Robert Ambrogi Blog
Artificial intelligence company Neota Logic today rolled out version 9.2 of its AI automation platform, introducing Dashboards, a data-management and visualization tool that customers can configure to create custom views and charts of data collections and usage, and Open Negotiation, an authoring tool for building contract negotiation into document automation workflows within Neota.
[See video of Dashboards and Open Negotiation.]
But perhaps the bigger news is the company’s aggressive plan to expand its scale, in part by expanding its customer base — which to date has been primarily law firms — within corporations and corporate legal departments and by extending into additional verticals.
Kim Massana
This is the plan laid out by Kim Massana, who joined Neota Logic as president and chief executive officer, Americas, in October, and with whom I spoke yesterday by telephone, along with Rebecca Tear, who joined the company in October as global marketing manager.
Massana came to Neota Logic from Thomson Reuters, where he had been global head of customer experience, not just for legal, but across the organization. Earlier, he had been CEO of Innovative Interfaces, a developer of ERP software for academic and public libraries, and, for nearly a decade before that, he had been at Thomson Reuters in various executive roles, most recently as president of the company’s Elite business.
He was attracted to join Neota Logic because of its strong reputation in the industry and its potential for growth, he told me yesterday. Although still a small company, it is well known and well respected, he said, and it has “an amazing client list.”
“We have been very much a knowledge-driven company,” Massana said. “Now we are going to put a more commercial emphasis on that so that we can scale the company.”
Neota Logic has done well in selling to large law firms in the AmLaw 100 and Magic Circle, but Massana believes the company’s bigger opportunity is in the corporate world. Not only is it a bigger market overall with bigger budgets, but corporations’ term of investment in a platform such as Neota is longer, he said.
Expanding into the corporate market means also expanding into different verticals, Massana said. While the product has already established a strong base in banking and insurance, he said, he sees opportunities in sectors such as pharmaceuticals and healthcare. “We can tailor our solution to different industries and different verticals.”
All of this means that Neota Logic will be significantly expanding its marketing. “We’ve been good at attracting some major clients, but historically it’s been done more by word of mouth and by leveraging our great assets such as [co-founder] Michael Mills,” Massana said. “But our platform is now ready to go to a bigger scale.”
That expanded marketing will include a new website, a more prominent presence at major legal and technology conferences, and potential joint marketing programs with law firms and technology providers.
In addition, the company has created a customer advisory board and is in the process of creating a user group modeled on the Elite experience, which has a robust user community and annual user conference. Neota had its first user conference in December.
“Part of the problem we have is the platform is very powerful and can do lots of things,” Massana said. “That’s great, but that’s also a problem for marketing. We need to get our marketing more targeted.”
Massana said he is adjusting to New York weather after moving from Los Angeles, but added that he is energized by the Neota environment and the talented people who work there, including many lawyers and computer scientists. “This is the only place where I’ve worked where I feel like I’m the dumbest person by far.”