.
Launched earlier this month, Contract Understanding has developed an AI and machine learning powered platform that streamlines contract management which, up until now, has been a cumbersome, error-prone, and a time-consuming process.
The company’s technology enables businesses of all sizes to gain visibility into their contracts, mitigate contract risks, easily meet deadlines for renewals or cancellations, and automate processes. Norman Kretzmer, the founder and CEO of Contract Understanding, said its solution can vastly improve an organisation’s contract management cycle, while enabling it to ensure compliance with contractual obligations and maximisation of contract benefits.
“Our solution enables companies to take complete control of their contract benefits, obligations, and renewals. The software analyses and extracts key data from each contract, offering complete visibility into every contract a company manages,” he said.
The idea for the solution came from Kretzmer and his team’s own experiences.
“As entrepreneurs running medium-sized businesses, we encountered a range of challenges and frustrations in managing contracts after they’re signed. Pain points include losing track of the physical paperwork, missing deadlines to renew contracts on favourable terms, missing deadlines to cancel contracts before they auto-renew, losing out on benefits such as incentives or discounts due under a contract, or incurring penalties for non-compliance with contracts,” he said.
“We founded Contract Understanding to help other businesses optimise contract management and avoid these potentially expensive pitfalls.”
Self-funded to date, the startup does plan to raise external capital to fund its growth and to further develop its product. For now, though, it is focused on gaining early adoption of its solution.
“We offer one of the first artificial intelligence-powered SaaS solutions for contract management that is affordable and accessible to mid-sized and large companies. In addition to South Africa, our other target markets include African economic powerhouses such as Egypt, Kenya, and Nigeria as well as the Asian financial hubs of Singapore and Malaysia. We will consider further geographic expansion once we have bedded down our business in our initial target markets,” said Kretzmer.
