In our procurement approach, when we are reaching out to suppliers, we look at it from a partnership perspective, not from a transactional standpoint. From the moment we started interacting with Ironclad, we felt they were invested in making us successful.
As Canada’s largest network of dental practices with 550+ clinics, Dentalcorp faces complex contracting challenges across its organization. From practice-level supplier and Dentist contracts to enterprise-wide partnerships, the company’s procurement & legal teams manage a vast array of contracts that are crucial to maintaining operational efficiency across their network.
The limitations of legacy systems
Before implementing Ironclad, Dentalcorp relied on another widely used CLM platform for contract management. However, the implementation challenges they faced with this platform were just the beginning of their problems. “The implementation was difficult, and as a result, we actually realized how many limitations it has and how many things we couldn’t do,” explains Aneta Ciesla, Senior Manager of Legal Operations at Dentalcorp.
The team was limited to using the platform as a document repository, unable to create needed workflows or even generate basic reports. Even using it just as a repository, we couldn't get the reports we wanted. We couldn't configure most of the metadata and faced limitations at every step.
A needle in the proverbial haystack
Recognizing the need for change, Dentalcorp’s procurement team launched a comprehensive evaluation process, interviewing teams across the organization to understand their requirements. They evaluated 13 different CLM solutions, with Ironclad standing out across three key criteria:
1. Technical capabilities
“No solution can do everything that we want. But as long as they can do at least 95 percent of the must-haves and 80 percent of the nice-to-haves, that’s kind of the cutoff where we can say that this solution may work for us,” explains Paul.
2. Value for money
The team found solutions that offered more features but at a higher cost and complexity. “We had to take into consideration the balance of what we are paying for versus what we are getting,” notes Aritra.
3. Partnership approach
Ironclad’s support during the evaluation process set them apart. The team, including Casey, and Natalie, facilitated demonstrations and answered questions, while Alyson provided strong project management support.
During the conversations, Casey facilitated it so well. It made the journey very seamless.
The key to driving enterprise-wide adoption: early engagement, phased rollouts
Dentalcorp took a methodical approach to implementing Ironclad across the organization:
Early stakeholder engagement
The team started change management well before selecting Ironclad. “We met with all the team members and told them that this is a project. We are taking recommendations – what are your requirements? That way, they were already being prepped slowly that this new system is coming into the picture,” explains Paul.
Data migration strategy
The team adopted different approaches for different contract types:
For procurement contracts with 70-80% data accuracy, the team bulk-uploaded contracts with defined attributes via bulk import. After uploading the documents, they were audited for attribute accuracy.
For dentist agreements, the legal team took a more cautious approach.
“We decided to do it from scratch. We uploaded every single agreement manually…it took a lot of time, but now we’re very happy because we’re confident everything that’s uploaded in Ironclad is totally accurate,” says Ciesla.
Phased rollout
The legal team started with their most critical agreements first. “We decided to only launch the most important agreements first – locum and associate agreements. Over time, when users already knew how to use the system, we added amendments and terminations,” describes Ciesla.
Legal transformation at its finest
Within three months of implementation, Dentalcorp has seen significant improvements:
Dramatic time savings
- Contract drafting time reduced from 15 minutes to 4 minutes per contract
- Weekly trends show decreasing total workflow completion times
- Talent team can now get in front of candidates faster
Advanced analytics at your fingertips
The team now tracks over 15 attributes and generates critical reports including:
- Contracts expiring in the next 90 days
- Compensation analysis (e.g., associates paid on net collections vs. per diem)
- Missing agreements identification
- Practice-specific contract reports
Seamless workflows across departments
- Operations team now has clear visibility into contract status and approval chains
- IT teams can now manage their contracts independently while procurement maintains oversight
- Finance teams can access agreements for audit purposes
- The talent team has streamlined their recruitment process with faster contract generation
The impact has been felt across the organization.
We have received glowing feedback from the users outside of the legal team. Our operations team is much more organized because they know at every step of the way where the contracts are. They can just log in and see who's approving and what the status is.
The procurement team has been particularly impressed with Ironclad’s responsiveness to feedback. “Within three months, we have only seen two to three changes which, for an enterprise-level solution, is pretty impressive,” notes Paul.
A CLM-powered path forward
With approximately 90 users now actively using the system across procurement, legal, IT, finance, and operations, Dentalcorp has successfully transformed their contract management process from a basic repository to a comprehensive lifecycle management solution. The company has already loaded over 1,700 contracts into the system, representing about 95% of their supplier contracts, along with all active HR contracts and legal agreements.
As they continue to expand their use of the platform, Dentalcorp remains focused on maximizing its potential. Their successful implementation demonstrates how the right technology partner can transform enterprise-wide contract management while maintaining the flexibility needed for diverse departmental needs.
