Evisort brings AI to Cox

Automotive’s Contracts

Trish Whitlock
Bridgecommunity.com
Contributor
Evisort brings AI to Cox Automotive’s
Contracts
Trish Whitlock - Contributor

Evisort helps corporations to never miss an opportunity because of confusing and lengthy
contract language. Their artificial intelligence product automatically turns the text within
contracts into data and leverages this data to drive legal, procurement, finance, and business
operations.

This Silicon Valley and Boston-based startup was chosen for the 2018 BridgeCommunity
cohort and jump-started an immediate relationship with program Member, Cox Automotive
Inc. at the program’s kick off party in early May. Cyndi Scallion, Vice President Supply Chain
Management and Doug Smith, Senior Manager, Reporting & Data Analysis at Cox
Automotive Inc. both attended the kick off event specifically looking to meet the Evisort
team.

The pair had a specific use case in mind when they asked Jerry Ting, Founder and CEO of
Evisort, for a demo at the event. Following recent mergers and acquisitions, Cox
Automotive’s Supply Chain group was looking to get a handle on their plethora of contracts
(in terms of locations and formats), and pull data from them in a useful way. Cox
Automotive’s current tool involves a highly manual and not user friendly process, which only
functions as a repository with basic reporting. Ting jumped at the chance to demo Evisort’s
functionality to Scallion and Smith and was subsequently invited to Cox headquarters for a
working session where Cox shed more light on the areas they thought AI could be used as a
solution.
“There was so much transparency and trust. We were able to clearly understand Cox Automotive’s pain points, talk to employees who would be the
end user, pitch a crafted solution and discuss a proposal all within the first working session. The BridgeCommunity program created a structured
buying process and helped us to understand how to sell to mammoth corporations. We learned how to communicate to large enterprises and invested
the time in making enterprise-centric materials that we have already used in other sales discussions.” – Jerry Ting, Founder and CEO of Evisort

A paid 3-month pilot is in motion between Cox Automotive and Evisort. The success of the pilot will be measured by hit rates, the quality of the data
pulled from contracts, and feedback from employees on the ease of Evisort’s user interface. If successful, the longer-term vision would be to utilize the
product in other business units.

“Evisort intently listened to what Cox Automotive was looking to accomplish and compared it to how they solved similar issues in other client
situations. They listened to our hot-button items and went right to it. Larger companies with an established product are less willing to customize.
Evisort’s willingness to create a tailor-made solution has resulted in a more personal relationship to give and receive feedback than we have with
most other vendors. We’re looking forward to using their tool to enable us to not only have the confidence of locating contracts enterprise wide, but
also the capability to engage in new strategic sourcing opportunities from the output they provide.” – Doug Smith, Senior Manager, Reporting &
Data Analysis at Cox Automotive Inc.