Objective
Focused on driving better alignment between the Manulife project team and the GenAI development team to support the adoption and expansion of the contract summariser tool. Currently, the client team’s evaluation of the tool is largely centered around whether it can function as a simple plug-and-play solution for:
- Third-party Risk Management vendor contracts
- Client-specific information security clauses
However, meaningful adoption will likely require collaboration, customization, and iterative development rather than a turnkey deployment.
Strategic Observations
For the engagement to successfully adopt and scale the GenAI contract summariser, several mindset and process shifts may be required:
- Better articulation of requirements from the Manulife team to guide development.
- Greater collaboration with the GenAI team to support tool customization and iteration.
- Creation of a strategy for providing sample contracts that can be used as training data.
- Expectation management with stakeholders around the level of effort required to integrate the tool into existing Manulife processes.
- Clarification of roles between consulting and development teams to ensure productive collaboration.
- Framing successful adoption as a firm-wide capability win, rather than only a project-specific outcome.
Summary of Alignment Sessions for the Week:
- Monday – Tuesday
Spent several hours in working sessions with the GenAI team focusing on: - Walkthrough of the contract summariser tool and its current capabilities. - Review of existing use cases supported by the tool. - Detailed walkthrough of the current manual contract review process used by our team. - Discussion of the desired end-state review process and how the tool could support it. - Exploration of additional use cases that could potentially be incorporated. - Discussion of anticipated challenges related to: Model training, Tool customization, Quality and format of generated outputs
These sessions helped align the GenAI team on our operational workflows and the practical requirements of the review process.
Wednesday
Conducted a 1-hour walkthrough with the Project Manager and Delivery Manager covering: - The current (AS-IS) state of the contract summariser tool - How the tool currently supports existing use cases - Their vision for future (TO-BE) processes
Additionally: Held a separate discussion with the Project Manager on the importance of collaborative implementation. Emphasized that successful deployment will require joint effort across teams, rather than a purely plug-and-play deployment in the client environment.
Thursday Presented the tool walkthrough and adoption discussion to the Director and the broader project team.
Significant time was spent addressing questions and concerns around: - The effort required from the project team to support implementation - The need for collaboration with the GenAI development team - The practical steps required to operationalize the tool within existing workflows
Friday Held an informal discussion with senior team members regarding next steps for the GenAI tool. A number of perspectives were shared suggesting that the team may prefer to attribute limitations to the tool itself, rather than investing significant effort into enabling its adoption.
Personal Reflection
There is a risk that this approach may slow down experimentation and innovation, particularly as Generative AI adoption increases across our industry and within our practice. In order to fully leverage these tools, consulting teams may need to take a more active role in: - Use-case development - Testing and feedback loops - Implementation and operational integration
Becoming effective users of GenAI solutions will likely require closer collaboration between consulting teams and development teams, rather than treating these capabilities as standalone products.
Key Takeaways
The contract summariser tool has potential, but adoption requires iterative collaboration rather than plug-and-play expectations. Clearer requirements articulation and sample data strategy will be critical. Successful implementation will depend on cross-team collaboration between consulting and development teams. There is an opportunity to position the initiative as a strategic capability for the firm, not just a project-level or a use-case level success. I seriously remain concerned about the negative forces from within the team who wis to sabotage the initiatives.