2022 has definitely been an eventful year. When I reflect on the past 12 months, the opening lines of Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities come to mind:
“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief. It was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of Light. It was the season of Darkness. It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair.”
While this year saw its fair share of highs, it also witnessed a few major lows.
But since I’d like to end this “Year in Review” on a positive note 🙂, let’s start with the bad, which, I’m sure you can probably guess…
War in Ukraine
It’s never easy to run a business effectively when your country is turned upside down. Sadly, our neighbor to the east proved to be much less than friendly. But little did they know that they went barking up the wrong tree.
I won’t dive into the specifics, but generally speaking, we’ve stayed strong and tried to do our part to ensure Ukraine emerges triumphant. At the same time, we’ve managed to grow as a company, largely thanks to the support we’ve received from our fellow Onit companies, our partners, and, most of all, our users.
For a deeper look into how we’ve functioned throughout the war, check out our post “How We Operate Under Air Raid Sirens”.
Continuity & Expansion
During the earlier months of the war, our main goal was to guarantee AXDRAFT remained up and running. Various continuity plans were set in motion, and steps were taken to ensure everyone remained safe with a warm bed to sleep on and a stable internet connection.
After the initial chaos subsided, we were able to expand a bit. In addition to more new employees joining us here in Kyiv, we also opened an office in Lviv. We also have several other colleagues spread throughout Europe, such as in Germany and Estonia.
New Products, Features, and Integrations
With every passing year, we aim to provide more features that can help our users get their routine legal work done faster, more efficiently, and with less hassle.
This year, we enabled:
Here’s a bit of a closer look at each one:
ContractWorks Integration
By integrating AXDRAFT with ContractWorks, users can benefit not only from AXDRAFT’s powerful document automation engine, but also from ContractWorks’ robust storage system.
Both platforms are SOC 2 Type II certified, which means all contract data remains safe and secure. At the same time, since both systems are linked, it takes just a single click to switch between them, while all data can be pulled and reused for new agreements.
This potent one-two combo ensures that all contract processes are united under one roof.
Salesforce Integration
Sales teams end up spending 30% of their time working on legal matters instead of selling. As a result, a lot of potential sales are missed, resulting in lower revenue.
By integrating AXDRAFT CLM with Salesforce CRM, sales representatives can initiate the drafting of compliant, Legal-approved contracts directly from their CRM dashboard. Client data gets automatically inserted into contracts and invoices, and all that’s needed from Legal is a quick skim and approval.
Not only does this enable sales teams to close deals faster, but it frees them to pursue more deals.
Collaborative Editor
In just six words, we can describe our native Collaborative Editor as Just like MS Word, but better.
Our editor allows teams to redline documents side-by-side in real time from multiple locations. It’s also two-way compatible with MS Word, but unlike other processors, our editor maintains all complex formatting, such as tables, graphs, and multi-level lists, no matter how many times to import and export.
On top of all that, it features a built-in clause library that allows you to swap clauses as fast as you might swap vocabulary in Google Docs. And you can assign specific clauses to specific stakeholders, saving them time and effort scanning the document.
Record Performance
Even though the way caused a drop in business early on, we bounced back strong. Q1 may have seen low sales performance, but we recovered and surpassed our later quarterly sales target by 200%.
The use of AXDRAFT is gaining traction as well. In just the last month, we hit a record number of documents generated using our products.
That’s just proof that no matter what Russia may throw at us, Ukraine will never give up. We’ll find ways to continue living, learning, and succeeding.
Post-Covid World
Over the past two years, international travel was mostly restricted, which meant many of the biggest conferences were either inaccessible or completely canceled.
2022 saw a return to normalcy (at least in terms of conferences). In addition to attending several local events in Ukraine, we were able to make it to the States to visit Legal Week, ACC, and CLOC.
Each event was not only a breath of fresh air, but they allowed us to meet and hear many of the legal industry’s top minds. We definitely hope to visit them again next year.
New Year Resolutions
It’s impossible to ring in the New Year without a few resolutions and goals. Unlike some resolutions people make (looking at you Mr. I’ll-go-to-the-gym-every-day 😉Truth be told, I’m guilty of this as well 😅), we definitely will work towards achieving them (we promise!).
Here’s a sneak peek at what’s in store for 2023 (thaaat will take a bit of getting used to):
- More updates to further improve and boost the performance of Collaborative Editor and Version Control. The most robust they are, the more capable they’ll be at helping you process edits and redlines.
- Further refinement to our new ContractWorks integration. Since we just launched it, there are bound to be a few bugs and issues. We’ll work alongside partners and users to find them, isolate them, and fix them so that you can enjoy the best that AXDRAFT and ContractWorks have to offer.
- Adding new employees to fill critical roles. While there are some serious headwinds in the global economy, we won’t shy away from hiring talented individuals who will contribute towards a better future for AXDRAFT.
- Winning more awards. We won a few this year, such as a Bronze Stevie and a Gold Globee, but we’ll push towards even greater success.
- Setting new personal performance records. We won’t settle for what we’ve done. Instead, like any good marathon runner, we hope to break the personal records we’ve set this year.
Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!
The world is constantly changing, and sometimes it feels like it changes faster than we can respond.
Yet despite all the chaos and turmoil, you have stayed with us through thick and thin. For your support, we are eternally grateful 🙏
As always, please feel free to reach out to us at any time or explore our website and resource library.
But above all, stay safe this holiday season, and may you have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! 🎁🎄