Helping Manage Contracts with Ease | Mark Nastasi

"CobbleStone Software serves the healthcare industry with leading, AI-enabled contract management software tools such as merging clauses and metadata with templates for HIPAA BAAs, physician agreements, protected health information, and other critical healthcare contracts "

Mark Nastasi

Executive VP & Founder

CobbleStone Software

There have been many developments in digital solutions for contract management over the past few years. The global contract lifecycle management (CLM) market could reach $ 3.84 billion in valuation by 2026. But CLM hasn’t been without its problems. Customers lack organization around CLM, creating problems such as missed key dates, time-consuming manual drafting, negotiation collaboration bottlenecks, and legalese/clause inconsistencies. CobbleStone Software offers artificial intelligence-powered solutions to common CLM issues with a centralized, user-friendly contract repository, key date, task alerts, streamlined document assembly with the merging of clauses and metadata with templates from a pre-approved library, and clause ownership – among many other features. 

CobbleStone Software is cloud-based or deployed (on-premise) and used by many leading companies, state and local governments, and other regulated organizations worldwide. The platform hosts over 3 million contract transactions and billions of contract value. They have provided contract software as a Software as a Service (SaaS) longer than any other contract platform. CobbleStone is a Federal GSA vendor, SOC 2 reviewed, reviewed by Gartner, Forrester, and Dunn & Bradstreet. 

CobbleStone Software serves the healthcare industry with leading, AI-enabled contract management software tools such as merging clauses and metadata with templates for HIPAA BAAs, physician agreements, protected health information, and other critical healthcare contracts. Organizations can track and manage rebates related to contract records by configuring user-defined data sub-tables to punctually track rebate information such as rebate amounts, dates received, and statuses. Additionally, teams can track line items such as items, quantities, cost per unit, and more (for example, IV bags, medical equipment, laboratory products, or personal protective equipment (PPE). Organizations can document GL codes associated with a particular contract on a tidy contract record page. These GL codes can include assets, liabilities, expenses, revenue, allocations, and other GL codes organizations want to track neatly. CobbleStone Contract Insight AI-backed cloud contract management software is hosted at highly secure SaaS data centers and boasts SOC 1, SOC 2, HITRUST, and Privacy Shield compliance. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest to secure data further. They also offer an on-premise solution for clients who prefer to install the database behind their corporate firewall.

Making CLM Easier

CobbleStone’s IntelliSign® allows users to insert a saved, typed, or drawn signature, saving time during the contract signing process. Alongside the signature, users can save their initials, insert a date, add additional text to signatures, and use a previously saved title. This AI-powered eSignature optimization can revolutionize internal employee policy signing processes, provider and contractor signing processes, and other industry-relevant signing needs. Furthermore, signatories and stakeholders can use digital signatures that validate a signature’s signing date and that it was untampered with – decreasing the need for a licensed notary.

The company has climbed the success ladderowing to Mark Nastasi, the Executive VP and founder of CobbleStone Software with over 20 years of professional experience in the industry, who launched the first commercial contract software in 1995 named CMTS (Contract Management Tracking System). He has worked extensively with general counsels, paralegals, lawyers, and legal professionals to help manage contracts better. Mark is an exceptional leader and was able to witness issues he noticed within contract management before they became widely experienced and known. He is able to maintain and grow CobbleStone’s AI-enabled CLM software offering with relentless innovation and expansion of their global presence while putting the end-user above all else.

CobbleStone thwarts its competition by being a prescient leader in contract artificial intelligence. The company has paved the way with its proprietary contract AI engine with machine learning – VISDOM®. The VISDOM team is forward-thinking in its offering of auto-redlining, generative AI, intelligent clause recognition, and much more, with no sign of stopping. CobbleStone has received numerous recognitions for its customer service. With implementation, training, comprehensive customer support, thought leadership pieces, self-help resources, and recurring events, the company prides itself on ensuring its clients are fully supported to make the most of CobbleStone’s AI-enabled, digitally transformative features and functionality. 

In one instance, Intarcia Therapeutics needed contract management software that would be able to conquer some of the ongoing issues that they were facing daily. A few of the main challenges that they were faced with were that they currently had a manual contract lifecycle and request process, i.e., email, file/print server storage, there was no real-time visibility into any vendor or contract process, and they were looking for a web-based system with enhanced capabilities to tailor towards their business needs.

Intarcia Therapeutics chose CobbleStone Contract Insight® Enterprise for its robust and extensive functionality, as well as its intuitive user interface. The Sr. Director of Enterprise Applications at Intarcia Therapeutics stated, “CobbleStone is specifically designed as a CLM with extensible and scalable functionality… CobbleStone’s product value has far exceeded that of any competitor.”

CobbleStone’s Contract Management Software alleviated Intarcia Therapeutics’ contract lifecycle issues. Using CobbleStone Contract Insight, Intarcia Therapeutics now has a solution that is able to encompass the functionality that they were looking for in contract management software, including contract status visibility, approval alerts, and user dashboards. The Intarcia Therapeutics Sr. Director of Enterprise Applications was also delighted with CobbleStone’s implementation services and stated, “Great training and overviews. Additional follow-up/instructions were accurate and efficient. On-line documentation was also accurate and easy to follow…Overall, outstanding experience and very stable product.”

Towards the Future

CobbleStone plans on continuing its international expansion (which has started with Australia/The Pacific, The UK, and others). CobbleStone also plans on enhancing its AI-backed user interface, streamlining its workflow functionality, and fostering the innovation of its contract artificial intelligence features even more.

One of CobbleStone’s most exciting recent initiatives is its million-clause initiative. CobbleStone has introduced nearly one million real-life, classified clauses into VISDOM artificial intelligence. This initiative was launched in an effort to enrich the AI system and optimize the contract lifecycle management process. With the addition of this initiative, users can expect an increasingly dynamic and robust intelligent interface with repeated exposure to contract language and clauses.

Named entity recognition (NER) and natural language processing (NLP) are essential factors that helped this project come to fruition. VISDOM AI can feature more than 140 different standard clause types, and some of them include:

> Intellectual Property (IP) Clauses

> Waivers

> Confidentiality Clauses

> Amendments

For the days to come, the company under the leadership of Mark has numerous projects and undertakings to go and is looking towards making a difference in the industry with its pioneering solutions.