In a crowded legal tech market, how does a corporate legal department pick the right technology vendor? While product features and functionality remain essential considerations, successful long-term technology partnerships depend on far more than technical specifications alone.
Legal teams must go beyond surface-level product comparisons to identify technology partners who are truly aligned with their strategic objectives and operational realities – and this largely means looking at the vendor’s business culture.
Who’s in charge?
At first glance, “business culture” might seem like a somewhat fuzzy term, but to be clear, it’s much more than just deciding if you like the people you’ve met with on the vendor side and want to do business with them.
Assessing business culture means taking a close look at how the vendor is set up as a company and how they operate. For example, what kind of ownership structure do they have? Is it a private equity-backed company with short-term goals? Or is it a founder-led organisation committed to sustainable, long-term growth?
That information might be publicly available via a quick Google search, but if it isn’t, customers shouldn’t be afraid to ask a potential vendor point-blank what their ownership structure is. After all, if it’s a private equity company that’s just looking to make a quick sale, a new set of owners with different priorities can completely change the future road map of the product.
Speaking of the product: It’s worth asking who’s actually developing it. The best tools are usually built by actual end users from that field who understand the real-world pain points and challenges that the tool is meant to address. This means purchasing systems built by procurement professionals, for procurement professionals; CRM systems built by sales professionals for sales professionals; and legal tech built by legal professionals, for legal professionals.
The presence of this “insider knowledge” within the company drives the culture and is a strong indicator that the company can deliver relevant, highly effective products on an ongoing basis. The absence of this culture within the business, by contrast, calls their ability to be a long-term strategic partner into question.
“The best tools are usually built by actual end users from that field who understand the real-world pain points and challenges that the tool is meant to address”
Making success a priority
Another area to pay attention to is a vendor’s customer engagement philosophy. For instance, do they have a well-defined customer success model? Do they have dedicated account managers that work with the customers to ensure their success?
Once again, customers shouldn’t be afraid to dig into the nitty-gritty here to get specifics from the vendor. How many customers does each account manager handle? Is it a company that assigns 5 customers per account manager – or is it more like 50 customers per account manager?
Customers should also know what the success metrics are, for the customer and for the vendor. Does the vendor’s definition of “success” look completely different to what the customer is hoping to achieve through their technology purchase? If those definitions of success are far apart, is the vendor willing to adjust their KPIs to help align success metrics between customer and vendor?
Also: how proactive or reactive is the vendor about addressing issues when they come up (which they inevitably will)? If they notice a bug or a limitation in the functionality of the product, will they proactively address it, or will they put it on the back burner and wait until enough customers call in and complain about it? Their approach tells you a lot about the overall culture of the business.
“Do they have a well-defined customer success model?”
Pricing and partnerships
There are a couple other keyholes for customers to peer into to get a sense of a vendor’s business culture.
Start with licensing: What is the true cost of doing business with the vendor? Are they willing to be fully transparent about what each license includes, and break down the itemised costs of that license? Does their quote encompass the total cost of ownership of that solution, or does it leave out areas like integration and ongoing maintenance?
It’s hard to have a truly scalable relationship with a vendor – one where they can grow with you as you grow – if you can’t get an accurate read on how much it truly costs to own and use their product.
Keep in mind, no technology is an island – so it’s worth understanding what kind of partner ecosystem a potential vendor has. Do they integrate with a wide variety of tools – including ones currently in operation at your organisation and deeply embedded in your daily workflows? If you don’t ask those questions, then you may not know what kind of integration points exist within the ecosystem and how interoperable it really is with your organisation.
More to the point, the presence or absence of strong partner alliances tells you something about the vendor’s overall business culture: It indicates whether they’re focused on designing products to be as seamless and frictionless as possible for their customers, or whether they’re putting the burden on the customer to figure out workarounds for getting all their tools to “play nice” together.
“What is the true cost of doing business with the vendor?”
It’s not all about the software – it’s also about the company
Procurement’s main role when it comes to legal tech is derisking purchasing decisions and driving better outcomes through smarter vendor partnerships. That’s precisely why vendor evaluations need to go beyond a “tick the box” exercise with a feature matrix towards a full understanding of the vendor’s business culture. Asking the right questions will surface valuable clues in this regard and will be well worth the effort – because it’s not just about buying software: it’s about investing in a partnership that aligns with your long-term success.
Marty Gomez
Head of Procurement
iManage
