Ontra’s human-in-the-loop (HITL) implementation process leverages AI to digitize and abstract documents at scale, while our dedicated Solutions Consulting team applies its legal and private markets experience to ensure the AI outputs are tailored to our customers’ legal, compliance, and governance use cases.
Alison Mehic, Director, Implementation, and Ashley Ruocco-Cocciardi, Manager, Solutions Consulting, oversee the teams responsible for onboarding new Insight for Funds and Insight for Credit customers: Customer Onboarding Managers, Implementation Associates, and Solutions Consultants.
Together, these teams ensure customers benefit from Ontra’s technical expertise and legal experience. Onboarding Managers guide customers through the implementation process, which takes careful planning and feedback. Implementation Associates know the product inside and out, acting as “humans in the loop” while leveraging AI to abstract documents, obligations, and covenants.
Last but not least, our Solutions Consultants are another critical aspect of our HITL system. They leverage their legal and private markets backgrounds to support high-quality abstraction, summaries, and AI outputs.
Learn how these leaders and their teams help customers achieve a smooth implementation to derive efficiencies and value from Insight as soon as possible.
Q: Tell us a bit about your roles and backgrounds.
Alison: I’ve spent my career in financial technology, split between tech firms and asset managers in onboarding and customer success roles. I’m passionate about how technology can help professionals save time so they can focus on what matters. This drew me to Ontra’s mission and the people behind it.
I started on Ontra’s Implementation team and, shortly thereafter, launched Ontra’s Customer Onboarding team, focused on project and relationship management to get customers up and running quickly with Ontra’s software-as-a-service products.
I currently manage Ontra’s Implementation and Customer Onboarding team, two sides of the same coin, making sure that we deliver customers a smooth onboarding to Ontra, backed by an exceptional product implementation.
Ashley: I began my career in the Investment Management Group at a large, international law firm, where I focused on the foundational side of the industry — forming fund entities, managing launches, and navigating complex MFN processes for major international investment managers.
I then moved in-house to a global asset management firm, where I developed a deep appreciation for the cross-functional nature of funds; I worked daily with Investor Relations, Tax, and Accounting to manage a fund’s lifecycle.
Before leading the Solutions Consulting team at Ontra, I spent time in the trenches as a member of the Ontra Legal Network, manually abstracting the very LPAs and side letters our AI now handles. My goal is to ensure our technology solves the actual “2:00 AM” problems I faced during my years in practice.
Q: What is the role of the Implementation team at Ontra?
Alison: The Implementation team — made up of both Implementation and Customer Onboarding Associates — is a customer’s first touchpoint after agreeing that one or more of Ontra’s products will help solve an everyday problem.
It’s the Implementation team’s job to ensure customer data and documents are digitized into the Ontra platform quickly and accurately, so customers can begin their work in our solutions and experience efficiencies right away.
The team comprises Ontra’s top product experts. Our Implementation Associates are part of our “humans in the loop.” They are methodical and detail-oriented individuals who thrive in this type of analytical setting. They work alongside our AI-powered product functionality to efficiently digitize our customers’ data and documents into our systems. They live in our products day in and day out, overseeing our customers’ AI outputs during implementation. Because Ontra works exclusively with private markets firms, our Implementation Associates know what our customers expect in order to trust our tools.
Q: What is the Solutions Consulting team, and why is it unique?
Ashley: Ontra’s Solutions Consulting team bridges the gap between complex legal challenges and innovative technology, tailoring solutions that enhance efficiency, accuracy, and strategic advantage for our customers. We provide cross-functional support to our internal teams, including our Customer Onboarding and Implementation Associates, ensuring our customers receive the most effective technology and an unparalleled service experience.
We aren’t just technical experts; we have sat in our customers’ seats. Every member of our Solutions Consulting team is a former practicing lawyer with significant domain expertise. We speak our customers’ language because we’ve been in their shoes.
Most importantly, our Solutions Consultants don’t just see data points. They see MFN obligations, ERISA constraints, investment restrictions, NDA pitfalls, and potential SEC examinations. We ensure that the output isn’t only fast but also accurate and meets our customers’ needs. Our value is in truly understanding the “why” behind our customers’ documents and needs.
Q: How do Ontra’s customers benefit from the different roles across these teams?
Alison: We want to offer our customers an implementation experience that is both efficient and fit for purpose. It’s important to us to really delight customers and make a meaningful difference in their day-to-day lives. Our product and the implementation process have to deliver something that’s fit for their specific needs — not a generic use case.
The Implementation and Solutions Consulting teams function as the two sides of the same coin to achieve that goal.
Ashley: In the private funds space, AI is only as powerful as the legal logic behind it. That’s why our Solutions Consulting team isn’t made up of broad-scope technologists. We are a team of former lawyers — most of whom specialized in private funds — turned dedicated subject matter experts and strategic solutions architects.
We collaborate closely with the Implementation team to achieve optimal results for our customers. Both teams constitute essential components of the human-in-the-loop framework. The Solutions Consulting team leverages its specialized knowledge to provide an additional layer of quality assurance, offering expert guidance where necessary, and ensuring customers receive a solution that is fit for purpose.
Q: Getting into the details, what is the Insight onboarding process like?
Alison: Our Onboarding Managers oversee the onboarding process for Insight for Funds. They work closely with our customers from the minute a firm signs a contract with Ontra.
Our Onboarding Managers explain:
- Implementation milestones and requirements,
- Provide project plans and status updates, and
- Serve as guides throughout the onboarding period.
Our customers are responsible for providing Ontra with their documents (side letters, LPAs, credit agreements) so that implementation can begin. Once a firm sends documents to Ontra, our Implementation Associates leverage our AI technology to abstract the documents’ terms and obligations, while our Onboarding Managers assist our customers in planning the next steps.
Early in the implementation, we conduct a “priority fund review,” where we abstract a customer-designated set of fund documents to show them their data in our system as early in the process as possible. This step helps customers envision the future state more clearly and provide feedback early.
Incorporating new technology into our customers’ workflows requires thoughtful planning and effective change management. Our Onboarding Managers help customers plan for their future state, while our Implementation team works diligently behind the scenes. Later, the customer and the Implementation team come back together for a final review and sign off on the abstraction’s completeness and accuracy.
Q: Can you tell us a bit more about the technical aspect of Implementation?
Alison: For Insight for Funds, we digitize our customers’ side letters and LPAs to create a repository of obligations, essentially a digital compendium. We refer to this process as “abstraction,” because it’s more than simple digitization. Abstraction turns a static document into structured data.
Instead of using Ctrl+F to search a document, our users can use filters, categories, or obligation groups in Insight for Funds to look across an entire database of obligations for all the firm’s funds and strategies to find what they need.
For Insight for Credit, Implementation associates follow the same process to abstract key covenants. The team also identifies a set of key business and legal terms to create summaries for each agreement. These credit agreement summaries can then be pulled into a comparison tool, allowing our users to see similarities and differences in key terms across multiple agreements.
Q: How is the Solutions Consulting team involved in customer onboarding?
Ashley: Our team is integral to the human-in-the-loop process. We train Implementation Associates on best practices, ensuring the team possesses a robust understanding of customer requirements, and provide the necessary background on the document types our customers utilize.
We review and refine the implementation output for Ontra’s Premier Tier customers. We also participate in customer calls, supporting the Onboarding and Customer Success Managers by presenting the Implementation team’s work for the account, engaging customers with industry-specific terminology, and emphasizing Insight’s capabilities.
Overall, our Solutions Consultants leverage their legal expertise to:
- Refine quality control during the human-in-the-loop review step of implementation.
- Ensure customer alignment during onboarding conversations with customers to confirm that the Implementation team addresses the specific reasons they engaged with Ontra.
- Work closely with Customer Success Managers to address bespoke or ad hoc customer requests after implementation.
Q: Can you give us an example of the human-in-the-loop process?
Alison: Once the Implementation Associates complete the core implementation work, Solutions Consulting conducts a “front-end review” for Premier Tier customers. A consultant accesses our customers’ Insight account as if they were the customer and tests the platform as our users would — running filters and queries to ensure they can answer common questions quickly and with confidence — logging feedback along the way. Our Solutions Consultants provide direct feedback to the Implementation Associate working on that customer, ensuring a tight feedback loop and continual improvement.
Ashley: We evaluate the platform from the customer’s perspective, leveraging our expertise to enable the customer to effectively use and find value in Insight as quickly as possible. The Solutions Consulting team provides direct feedback to the Implementation team, as required, and also provides necessary documentation and training on more complex business concepts found in the customers’ documentation. By collaborating closely and leveraging each team’s specialized knowledge, we deliver an optimal customer experience.
