SUCCESS STORY – CONTRACT MANAGEMENT
Prescription for change: Contract management in Italy’s biggest pharmaceutical company
How one of Italy’s top pharmaceutical companies unified its legal contract operations to gain visibility, control, and speed across global teams.
AT A GLANCE
INTRODUCTION
Sometimes innovation and tight regulations collide, but those who understand the real strategic advantage of digitalization do everything they can to change that. This global pharmaceutical company understood that innovation wasn’t just nice, it was essential. The corporation operates across more than 60 entities and is headquartered in Italy, and behind a well-structured legal department lay outdated processes: siloed and scattered contracts, files, and more. The result: impossible for teams to properly track these precious documents.
On one occasion, the company was looking for a report that had been shared a long time ago. It was impossible to find it anywhere online; they spent an entire day looking for the document, only to end up finding it on someone’s desk, in a printed version, and written with a typing machine. This was the sort of situation that shifted the legal team’s mindset. In an industry with high stress, tight deadlines, and strict regulations, there is no room for mistakes and delays. The fragmented contract management was creating risk, confusion, and costly delays. Despite already investing in digital tools, their legal team knew that without a unified contract system, they wouldn’t reach the level of excellence they aimed for.
THE CHALLENGE
Every contract carried consequences and heavy work
This global Pharma leader, one of Italy’s top eleven and publicly listed on the Italian Stock Exchange, dealt with high volumes of contracts. From Clinical Trial Agreements to distribution and licensing deals, legal teams must stay on top of it all, because in the Pharma industry, there’s more than one side to the game. Not only did the organization need to abide by regulations, which are already a lot of work, but they also deal with huge amounts of personal data regarding patients, patents, and doctors. Risk comes in two ways: handling contracts poorly can have reputational consequences as well as personal consequences, affecting individuals directly. The Italian Head of Legal highlighted several issues:
The business was tired of delays, wasted efforts and the lack of trust in the legal department coming from other business units. After searching for the right solution for months, the company was ready to act.
THE SOLUTION
Enabling a foundation for consistent, controlled collaboration
To address these challenges, the company implemented DiliTrust’s Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) platform, rolling it out to 700 users as part of a multi-phased onboarding project. The legal department now had the tools to lead change without losing control.
A unified contract repository, searchable by natural language, with contracts organized by geography and business unit.
Role-based access and automated workflows, enabling seamless collaboration while preserving oversight.
A global clause and template library, localized per entity or region, ensuring everyone works from the same compliant base.
What once felt like chaos became a smooth, and guided process. The Pharma leader chose DiliTrust mainly for its strong AI roadmap and capabilities, and for its localized support and in-person engagement. This aspect was crucial for the organization to succeed its contract management digitalization process.
THE RESULTS
More control, less risk, and time reclaimed
Legal no longer chases documents; it enables decisions. Business units gain autonomy while staying compliant. Risk is reduced, and response time to audits and regulators has dropped dramatically.
The transformation delivered concrete results for legal and business alike. This success story showcases how a global organization can turn fragmented contract practices into a streamlined, secure, and scalable legal operation. The key lies in standardizing as much as possible to cut delays, maintain governance, and enable teams rather than block them. DiliTrust provided strong foundations, but the pharmaceutical leader built on them to reach its goals.
Now that our teams work from one source of truth, Legal spends less time chasing contracts and more time enabling the business. DiliTrust brought clarity where there was confusion.
Head of Legal Italy
Learn more about what DiliTrust can do for you, whether it’s accelerating processes, efficiency gains, cost savings or all the above mentioned.