Blackstone Accelerates Top-Tier Investments With Ontra’s Contract Automation
Efficiency improvements empower market leader to remain agile
Increased bandwidth allows growth equity professionals to focus on high-value work
Consistent standards maintained across various departments processing NDAs
"Ontra has really helped us unlock numerous efficiencies and gives the deal team a lot of leverage so we can focus on what really matters. That includes doing needed diligence and building deeper relationships with the management team and founders so we can be a trusted advisor and partner in the next leg of their journey."
Overview
Blackstone was founded in 1985 as a Mergers & Acquisitions firm and is currently the largest alternative asset manager in the world, with $1 trillion in AUM. The New York-based firm serves both institutional and individual investors and has a diverse portfolio of 230+ businesses and approximately 12,500 real estate assets.
Challenge
Large firm needs to process NDAs faster and consistently
In recent years, private equity has grown increasingly competitive. When a firm finds a valuable investment opportunity, it has to work against the clock to seal the deal before a more agile competitor swoops in.
As a growth equity investor, Hannah Kim seeks out high-caliber investment opportunities for Blackstone. NDAs are a critical component of this process, as they contain all the information typically needed to evaluate whether a business is a worthwhile investment.
Due to Blackstone’s enormous size, various departments process NDAs, so it’s crucial to ensure that everyone is aligned to the same standards. In addition to placing a significant burden on in-house teams and requiring considerable resources, this complexity leaves a lot of room for potential errors.
An inefficient NDA process can drag on for weeks, and anything that falls through the cracks creates additional work for the growth equity team.
Kim explained the resulting frustration: “The bandwidth I would have used to source other opportunities or do extra diligence or market work was mostly dedicated to getting through the NDA process.”
Solution
Contract Automation relieves bottlenecks and reduces the margin of error
Kim first used Ontra’s Contract Automation in a previous role before joining Blackstone, when NDA processing via an external counsel wasn’t efficient or cost-effective. She was thrilled that Ontra’s standardized and simple onboarding process would help her team at Blackstone just as it had at her previous firm, allowing her to get up to speed quickly.
Even more important than easy onboarding was the degree of fidelity that allowed Blackstone to rely on Contract Automation to complete NDA negotiations quickly, thoroughly, and with the right expertise.
In her words: “You can always trust that Contract Automation is going to work efficiently. It’s not going to let things slip through the cracks, and it will — at the right time — flag any nuances that might come up in the NDA process to prevent any bottlenecks further down the road.”
Results
Efficiency, uniformity, and more time for high-value work
A large firm like Blackstone needs to ensure that all the terms it’s accepting remain relatively uniform across a high volume of contracts. Because Contract Automation provides a summary table of all key terms in each NDA, it’s easy to spot any nuances and differences. This allows Blackstone to achieve consistency without straining its investment professionals’ bandwidth.
Ultimately, the Ontra solution enables Kim and the rest of Blackstone’s growth equity team to prioritize value-adding work.
Kim explained, “Ontra has helped us unlock numerous efficiencies and gives the deal team a lot of leverage. As a result, we can focus on what really matters. That includes doing needed diligence and building deeper relationships with the management team and founders so we can be a trusted advisor and partner in the next leg of their journey.”
On top of that, Ontra helps Blackstone retain its competitive edge. According to Global Head of Blackstone Growth (BXG) Jon Korngold, “With so many people using Ontra’s Contract Automation, it has essentially become the standard. It raises the question: ‘Why wouldn’t you use Ontra?’”
Published on March 24, 2024