ContractPodAi Client Case Study: Braskem 

ContractPodAi Client Case Study: Braskem 

By ContractPodAi

Introduction 

ContractPodAi’s End to End CLM Platform

ContractPodAi is a Contract Lifecycle Management solution. It is an accessible end-to-end system that is transparent, with disruptively low pricing and fast cloud-based implementation.

CLIENT BACKGROUND AND SCOPE

As one of the world’s largest petrochemical groups operating in 100 countries, Brazilian headquartered Braskem sought to digitize its legal function.

The group’s global legal function bore the weight of its busy operational schedule in the form of an intense through-put of documents.

OBJECTIVES

Strategic and user-based objectives for the project were identified:

TIMESCALE

In order to achieve its goals Braskem identified a number of essential elements of functionality it sought to achieve from the implementation:

• Centralized contract repository
• Global automated process to generate and negotiate contracts
• Align and uniformize practices and workflows
• Tools to search and manage contract data
• Ability to do digital signature within the workflow
• Integration with SAP

Having identified its use case by January 2018, Braskem shortlisted a number of potential suppliers with ContractPodAi® ultimately selected as the best equipped vendor to fulfil the brief.

ContractPodAi has marked itself out from the increasingly crowded and hyped world of Legal AI by creating the Legal AI as a Service model. By providing elements such as machine learning and legal engineering and cloud infrastructure as part of the platform – it facilitates for faster implementation and a one-stop solution.

The majority of the implementation could be met with the out of the box software, with four individual requirements for specific customization:

1. Oracle integration
2. Interface usability elements
3. Integration with SAP
4. Ability to mark records as confidential

As part of the brief these requirements were built into the implementation cycle.

ContractPodAi’s out of the box solution repurposes the best technology in the platform where required – IBM Watson for AI, Workshare for Document Collaboration, DocuSign for E-Signatures. However, with implementations of this scale, it’s also able to integrate as required with other software as per client requirements.

BRASKEM’S IMPLEMENTATION

CHALLENGES

Braskem was seeking a centralised solution for business-wide contract management. The business at the board level recognised the need of a single contract management system at a global level.

Any transformation at this global scale required an integration of contract processes and a dynamic system, which could cope with different workflows and approvals at both regional as well as business unit and operational level. Challenges were as follows:

• There existed no centralised legal front door request centre
• Lack of internal resource available to implement self-servicing contracts, necessary to onboard the self-service desk
• Finally, there was a training challenge: How would they train people across different regions and different technology skill sets on the same platform?

SUCCESS CRITERIA

Braskem was assigned a single implementation manager as point person and owner of the project.

This individual worked alongside the client, which had already established both working group for the project as a means to address the lack of dedicated resource.

A number of steps were followed pre-implementation working in close proximity with the client. The project ran according to the following key phases:

• Proof of Concept – 4^thApril to 6^thJune 2018
• Customization – 11^thJune – 5^thOctober
• Training Sessions – Brazil 8-11 October; Europe 31 Oct – 1 Nov; Mexico 20 Nov; USA 4 December
• Central Repository Live Dates – Brazil 15 Oct; Europe 5 Nov; Mexico 26 Nov; USA 10 Dec
• Workflow/CLM – Brazil & Europe 15 December; Mexico & USA 1 January

One of the reasons for successful implementation was this decision to run the transformation in two phases: effectively POC and then land and expand.

The training challenge was addressed with multiple rounds of training both on premise as well as WebEx.

The ContractPodAi team helped in the building and on-boarding templates as part of the Legal Ai as a Service Model – this helped Braskem tremendously, which had no internal resourcing to do this.

EFFECTIVENESS AND RESULTS

Each stage of the project was then completed according to agreed timings set out in Section 3.2. above.

One month into its three-month proof of concept of 50 users, the client was ready to go live with the full implementation of 800 users (40 full users in the legal department and 760 users from across the business), becoming one of ContractPodAi’s largest customers.

Before the Repository Go Live Stage of the project around November 2018, Braskem, decided at that point to extend the scope of the implementation even further to include the ContractPodAi® Platform’s third-party contract review functionality.

This decision was aided by the fact that the platform’s Artificial Intelligence capability is agnostic to contract type, so it can deal with buy or sell side contracts, regardless of volume. Thanks to comprehensive and ongoing machine learning and support, it operates with a high level of accuracy from a standing start once live post implementation.

Early in 2019 the decision was made to further scale up to 1,050 users by the end of March. The project now enjoys consistently high user adoption – on average 200 requests come in per day – that’s 200 different users actively using the system five days per week.

Client comment on the project by Filipe Tavares, Legal Manager, Braskem:

‘ContractpodAi has been an important partner of our Company for over a year now. ContractPodAi is very open to our inputs and committed to finding the best way to tailor the tool to our needs by integrating it to our processes, systems and workflows globally.

‘It’s great how easily and quickly we can now generate contracts and reports on rights and obligations – and keep track of all the important dates. We value our partnership very much and look forward to strengthening this relationship for the upcoming years.’

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[Artificial Lawyer is proud to bring you this sponsored thought leadership article by ContractPodAi.]