Latest news with #CLM
Scoop
5 days ago
- Business
- Scoop
‘We Erred' – Stadium Policy That Threatened Nelson Giants Reversed
The future of Nelson's basketball club looks brighter after a change of heart over a food and drink policy. Nelson City Council and Trafalgar Centre manager CLM (Community Leisure Management) have agreed to give three community groups exemptions to a policy that otherwise gives CLM exclusive food and beverage rights at the NBS Nelson Giants' home court. Four weeks ago, the Giants warned the council that the policy would 'likely kill' the basketball club, which derives about 14% of its income from food and drink sales. The policy was adopted without consultation with key users of the Trafalgar Centre when the contract for the facility was renegotiated last year. On Tuesday, the council's Tenders Committee met confidentially to discuss the issue and Mayor Nick Smith announced on Friday morning that a solution had been found for the city's 'beloved' club. 'The prospect of the Giants not being part of Nelson was just untenable,' he said. 'We erred in not engaging with our anchor tenants, like the Giants, when the change was made. You live and learn.' The Giants, the NBS Dancing for a Cause charity fundraiser, and Te Tauihu o te Waka a Maui Māori Cultural Council kapa haka are the three users of the centre that were granted exemptions from the policy until the end of the contract on 30 June 2027. The policy had been changed to align with other 'premier' venues around the country, and to reduce costs to ratepayers who subsidise the facility by $2 million annually. 'I have no apologies for the fact that we want to minimise the cost to the ratepayer,' Smith said. 'The bit we did not understand was just the scale of the impact that would have on the finances of an organisation like the Giants.' The addition of the policy allowed the council to secure a 'significantly' cheaper contract for CLM to manage the facility, but some of those savings will now be paid back to CLM as compensation for the variation to the contract. Smith said the cost of the variation for the council would not be disclosed because it was commercially sensitive. Next year, the council will conduct a high-level strategic review of the Trafalgar Centre, which will include engagement with groups that use the facility, to ensure that the new 2027 contract will work for the community. It was possible that other groups will secure exemptions through that process, Smith added. Giants head coach and manager Mike Fitchett said securing the exemption was a 'massive relief'. Since his presentation to the council a month ago, he said he had been 'surprised' by support from the community. 'It's fair to say we're pretty overwhelmed with the support we received.' Last Saturday afternoon, Smith was presented with a petition urging the council find a solution. 'For that to generate 1200 signatures, and in a pretty quick time – it was fantastic for us. We know we're really well supported, and this was another indication of that for us,' Fitchett said. CLM Nelson community venues manager Mark Mekalick said the company was 'proud' to be a gold partner of the Giants. 'Community's at our heart and the Giants are a big part of this community, so it wasn't a hard decision to make,' he said. 'We want this venue to feel like their home.' Dancing for a Cause trustee Michelle Byczkow was 'really grateful' to the council, mayor, CLM, and councillor and contestant Campbell Rollo that the fundraiser had been granted an exemption. 'It just provides a really promising outlook for another successful event in 2027.' She said that this month's biennial event had raised $670,000 for the Nelson Tasman Hospice, surpassing her expectations. 'That support has followed through to everyone getting behind us and saying how they were feeling about the way that we and the Giants, and other community groups, were being disadvantaged.' The fundraiser had already negotiated its event hire agreement for its 2025 event and was therefore unaffected by the policy this year. But she said losing food and beverage rights, which were normally supplied by sponsors for free, for the 2027 event could have made the event not financially viable. 'That's not even somewhere that I want my mind to go.' She called the three exemptions a 'good step', but said the fundraiser would be lobbying for 'as many local community groups and charitable groups as possible' to also get exemptions in the 2027 centre contract. In the meantime, Fitchett was confident that the Giants would make the play-offs. 'We are still looking to pick up our first win of the season at the Trafalgar Centre, but we believe we can win six or seven of those last seven games to sneak in there.' Smith was cheering the club on: 'Go the Giants!'
RNZ News
6 days ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Nelson City Council revises catering contract to save Giants basketball team
Nelson_Giants_head_coach_and_general_manager_Mike_Fitchett_left_Nelson_Mayor_Nick_Smith_and_CLM_Trafalgar_Centre_manager_Mark_Mekalick Photo: Samantha Gee/RNZ Nelson Giants basketball club is no longer facing closure, after the local council amended its contract for their Trafalgar Centre venue, enabling the team to sell food and drinks at home games for another two years. Giants management earlier urged the Nelson City Council to re-consider its new contract with Community Leisure Management (CLM) that gave the company exclusive rights to food and beverage sales at the centre. At a council meeting earlier this month, head coach and general manager Mike Fitchett said the decision would "likely kill the Giants", because money raised through selling food and drinks at games accounted for about 15 percent of their revenue. More than 1200 people signed [ a petition calling on the council to rethink its position ] . Nelson Mayor Nick Smith said the council should have engaged with the venue's users before negotiating the contract and promised to do better next time. Nelson City Council had a contract with CLM for several hundred thousand dollars a year to manage the Trafalgar Centre. Smith said CLM had "dropped the price significantly" in exchange for the exclusive hospitality rights. "We didn't appreciate in coming to the agreement of the exclusive food and beverage with CLM, a common arrangement in premier venues around the country, that it would have such a negative impact," he said. "We should, at the time, have engaged with our regular users and there's some lessons for us to learn from that." He said the prospect of the Giants not being part of Nelson was "untenable", the region had huge pride in the team that had a long history in the NZ Basketball League and many players had gone on to become Tall Blacks. Smith said the council had negotiated a variation to the contract with CLM until June 2027, the remainder of its term. There was a cost to ratepayers, which he would not disclose for commercial reasons. The centre cost $2.5 million to run each year and generated about $500,000 per year in income. Smith said the council had hoped to reduce the cost on ratepayers. Smith said the variation would also apply to two other groups that used the centre - Dancing for a Cause and Te Tauihu o te Waka a Maui Māori Cultural Council kapa haka. "The savings that were achieved last year were significant and we've had to return a portion of those savings back to CLM to be able to get this exemption for these three organisations," he said. Nelson Giants head coach Mike Fitchett calls the shots against Tauranga Whai. Photo: Chris Symes/ Smith said some community organisations would be disappointed that they were not included in the exclusion, so the council needed to think strategically about the venue's management from June 2027. "We need a partner like CLM that's able to promote it as a national venue and maintain it as a premier facility, but I think we've got a bit of a challenge to provide a hybrid model that will also work for our community-based organisations," he said. Fitchett said the club was overwhelmed with support, after it went public about the issue, with fans from Nelson and around the country getting in touch. "For [the council] to find a solution for us, it's a massive relief," he said. "To secure our future at the Trafalgar Centre for the next few years is huge." CLM Trafalgar Centre manager Mark Mekalick said the organisation was glad to come to an agreement that worked for everyone. The company had managed the Trafalgar Centre for the last seven-and-a-half years and put forward a contract proposal based on delivering the best value. When Giants management spoke publicly about how contract would affect the team, Mekalick said the company valued the partnership and wanted to work together to find a resolution. "Community is at our heart and the Giants are a big part of this community, so it wasn't a hard decision to make," he said. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Sirion Recognized as a Customers' Choice in 2025 Gartner® Voice of the Customer for Contract Life Cycle Management Report for Third Consecutive Year
Sirion is the only CLM vendor to be recognized as a Customers' Choice every year since the report's inception; rated 4.9 out of 5 based on end-user feedback LEHI, Utah, May 27, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sirion, a global leader in AI-native contract lifecycle management (CLM), today announced that it has been recognized as a Customers' Choice in the 2025 Gartner® Voice of the Customer for Contract Life Cycle Management Report - the only CLM vendor to be positioned in the Customers' Choice Quadrant three years in a row. A complimentary copy of the report is available here. Based on verified feedback from end-users on Gartner® Peer Insights™, Sirion scored an overall rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars, with 97% of users (based on 100 reviews as of Jan. 31, 2025) saying they would recommend the platform. You can view user reviews for Sirion on Gartner Peer Insights here. "We are honored by the trust customers have consistently placed in Sirion," said Rajeev Kumar, Chief Customer Officer, Sirion. "We believe this sustained recognition reflects our customer-first approach to providing tangible value across the customer journey, from sales, solution design, implementation, to post-deployment support. We are focused on providing a seamless, conversational contracting experience with agentic AI, which will help customers unlock the full potential of their contracts." Why Customers Trust Sirion to Deliver Lasting Value Every aspect of our business is tailored to maximize customer value. Sirion's agentic CLM platform is designed to deliver an autonomous contracting experience aligned with the requirements of global enterprises. These include deep self-service capabilities, user experience that promotes faster adoption, and extensive integrations with major enterprise systems that accelerate time-to-value. Beyond the platform, Sirion supports customers across every stage of their journey—from onboarding and training to value realization—through programs such as Sirion University and an active peer community to help customers get maximum RoI from their CLM investment. This holistic approach is why customers see Sirion not just as a software provider, but as a long-term business partner who they trust to manage over $800B in contract value across 70 countries. What Our Customers Say About Sirion "GenAI based features like Ask Sirion and AE Turbo are working exceptionally well for the Company's needs. Additional GenAI features such as Issue Identification and Auto-Redlining look very promising. " [Read the full review here]– Legal and Compliance Associate; IT Services Company The tool is really intuitive and fast. For us, the ease of collaboration offered through Sirion's workflows is great. " [Read the full review here]– Manager, Legal and Compliance; Energy and Utilities Company "Sirion seamlessly integrated with our upstream and downstream systems to streamline our end-to-end contracting processes. " [Read the full review here]– Senior Architect; Telecommunication Company "We have been able to create complex workflows within the system, and created a repository for all of our contracts allowing us to create data about them for follow up and analytics." [Read the full review here]– S2P Data and Analytics Lead; Manufacturing Company The breadth of the product functionality ensures that the solution delivers value to all parts of our business across Sales, Delivery, Finance, Contracts, Legal and Operational teams." [Read the full review here]– Commercial Contracts Manager; Telecommunication Company This latest distinction for Sirion follows its recent recognition as a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for CLM for the third year in a row, the highest ranked vendor for all CLM Use Cases in the 2024 Gartner® Critical Capabilities for CLM, second year in a row. In 2025, Sirion was recognized as the No. 1 CLM Vendor in Spend Matters® Spring 2025 SolutionMap for the fourth successive time, a Leader in the 2025 Forrester Wave for CLM; Sirion is also a leader in 2024 IDC Marketscape: CLM for Corporate Legal, as well as 2023 IDC Marketscape: Buy-side CLM reports. We believe such consistent recognition from end users and analysts demonstrates why Sirion is the leading CLM vendor in the market today. Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Contract Life Cycle Management, Kaitlynn Sommers, Kerrie McDonald, Lynne Phelan, 14 October 2024. Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Contract Life Cycle Management, Kaitlynn Sommers, Kerrie McDonald, Lynne Phelan, 21 October 2024. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, MAGIC QUADRANT and PEER INSIGHTS are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences with the vendors listed on the platform, should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. About Sirion Sirion is the world's leading AI-native CLM platform, pioneering the application of Agentic AI to help enterprises transform the way they store, create, and manage contracts. The platform's extraction, conversational search, and AI-enhanced negotiation capabilities have revolutionized contracting across enterprise teams – from legal and procurement to sales and finance. The world's most valuable brands trust Sirion to manage 7M+ contracts worth nearly $800B and relationships with 1M+ suppliers and customers in 100+ languages. Leading analysts such as Gartner, IDC, and Spend Matters have consistently recognized Sirion as a leader in CLM for its focus on category-leading innovation. For more information, visit View source version on Contacts Devinderjeet Singh (DJ)Marketing@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Wire
27-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Sirion Recognized as a Customers' Choice in 2025 Gartner® Voice of the Customer for Contract Life Cycle Management Report for Third Consecutive Year
LEHI, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Sirion, a global leader in AI-native contract lifecycle management (CLM), today announced that it has been recognized as a Customers' Choice in the 2025 Gartner® Voice of the Customer for Contract Life Cycle Management Report - the only CLM vendor to be positioned in the Customers' Choice Quadrant three years in a row. A complimentary copy of the report is available here. This sustained recognition reflects our customer-first approach to providing tangible value across the customer journey, from sales, solution design, implementation, to post-deployment support. Share Based on verified feedback from end-users on Gartner® Peer Insights™, Sirion scored an overall rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars, with 97% of users (based on 100 reviews as of Jan. 31, 2025) saying they would recommend the platform. You can view user reviews for Sirion on Gartner Peer Insights here. "We are honored by the trust customers have consistently placed in Sirion,' said Rajeev Kumar, Chief Customer Officer, Sirion. 'We believe this sustained recognition reflects our customer-first approach to providing tangible value across the customer journey, from sales, solution design, implementation, to post-deployment support. We are focused on providing a seamless, conversational contracting experience with agentic AI, which will help customers unlock the full potential of their contracts.' Why Customers Trust Sirion to Deliver Lasting Value Every aspect of our business is tailored to maximize customer value. Sirion's agentic CLM platform is designed to deliver an autonomous contracting experience aligned with the requirements of global enterprises. These include deep self-service capabilities, user experience that promotes faster adoption, and extensive integrations with major enterprise systems that accelerate time-to-value. Beyond the platform, Sirion supports customers across every stage of their journey—from onboarding and training to value realization—through programs such as Sirion University and an active peer community to help customers get maximum RoI from their CLM investment. This holistic approach is why customers see Sirion not just as a software provider, but as a long-term business partner who they trust to manage over $800B in contract value across 70 countries. What Our Customers Say About Sirion 'GenAI based features like Ask Sirion and AE Turbo are working exceptionally well for the Company's needs. Additional GenAI features such as Issue Identification and Auto-Redlining look very promising. " [Read the full review here] – Legal and Compliance Associate; IT Services Company The tool is really intuitive and fast. For us, the ease of collaboration offered through Sirion's workflows is great. ' [Read the full review here] – Manager, Legal and Compliance; Energy and Utilities Company 'Sirion seamlessly integrated with our upstream and downstream systems to streamline our end-to-end contracting processes. " [Read the full review here] – Senior Architect; Telecommunication Company 'We have been able to create complex workflows within the system, and created a repository for all of our contracts allowing us to create data about them for follow up and analytics.' [Read the full review here] – S2P Data and Analytics Lead; Manufacturing Company The breadth of the product functionality ensures that the solution delivers value to all parts of our business across Sales, Delivery, Finance, Contracts, Legal and Operational teams.' [Read the full review here] – Commercial Contracts Manager; Telecommunication Company This latest distinction for Sirion follows its recent recognition as a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for CLM for the third year in a row, the highest ranked vendor for all CLM Use Cases in the 2024 Gartner® Critical Capabilities for CLM, second year in a row. In 2025, Sirion was recognized as the No. 1 CLM Vendor in Spend Matters® Spring 2025 SolutionMap for the fourth successive time, a Leader in the 2025 Forrester Wave for CLM; Sirion is also a leader in 2024 IDC Marketscape: CLM for Corporate Legal, as well as 2023 IDC Marketscape: Buy-side CLM reports. We believe such consistent recognition from end users and analysts demonstrates why Sirion is the leading CLM vendor in the market today. Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Contract Life Cycle Management, Kaitlynn Sommers, Kerrie McDonald, Lynne Phelan, 14 October 2024. Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Contract Life Cycle Management, Kaitlynn Sommers, Kerrie McDonald, Lynne Phelan, 21 October 2024. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, MAGIC QUADRANT and PEER INSIGHTS are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences with the vendors listed on the platform, should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. About Sirion Sirion is the world's leading AI-native CLM platform, pioneering the application of Agentic AI to help enterprises transform the way they store, create, and manage contracts. The platform's extraction, conversational search, and AI-enhanced negotiation capabilities have revolutionized contracting across enterprise teams – from legal and procurement to sales and finance. The world's most valuable brands trust Sirion to manage 7M+ contracts worth nearly $800B and relationships with 1M+ suppliers and customers in 100+ languages. Leading analysts such as Gartner, IDC, and Spend Matters have consistently recognized Sirion as a leader in CLM for its focus on category-leading innovation. For more information, visit
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Unlicensed, Unqualified and On the Road: Driver Risk Starts With Licensing
Let's get real for a second: Just because someone has a license doesn't mean he or she should be driving a commercial vehicle. New posts from Adam Wingfeld in the FreightWaves Playbook report that nearly 4% of truck drivers on U.S. highways don't have a valid CDL. That's tens of thousands of drivers, potentially hauling 80,000-pound loads while technically not legal to operate them. It gets worse. What license do you get before you can have a CDL? Thirteen states don't require verifiable behind-the-wheel experience for new drivers before issuing a basic license. That means teenagers could get a regular driver's license with zero practical training or experience, learn all the wrong habits by themselves and then apply for a CDL two years later under specific state laws. No professional background. No real driver experience. Just a piece of plastic and a promise. The U.S. licensing system has gaps, which are where risk exists. It all starts with whom we license and put on the highway and in our equipment. States govern licensing for the most part, but I'd argue we need a more centralized, overarching standard. I get teen students wanting to be licensed regularly even though they get in the vehicle and don't even understand how to adjust their mirrors or seats. Most fleets think of qualifications as something you get out of the way during onboarding: Review the CDL, run a motor vehicle record (MVR), and check it again next not a qualification, that's a formality. A check-the-box mindset. If 'Bobby' loses his license in February because of a child support issue or DUI, and you don't pull another MVR until the following January, he could be running freight unlicensed for 11 months. You'll only find out when something goes wrong, and by then, it's too late to fix it. This is why continuous license monitoring (CLM) shouldn't be optional, it should be a factory setting, a regulatory requirement. This is commonsense policy. SambaSafety's 2025 report pulls from over 6 billion risk events, 50 million MVRs, and 1,000-plus fleet datasets across the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS) and Compliance, Safety and Accountability (CSA) system. It shows a trucking industry operating blindly when it comes to driver risk. Let's break down the numbers and what they mean:78% of risky driver behavior goes undetected without more than three-quarters of warning signs, violations, suspensions, license expirations or crashes that fleets never see coming if they rely only on annual MVRs. 40% of all high-risk drivers had no MVR activity in the past 12 alone don't catch the most dangerous drivers because CSA and crash reports often don't show up there. Your clean MVR driver could be a liability you haven't discovered yet. Fleets using CLM are seven times more likely to identify, retrain or remove high-risk drivers not just about catching bad drivers. It's about keeping good ones from going sideways by intervening with data-backed coaching. Fleets that leverage driver data saw 38% fewer violations per isn't just for big carriers anymore. Fleets that connect their risk and safety programs with real-time driver monitoring saw tangible results. Fleets that took more than 10 days to hire saw 22% higher risk onboarding isn't just inefficient; it's risky. Top-tier drivers don't sit around waiting, and drivers who do might have skeletons in their closets. It's not just that we don't monitor licenses well. It's that we give them out like candy. In the U.S., Entry-Level Driver Training (ELDT) is a great concept, but the lack of minimum hour requirements means that, in some cases, all the classroom, behind-the-wheel and range training could be done in a single day if a school wanted to do it that way. Compare that to Germany, where getting a commercial license involves six months of training, over 100 hours behind the wheel and classroom time rivaling college coursework. What are we really qualifying? A license or an operator? That's where systems like SambaSafety and Tenstreet shine. SambaSafety offers continuous license monitoring that alerts you when a CDL is suspended or revoked. It also pulls in CSA data. You'll know when one of your drivers was just written up in a roadside inspection, even if they haven't told you yet. Tenstreet, on the other hand, has gone from being a recruiting tool to a full-blown compliance assistant. Its latest feature, showcased at the Tenstreet User Conference in Las Vegas, is AI file reviews. AI file reviews automatically review your driver qualification files in real time to flag expired or expiring medical cards and missing documents. It also enables you to order verifications of employment from past employers so you can better grasp historical workplace performance that coincides with regulatory qualification. Together, these systems help you recruit smarter, onboard faster and monitor continuously, so you stop hiring problems and start retaining you want to stay off the plaintiff's radar, improve safety and operate ethically, here's what you need to do: Use continuous license monitoring. Annual MVRs won't cut it anymore. Add Preemployment Screening Program reports and CSA data into hiring decisions. You need more than just a license check. Review electronic logging device training logs and verify that real training occurred. Evaluate past employment not just on job title, but on performance. Invest in systems like Tenstreet that reduce human error. Track driver behavior and violations after hire. Qualification is ongoing, not a one-time deal. An MVR that looks clean doesn't mean a driver is safe. The FMCSA and Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance have clarified that driver qualification and risk management are evolving. It's time your fleet evolves as well. If we're serious about road safety, insurance costs, litigation exposure and doing right by our drivers and the public, then licensing, monitoring and qualification must be the backbone of our operations. The post Unlicensed, Unqualified and On the Road: Driver Risk Starts With Licensing appeared first on FreightWaves.
