Each Industry has its own specific requirements, and that’s already a lot to handle for often under staffed but highly demanded legal teams. Now add the local complexities, very specific to each region your company handles into the mix. It’s a challenging combo when navigating the educational publishing industry, because each jurisdiction will have its requirements but if regions don’t communicate effectively with the head quarters, risks of non compliance and more, can happen.
THE CONTEXT
An international educational publishing group, with its headquarter in the Iberian peninsula and operating across different regions, faced mounting pressure to modernize its legal operations.
Despite its success in delivering high-quality educational materials, the group’s legal infrastructure struggled to keep pace with the demands of an increasingly digital, decentralized business. Their operations were diverse, and the legal support across countries was anything but uniform. The lack of centralized oversight, standardized processes, and digital integration posed serious compliance and efficiency risks.
This international educational publisher was in desperate need of a proper contract management solution to allow users and managers gain back the time and control they needed. So a contract lifecycle le management tool is what they got.
THE CHALLENGE
A Global Publisher with little Visibility and Local Complexities
Considering the international reach of the organization, and the highly regulated educational industry, every region was facing specific difficulties. Nevertheless, each region was able to get something out of each other through lessons learnt. In this case, Mexico served as the blueprint thanks to its robust internal legal resources and the similarity of challenges it faced. As the implementation project progressed, insights from previous rollouts further streamlined the approach, enabling more effective navigation of emerging obstacles.
Siloed business units
Some regions lacked a local in-house legal team, leading other business units to handle contracts and often rely on external legal advisory. When external advisory wasn’t required, several regions sought support from the HQ team, leading the Spanish legal team to be overloaded.
Non-harmonious or little tech tool stack
Certain countries had some technology stack, such as a CRM or e-signature provider. The main issue was that none were sharing the same e-signature provider, and some regions were completely missing it. This led some regions to seek in-person signatures to close contracts, causing significant delays
Missed consolidation opportunities
Although some regions had worked on establishing specific templates to reuse, these weren’t compiled in a single space and often still required second verifications. This was causing delays in contract review and approvals.
Outdated manual processes
Since no specific contract management solution was in place, processes weren’t automated and relied on email exchanges, in-person meetings, signatures, and continuous back and forth to prepare and finalize contracts.
In order to better achieve each region’s specific goals, aside those coming from the headquarter, the rollout went through in multiple phases.
THE SOLUTION
A Tailored CLM Rollout with Regional Focus
The turning point came with the arrival of a new Head of Legal at the Spanish headquarters. With prior exposure to digital legal platforms, he recognized the urgency of the situation and initiated the shift. The rollout was not a one-size-fits-all initiative. Instead, it followed a region-by-region approach. The organization prioritized regions according to regulatory needs and “maturity” level.
Key integrations: Microsoft Dynamics CRMs allowed a seamless data flow and reduced manual duplications. As a result, business units could operate with their familiar tools and better collaborate with legal teams or contract responsible parties.
⚙️ Custom technical support: DiliTrust provided and still provides to this day, a tailor made support and rollout to users from all regions. In Mexico for instance, DiliTrust was highly involved in providing insights for workflows and their setup. On another hand, regions with little to none digital readiness benefited from foundational support. To this day, DiliTrust provides weekly touch-points, and sometimes daily, for under-resourced regions.
THE RESULTS
Efficiency, Standardization, Automation and Remarkable Gains Across Board
For this educational publishing leader, the pressing need to digitalize legal operations was a strategic imperative. By investing resources and working hand in hand with DiliTrust, all regions got adapted workflows to their needs. Ultimately, this organization gained the control, visibility, and efficiency it needed to build better cohesion between jurisdictions and business units across the world.
From 1 month to 48 hours
contract turnaround time
in one of their core regions
From 23+ to 6 templates
in several regions
enabling better governance
This organization’s journey is proof that centralized oversight and localized implementation, or in other terms, global mindset and local approach, is a powerful combo to achieve contractual excellence. This model is one that perhaps other global companies can follow when adopting LegalTech.
