Synergist.io received €1M investment from Berlin business development bank

Solving ambitious problems involves a certain level of risk and a healthy amount of innovation. Today, we’re pleased to announce a €1,000,000 innovation subsidy from the Investitionsbank Berlin (Berlin’s business development bank) to extend our contracting automation platform, synergist.io.

What does synergist.io do?

synergist.io is used by procurement departments, commercial teams and alternative legal service providers to execute high-volumes of recurring contracts with minimal effort. We provide a centralised and transparent workflow that is optimised for negotiating contract terms — the most tedious and unpredictable step in the process.

Users can manage increasing volumes of contracts required to onboard suppliers or close new business, all with minimal involvement from legal. They’re guided step-by-step through the process and are empowered to negotiate where necessary, within safe boundaries and using terms that have been pre-approved by their legal team.

What are the next steps?

synergist.io has been shaped first and foremost by users with an emphasis on ease of use, flexibility and security. This innovation subsidy allows us to extend our simple, intuitive negotiation experience to more complex contracting scenarios. In addition we’ll address our users’ demand to enable “smart contracts” by extracting key contract terms (supplier performance, sales order delivery for example) and managing them across existing business systems.

What’s an innovation subsidy?

Investitionsbank Berlin’s prestigious and competitive Pro FIT program is designed to boost the intensity of research, development and innovation in Berlin’s economy. We’re encouraged to apply “moonshot thinking” to solve problems and over the next 18 months we’ll break new ground in two areas; an intelligent negotiation assistant with guidance on how to respond in a negotiation, and a software-based mediator that identifies zones of possible agreement, both of which are made possible with the large contract and behavioural data sets collected from deals executed on synergist.io.

What’s the current state of legal tech?

Venture investment in legal tech has intensified in 2017 with contract management startup Ironclad raising $8M and hybrid law firm / legal tech startup Atrium LTS raising $10.5M. As companies become increasingly educated on advances in legal tech we’re seeing adoption increase as the benefits (speed, simplicity, cost) begin to outweigh the concerns (security, familiarity, legacy).

How can I get involved?

To learn more about contracting automation or join a community of contract professionals doing more with less, leave a comment below or request access directly at synergist.io