Ensuring Digital Signature Legality for Operational Budget Success

How to eSign a document: digital signature legality for Operational Budget

um thank you all for making the transition from one zoom meeting to another i'm delighted to introduce matt golds who will be moderating this panel and as well as andreas clauser and sebastian lohan um i'm french i uh my colleagues and and and so the panelists will forgive my pronunciation um i will do my best um we also have uh jakob fossa peterson um who is on the screen um i will give a very brief overview of uh each of their current roles then i will let them introduce themselves and then we will kick off um the session in earnest um so for those those of you who do not know matt he's head of legal transformation at contract pods um he is a brits um and used to be at the telecom operator like a mobile mobile i believe he's london based and he joins us from his home and i think like me he's had to be careful because it's suddenly sunny in london and the lighting has gone all weird in my room um jacob is corporate vice president and assistant general counsel at novo nordisk which is the company i know many of you will be familiar with um he is a also managing an offshoring team based in india i have the pleasure of managing a very large team in india it raises all sorts of of challenges especially over the last um almost two years now when travel has been impossible and actually when the pandemic started i had some indian colleagues who were with us here and both in our us and in our uk offices and we had great trouble getting them home safely and reasonably as the travel bans all started kicking in um and andreas causer um is general counsel for delivery hero in a global role in an exciting and fast moving industry and i very much look forward to to his comments as well um anila if if you're happy we can start the discussion anila i think you're on mute but yeah kevin let's go let's go ahead and jump in yes so we'll start with matt he'll be moderating this session thank you kevin fantastic kevin thank you very much for that introduction and uh great to have everybody on the on the line today yeah so i'm we lost matt therefore for contract board as well as being gc there so um uh really uh sort of working with clients how they can actually go on that transformation uh on that on that transformation journey is something that i spend a lot of time talking to people about and it's about solving the kinds of issues that i've had with teams that i've been running over over the years and now trying to solve help other people solve those problems um maybe before i ask the um the the the panel to sort of just give a little bit more um uh in introduction about themselves i was just gonna say just start with a few statistics um by 2025 um legal departments will increase their spend on technology threefold gartner staff another ghana stat um legal departments will have automated 50 or so of their legal work related to major corporate transactions um at least 25 of spending on corporate legal applications will go to non-specialist technology so using um technology that we we probably already have um but and again and this is really what we we're going to talk about during this session is that that by 2025 believes that only 30 of the potential benefits that could be gained by using uh technology will actually be being gained uh by most organizations so clearly a long way to go on the journey so it's that journey i think that we're going to be uh talking about a little bit today so on that uh no further duke if i could ask my fellow panelists to uh to just to introduce themselves and say a little bit about their interest in this area and their experiences and maybe um jakob if you'd like to go first thank you very much matt and and thanks for being here today i think it's it's fantastic that we can have a conference even though it's virtual so hope we can all benefit from that and i'll try to lend my perspective as kevin mentioned i head up dedication and legal operations at novo nordisk which is a relatively large pharmaceutical company i would say legal operations for us started three years ago it took some time to sell the idea but we've now had a team around for two years i think we're still building a little bit as we go but we also have a few key key wins that we can put on our tombstone we have focused a lot on creating progress within areas where we have either large pain points or can see relatively early winds so external council management and contract management have been two areas we've been focusing on a lot and a lot more to come and i hope we can get back to that later in in this session thank you yeah cool um sebastian see if i can get this working round thank you and sorry for being late um yeah sebastian lohan i'm the group general counsel and the chief compliance officer for tucson hope the group is is roughly 100 000 employees it's it's a traditional german steel uh production company but has evolved since uh maybe you heard that we sold our elevators business last year for roughly 17 billion which was a quite a large transaction um we're building everything from german submarines to cement plants to um but also trading in metals etc so it's uh it's a rather big conglomerate which is um the background against which we are working in these in this legal operations environment i've been the chief compliance officer since 2018 always in compliance more or less and therefore quite used to actually using tools for business partner screenings our whistleblowing system which we've just talked about in the in the breakout session so so i think for compliance departments it's not so unusual to to use these these tech tools if you want for legal it's a bit more complicated maybe also because of the very different subjects that that we're dealing with um it's it's different if you if you're working with oems or with states as your customers etc but but there are some some basic uh elements that that i think legal departments can profit from as jack was saying operations um is is something where you can have some easy wins i think also and what we're looking looking at challenges um is is looking for for knowledge management contract management and things like that because it's always a trade-off between decentralized organization and centralized tools so i think we we have a chance to talk about that challenge also thank you very much sebastian and andres yes hello my name is andreas thanks for having me i work for delivery hero it's a tech company that delivers anything but also runs virtual kitchens and restaurants and also virtual convenience stores it's a fast growing company and we have recently been introduced into ducks also in germany and i lead the legal team here um so it's basically the corporate m a uh team then there's a capital markets team commercial regulatory team with anti-trust disputes and labor law and commercial operational team which focuses on software itip and general operational questions and there's also small legal tech legal ops setup that we have introduced just about a year ago and also i lead then governance risk management compliance and public policy and government affairs and our focus with legal tech basically is to gain and increase the efficiency uh because as mentioned our environment is growing very fast and it's a challenge to keep a breast basically with a business thank you andreas and maybe actually i'll just ask you to just sort of expand a little bit on that address in terms of the the key areas obviously talking about efficiency within your organization but what what what areas of legal tech are you actually looking at and you working on um getting into your your organization to sort of help drive that yes sure so basically it's automation to to a good extent so we try to introduce automation wherever tests are repetitive and maybe do not even have to be performed by the legal department per se but by a robot basically so what we for example have introduced is for our long-term incentive program we do have quite a number of beneficiaries and basically we went into automating the subscription process because the documents they're really the same and maybe it's the amount of um yeah rsu's the person can subscribe to there's a different name there's a different date um and minor things like that but nothing that should be performed by the core legal department really then the next one would probably be data consolidation so we are trying to work towards a single source of truth for all of our legal matters and contracts the team in berlin is already quite big it's overall 130 people half of which are working in the core legal function but then we have twice as many people roughly around the globe and hence it's really important for us to have this single source of truth and similar templates um obviously amended for for the relevant jurisdiction but on the higher level let's say it should be similar and lastly also we try to centralize or at least provide visibility on the legal operations to the entire wider legal team um globally so we don't necessarily need to centralize the processes but rather it's on the visibility so that we can collaborate as uh efficient as possible thank you very much indeed for that that that's some really interesting examples of of where to focus and uh jacob where where where is that your organization currently focusing your at your your efforts yeah i think you're right maybe i should clarify that we always look at this sort of as a three-way assessment one is the i.t tool in itself what that can do for us but also given that we think a lot of the tools out there are still relatively immature that's only one component out of three we then also look to the processes the way we work because it's always sort of the case that when we are introducing a new tool it has to be in combination with the set where we are working and so far or in the past lil has not been super good at sort of putting down on paper what it is we do so there needs to be a process and then lastly and importantly is our own human capital are we even able to make use of these tools ing to the process we then described so only when we see that we can leverage an i.t tool in combination with a way of working and that we are actually able to do it also out in the markets we have 300 lawyers around the world and they're working in a very hard and fast paced environment many of them so it has to be super simple the technical solution so if those three parameters come out and we can see a benefit then we go forward and that's where we apply this 80 20 approach that we go for either alleviating a key pain point or harnessing one sort of big opportunity and the two biggest wins we've had so far is within our management of external council and that fulfills all three criteria so there is a tech tool but there's also an established process and we have upskilled ourselves to be able to leverage the tool and the process and by that we have actually achieved a 20 cost reduction and since external council management is taking up between 40 and 50 of our global spend is actually a huge win on that dimension alone the other big pieces on contract management where we've implemented a new tool but also a new process and we've been able to decrease the time spent on our key contracts by close to 80 percent so it also gives you an indication of where we were coming from if you're able to reduce it that much but that is not the tool alone it's also basically drastically diminishing the contents we put into our contracts so those are two key areas that fulfill those criteria and then we have many more projects but i think those are the two biggest ones so far thank you okay and i think one of the when we were talking previously i think that the it's it's the fact that by by thinking about it in that way thinking about in such an organized way thinking about the processes actually the outcomes that you're seeing already you know an 80 reduction in time is is really impressive and and and takes so much man house and so much crud out of the system so i mean really is that by putting that effort in a logical thoughtful way you really can see the benefits um so maybe um uh sebastian i think your your experiences and where you've been focusing um yeah as i said coming from compliance the the the focus in in the past years was uh getting systems running there which means third party due diligence tool that we implemented or a whistleblowing system that is that is uh quite automated in a way that that you have documentation etc that you have a a web service et cetera it's it's nothing um super um advanced but it's it it's uh it's i think state of the art so um what we're looking at if we're looking at tools it's uh it's as easy to implement as possible which means obviously cloud-based et cetera but with with 300 subsidiaries plus um it it just needs to be easily accessible um on the one-hand side by our our legal colleagues compliance officers but also by the business so so that's that's very important that we get buy in at a very early stage um because it doesn't make sense that that we think a tool would be handy and necessary but it's uh in in the best instance uh it's driven by the business because or our business close to the business legal colleagues because then they have an advantage from it yeah typically it's uh it's going to be a big change process because uh even for ndas what what a typical lawyer would do is uh is search their old emails for for the latest version they used and then just use that on the next case right but uh but that's as as andrea said the a single source of truth for for these kind of things would would obviously be very helpful and that's that's one thing that we're going to look into fantastic thank you and just before actually we'll talk about um uh user how you got got a buy-in for user adoption in a moment but before we do that maybe let's just do a a bit of a panel question or sorry a uh a poll question to the audience first just to see uh what just to get the sense from our audiences about where their organizations are so um this is a single choice so are you still is your organization still thinking about it haven't really started on your uh digital transformation journey are you somewhere along the on the on the journey maybe you're you're um you're you're pretty uh in a good place or are you fully digitized so uh great we're getting some answers coming through i'll give it another five seconds before i end the poll and share the results yeah still waiting for a few people to put their answers in it's all anonymous we don't know yeah perfect so i will now launch and share the results and there we have it thank you that's very very interesting results and um um so before i give my my views let's uh let's let's ask the panel to give their their thoughts but how does a um jacob maybe how does how does that sort of chime is that what you would have expected from your organization also talking to colleagues in the industry yeah i can say i think actually our organization is somewhere in between a and b also because we have a lot of focus on on the processes and getting those right before we can even implement the it2 so i actually think this looks pretty impressive if this is really where people are i'm quite humble about even though we've done quite a few things i still think we have a lot of a way to go so we're in between a and b i think we are thank you no i i i i will talk a bit a little bit more but i think it's your focus on process which i from from my experience also from working with clients to implement that if you have if you've done the homework got the processes it's a great great way to just to start um sebastian your thoughts i was trying to try and also trying to press but i was not allowed right so yeah no we don't know we don't know what you thought you don't have to vote yeah yeah i would have done the same thing probably probably b try try to push b but but it's it's true as jacob's saying somewhere between a and b but i would i'll be really interested in the two companies that are fully digitalized or digitized um that that would be really interesting to see maybe even though it's anonymous um if if you have uh have everything ready yet already um that would be interesting join the discussion please that's a very very good point i one is fully digitized but to be fully automated if it does does show that some organizations really have got there and have been been been on this journey and that the benefits hopefully that those organizations are seeing um can lead lead us all to uh uh to aspire um andreas your your your thoughts on uh where your organization is in in relation to uh to this poll and uh your thoughts on the results yeah we are probably also about 20 into the journey so i think it's really telling to see that almost 90 percent of all companies are really thinking about this process and i'm also it's encouraging to see that some people are already very advanced as as mentioned even fully digitized or like halfway three quarters through the process so um yeah i think this will become more and more important for the next years to come i think think you're absolutely right it does show that you know some people have been obviously at this for for over two years which is which is good because really this is a this is a journey and obviously that's what we're talking about today so maybe i'm just moving moving on the um uh we we were talking a little bit about user adoption i think sebastian you you sort of referred to specifically in your in your last but maybe just give us a little bit of a thought maybe i'll go actually in terms of the approach that you took to actually get user adoption i think that's the thing that we see a lot of clients have is how do you get the buy-in in the first place both for your own teams for the for the for the for the wider wider organization and we all know the changes is tough um and lawyers are not necessarily always the kinds of people who uh who who who love change and love technology so uh how how do you um what are your tips and thoughts and how did it work for you well um well the first thing is that in an ideal world the drive for a new process or new tool comes comes from the business or from at least from the colleagues legal colleagues advising in the business right because then then the additional or added value is seen by those who are going to be using it it's i think the worst approach is to tell everybody we want and need this because the board says so and uh and and that if you if you've gotten across this point because everybody thinks uh or many people think it's helpful then then as soon as possible early in the implementation we need the users on on the team that develops the solution because as i think jacob said or on that i don't know the tools that you can get on the market are probably good as they are but they need to be heavily customized and to um yeah to fit into the processes the school pairs you know or all the processes have to be streamlined first probably both is true but in any case we need a customization and implementation team and and that is uh for sure not not only the people in the uh in the central department but uh but even more so the ones who are going to use the tool and so i think for us in the past for example with our third party uh due diligence tool it's been a good success because everybody could bring the ideas to the table specifics of their business what kind of questions do they need in in addition etc and then then it's easy to get into the multiplier role because they are convinced and then they convince can convince their people and it's i think very important also not to only use or include the bosses of the teams but but those who actually do the work and fantastic thank you for that um and i didn't remind you that your your comment on the on the board um resonates though there was um one of our clients very successful implementation in fact the gc decided to um to hand over the decision-making process obviously he was still controlling the budget but but actually the decision-making process of which supplier the team wanted to go with was ultimately decided by the uh by by the people who would ultimately be using and i thought it was a very interesting approach to take to uh to to get by at a very early stage um uh jacob um just just give you or give your thoughts on on on on the approach that you've you've taken to uh to get to get the bind i would say it's it's a challenge and will be throughout i think not to paint a bleak picture but i think you need to have pretty thick skin if you work in this environment and and i also used to head up compliance for a number of years our group compliance function and and it's an area where you can draw on a lot of the experiences i think because also there you really need to be in it for the long run but we started out with actually showcasing this to management uh but also a broader group by bringing in people from other organizations that were further ahead so instead of bringing in people who wanted to sell us something then hear from somebody who has already done it or at least ahead and with that we're actually succeeding in sort of setting up the team and getting the key resources in place and then i think maybe it was not super smart because i do relate to what sebastian is saying we took sort of a centralistic approach because we needed to push the contract management system so we actually said we needed this and implemented that but i think it was still very abstract for people what it was everybody would like to work smarter and now we're gravitating more towards this approach that you also were referring to as fast and that we actually engage more with the customers and have them define either in legal or in line of business what it is they would like to see improved so they're sort of on the journey in even creating the idea and developing the project instead of us having figured it all out and then trying to sell it to them after so going more with the flow of where people's interest is and then catering to that but i think it's tricky when you start out then i think there also has to be some somebody saying where are the sort of major wins to be had and and drive that but you get a lot more momentum if you can get some champions out there who actually want you to develop something for them and then you cater to that and jacob's we're thinking that that in fact one of our one of our audience asked the question and i think i think i picked up on it earlier you you were also talking obviously about the process changes um which obviously uh really really improved your uh the efficiency of the organization um but obviously to get the users to buy into that but also to actually change your processes what what what what would you say was the key that you key thing that you did and you focused on in order to achieve such a a an obvious um improvement in in output and efficiency yeah i mean specifically how we arrived at that was we did all the the hard labor but essentially we took out a lot of waste in the process right but i think what we are doing more and more and more and where i see we actually get momentum is we we try and engage more in getting the ideas but then we quickly build something some people so people can relate to it because a lot of this is very abstract to people so you need to build something and then you need to communicate communicate communicate and do it very visually so if you can sort of showcase this is where we are today this is where we would like to go and this is what it will mean for you or maybe now we've created a prototype and this is was what it was before and this is what it is now and what is the saving or the value add then people understand it and then they embrace it so build something quite fast it makes it less abstract and then showcase it and scale from there i think we're gonna do a lot more of that and then i'm repeating myself but never underestimate communication you can never do enough there and engage also one-to-one with people out there you cannot just sit in the central project office and issue newsletters and all the good things you're doing you need to be able to demonstrate the tangible value no i i couldn't agree with you more dick that's that's fantastic advice and uh and and and andreas i think your your experience and how you how you would uh how you would add i think although jacob i think summed it up with communicate communicate communicate um but um uh andres yeah i mean maybe we were at an advantage or are at an advantage to the effect that the company is still quite young and people in general are interested in tech tools and tech solutions and so we don't have established processes that have been run for decades and need to be changed fundamentally but can rather implement something new where it's still easy to point at the benefits but nonetheless i think change management in general was obviously also our um challenge because people do have their own ways of working and it is um difficult to [Music] influence that behavior and and change it and the other one was process mapping and integration so various legal functions might have quite different processes and then it's a challenge basically to map out a process that then translates into that software and basically deals with with everybody's issues and if you look outside of the legal department then there might be even competing requirements so if we want to collaborate with a procurement team for example it obviously also needs to fulfill the needs of such stakeholders and the way we went about it was basically twofold so first we started out at central and the process there was very inclusive maybe not necessarily democratic but everybody had the chance to voice their opinion and also look in detail in into the different tools and even test them so we involved these stakeholders so that we could address the requirements and then we identified basically a set of if you will super users or maybe you can call them champions uh legal tech champions who would promote the usage of the system within the respective departments but also then really be part of the technical discussions on how to improve the system and how to make it work for that department and then we sort of rolled it out at uh central and um revisit it after a while whether it's suiting our needs what needs to be further changed and basically improved before we scale it globally and now we are at the stage to roll it out globally with the learnings that we have achieved from from our central perspective and given that we are based in 50 different countries we are going for the so-called train the trainer concept so we have regional points of contacts who then will become the super users and train all the local entities on how to use it it will be slightly less inclusive because we already are the stage where we know which tool we want to run and in general also how we want to run it but then we still need to take into consideration sensitivities of different countries so be it uh language or particular uh requirements from these countries i'm just like yeah there's some i think there's some really good uh points around that that they're sort of starting small building up and taking the kind of phased approach i think is um it can be very successful but also the trained trainer getting getting getting the top down and and actually maybe just um sort of taking on there i think one of one of our uh uh one of our audiences asked the question about quick wins and uh we often see that actually that was part of that change management getting a few quick wins getting a few things that you can uh see up and running so that people can see the benefit can be a good way of taking people on the journey i don't know if you've got any any thoughts on that andreas and also jacob or or sebastian well it depends on the requirements or the pain points of each department right so but as i mentioned for example if for the long-term incentive program it takes considerable amount of time to sort of fill in the details um like contact details and the like of of hundreds of beneficiaries and if that can be automated um then that is a huge um and uh yeah maybe also a quick win for the department and then for example on signatures wherever it's possible to to get uh digital signatures um rather than running around the department and maybe not even knowing where the management port currently is so then it's uh it's much easier to get these signatures um digitally and yeah it really depends on on the particular pain points fantastic thank you jacob any um i would say it could be almost anything so rather than pointing to specific examples it's more the way to get there so one thing we did was we issued a time registration a request lawyers hate that right they used to work a law firm so now finally when they get in-house they get rid of that but it was actually extremely helpful in pointing to where do people spend their time and out of that what is on pretty uh labor-intensive or recurring work so there you have the data saying here people are saying i spent a lot of time here but i actually don't think this is a key value at and then you go and look for how can we then relieve you of some of that pain right and and many times it's actually not rocket science or that you need a super fantastic it2 they are relatively easy ways often to then at least make life easier so there again the customer as i see it has identified the pain point or the need and then you can have a discussion about how you can overcome that and then actually a lot of it is pretty banal and then it's just uh also relatively easy to do something about thank you jacob and sebastian your your thoughts on sort of quick wins and how to um and and how to get some some get that buy-in so so i think um what jacob just said is is a really important thing that we use in compliance not not yet in legal is to track what people are doing um that was as exactly as you're saying uh people coming from the law firms are not looking to fill in timesheets we are not allowed to attract times actually because german labor law is hindering us in or for determination but in any case what we did is uh is filling out sheets and that's um done in excel which is not the i.t if a fantastic it solution in itself it would be helpful to do it otherwise we've postponed it but but for years now we are tracking um the kind of advice we are giving to business and then can filter it and sort it out by by all kinds of um regions and businesses and and what have you and by topic and that is really helpful in in all um in in all budget fte and and and all those kind of just discussions but also in focusing on where do we want to invest into tools or invest into our processes and where does it make sense or not the thing is that sometimes you think it might be interesting to invest into a process because it's uh it's not it's not not really satisfying or or enriching to answer the 400th time if someone can can take an invitation or accept the gift of a wine bottle of 20 euros or so on the other hand implementing a tool for that would uh in in in our analysis create much more traffic to our desks than uh than we have right now with a system where this is not necessarily come to our desk all the time so so we we need to be careful what we ask for in in that instance because in the end if you have a tool that says well well any gift needs to be reasonable and and the tool doesn't provide uh provide an answer to what is reasonable then every single question will land on someone's physical desk and uh and there we need to be careful also that's a very very good point i am um i think that let's take us to the the second poll question that we have which which i think takes us a little bit too there's some questions only about what what do we consider to be um fully digitized and uh and i think these were sort of some of the sort of grouping of all the sort of different areas that the teams could be looking at we've got one document repository single source of truth uh automated workflows these signatures i've got a comment that obviously that that these signatures is obviously very key um they're getting in things that automated templates playbooks um and uh as i think it was fascinating was talking about the the the long-term digitization of a long-term incentive plan and of course then once we're getting to the the really advanced ai sort of actually properly reviewing third-party contract uh third-party contracts using use of playbooks those kinds of things so um like um [Music] i'm just going to wait another five seconds before i end the poll and launch the results and i can see quite a few people deciding on their answers and as we said cannot make any choices it's only for the audience so there we have it and the results are interesting it's been a bit a bit of a bit of everything but but maybe uh but the advanced ai maybe um uh the sort of the sort of should we say more the um maybe later down the line which sort of leads me to sort of just to sort of to to to ask the panel where where they and their organizations are thinking of going next sort of bearing in mind the different areas we've got here where where their organizations currently are but then maybe give us an idea of where you're heading in the next year but also your thoughts on where you might be in the next four to five years um maybe ask ask ask jacob to start on that one yeah thank you man first of all i think this corresponds with our organization's view in sort of doing first things first so a2c is where we have also focused and already more or less completed that the advanced ai is not to be ig skeptical but i think it needs a little further maturation and for sure for us to be able to embrace that so that would also be in line with our thinking where to next i think a lot is going to happen in in the coming years i'm really focused on getting a full-fledged knowledge management system so that is more than a central repository but ideally a system whereby all work product of the legal function is contained in one place and thereby you would not only be able to find the advice you've done before because you could get that from the repository but also you'll be able to extract data as to what your organization is actually doing and that's a key point also that as i see it in our organization legal operations is the only unit that is quantitative so actually using data setting up goals and sort of looking at how the organization performs ing to the goals so this means creating dashboards tracking your performance is absolutely key so when you have data then you can get much much better discussions on where to focus so getting the data is really key and that's why a full-fledged knowledge management system would be absolutely key for us to get to that makes makes perfect sense and and and sebastian where where do you uh see things in terms of how does this relate to your organization what you're thinking of automating your journey over the next year or two and indeed like where do you see things going in the next four to five years yeah so so we're also looking at contact management and and knowledge management and maybe one one of the uh the uh the audience as asking similarities and differences between uh legal departments and legal firms i think it's on the knowledge management side i think there's some similarities because you need to know what your company knows even if people are leaving or especially if people are leaving leaving their email inbox behind right so so ideally you don't you don't need to filter the email inbox to find something they were advising on so knowledge management is but it's it's also a very complicated part um that for sure but but definitely something i'm gonna be looking into and as jacob is saying um aai and having fancy uh fancy products and also the same same applies to me to things like blockchain i'm happy i'm happy if we have products that use ai or blockchain or you name it but i'm not looking into the technology i'm looking into the into the product if it's off the shelf it's it's it's probably something we're looking into looking for um and if it has ai and has a use case then it's then it's perfect but i'm not doing it the other way around to say i need ai in my company and then looking for a product where i can use it makes makes perfect sense as you say it's out but what what is the best way to what's the goal you're trying to achieve and i think that again i think just from from experience and talking to others it is actually those teams that sort of you know you think about your presence you think about the problem and then how do you solve the problem and if the problem is trying to get work out the legal team it may be that ai is part of the solution but it's not doing ai for ai's sake and i think that's a very good um very very good observation um and andreas just just to um uh to round things up your view of where where you are where your organization is going and in two to five years time and also also probably just also from your experience one of uh our um um our um audience have also asked the question about about how do you start in terms of local glo you start at the center and work down or start regionally and grow up maybe just want to touch on that as as as well in your in your opinion yep sure um so basically as mentioned we want to roll out the tool uh globally so that's our next step and um also right now it's only available to the legal function and procurement users so we would like to establish then a single portal for all business users to go basically to to request support from from the department and um in the longer term maybe in the best case even to have like a q a section that could work with a chatbot apart from that it's just the increase of the use of automation in in the regular legal tasks and to your question how to start um also as mentioned we started at central and basically started with the pain points everybody was overworked so we dug deep into the root cause of that and tried to map out what people spend their time with and then make a best case scenario what they should um spend their time with and then try to find solution on how to achieve this goal and uh automation played a quite a big role in this thank you and look i did the small question we haven't touched on but just for you jacob i think one of our our attendees about about um where do you start collecting your data i mean one example for us would be contract management where we implemented this tool but then actually one of my guys built in power bi a system whereby we can track live who's doing what so instead of just looking at overall numbers and adoption of of the system you can actually go in and see who does what and then you can target those people so we had a case where in poland we had slow adoption of of the tool and the eSignature of contracts and instead of addressing the whole organization we could actually only make a phone call to two people and then we're at 100 the day after just by getting to those two people we would not have been able to do that without that information fantastic and look i i um sadly we are we are out of time um but i also want to thank the panelists and i think that the the that um uh jacob sebastian and andreas and i think some wonderful insights yeah i think that that what it seems to me it is it's the it's the journey it's the thinking about the journey and it's as much about the focus on the start of the journey on the as as on the end and making sure that you really have people have talked to their users and got the necessary buy-ins and i think some great lessons um for all of us in that so just want to thank the panelists and uh hand back over to kevin to introduce the next speaker but thank you all very much indeed for your time and special thanks to matt for for moderating again very much in this setting it's always awkward and um thank you andreas thank you sebastian thank you jacob much appreciated that were there where and that undoubtedly will be more questions coming through please keep selling them we will make sure they all make their way to the panelists to the moderators and and everyone will do their best to to answer them either in a public forum or directly with you um and without further ado and neither are we ready for the next session um so welcoming andrew to his session so andrew you can begin uh thank you thank you uh kevin um hi there my name's andrew henderson i look after the due diligence business at uh refinitive which is part of the stock exchange group uh previously i was running part of the business at the red flag group which was acquired by refinitive so that's my background and today uh would have loved to be there in person and hopefully we'll be we'll be back in live events uh in the near future but uh today i want to just talk about what we're seeing as some of the changes in the due diligence space and primarily around how our clients are now wanting to look more holistically at a due diligence program rather than some of the historic programs which are much more focused on a single risk topic or risk area so that's really what i wanted to manage today and hopefully everyone can see my screen i'll walk through some some slides um really want to talk about is is what is due diligence some very basic discussions i'm sure everyone is well aware of whether in your business you're looking at due diligence for money laundering reasons or corruption reasons or any of the other many reasons that people are looking at um but talk a little bit about why we're seeing a need or a demand for more holistic due diligence or what we're calling more holistic due diligence and what that means you know what we talk about when we're saying that and why why it's being asked of us and why i think it's something that most people should be thinking about um or at least asking themselves questions about where they can go in that's in that direction um okay so what is due diligence a very basic point again it's really about gathering the information to make a good decision andrew um apologies we can't see the slides the slides can't see the slides okay there we go here we go okay thank you technical difficulties as always with these online reviews um so as i'm saying what is due diligence it's really a data gathering exercise and i think there's often a thinking around due diligence that it is a document or it is a report or a final product and it's not really it's a data gathering exercise um and it's a thinking process of risk assessment and as you gather more information you you're sort of making continual risk assessments till you get to a point where you've got enough information so that's really what i consider due diligence to be it is a process it's not a document or a piece of information it's a process that you're going through but what what i think is changing is that that process is gathering information on a lot broader set of risk areas than than was historically and what we're seeing i think is is a lot of pressure from a lot of different places for us to do this kind of due diligence or at least know about your partners whether suppliers customers distributors whoever it is that you're wanting to gather information about to make your decisions there's a lot of pressure coming from a lot of different places this was a survey that mit put together a lot of the pressure's coming from government so that's all the regulators and the legislation that's coming down the track in a lot of areas and that's that's certainly broadened out from the more traditional areas of corruption or money laundering um companies themselves are putting pressure on themselves so the executives are kind of starting to put together policies codes of conduct etc some of which is coming from industry some of which is is themselves wanting to do more csr or esg kind of work to to get themselves into into a position that they want to be so so the companies themselves are really driving a lot more of the the due diligence processes and the onboarding processes for customers and suppliers and that sort of leads to the third area of the source of pressure which i think is going to be growing exponentially over the next few years which is investors and that's really the esg topic um we're finding that that is driving a lot more due diligence than certainly had in the past and there's money behind it so that that's where i think a big difference is coming that esg due diligence might be a small part of what people are interested in in terms of the decision making but it's driving a lot of the need for it because executives can see the direct connection between an investment requirement whether that's a direct investor or a passive fund or an index if they're wanting to get investment and in an esg program uh of which due diligence is a part so that's that's really where we're seeing the change it's not so much being driven by a compliance function looking at a legal risk it's being driven much more from executives coming down the business saying there are real business imperatives that require us to do a more broad review and specifically at the moment it's very much esg driven to have that which has that connection with with investors um and that's what i think we're seeing and it will differ by business business but it's very much what we're seeing which is a change from two years ago and even from a year ago that driver for looking at esg risk as part of a due diligence program just wasn't there before um in terms of what we were doing before hopefully this isn't something that that is a surprise for anyone who is doing the due diligence work it was really finding out about the partner themselves it was very basic but it was looking at things like are they who they say they are so looking at ownership looking at sanctions and ideas of whether you can actually work is there a regulator or a government saying you can't work in that industry or that location or with that particular entity um looking at corruption and certainly in the supply sorry in the sales channel corruption was the number one risk money laundering was the number one risk in the in the client or the customer piece especially for financial services um or source of wealth and source of funds so those tended to be the areas that people were doing their due diligence in or focusing their due diligence on because they were very legal regulatory issues that they were being forced to do not because the business necessarily wanted to do it but because the obligations were being forced on the business and the compliance function was working out how to meet those obligations and manage and mitigate those obligations but what we're seeing now is is very much as i was saying massive driver behind esg and and it's yeah some of it is still regulation so you have things like the modern slavery legislation in the uk and the rest of europe you have a lot of supply chain intelligence legislation in germany and again replicated across many other parts of the world um but the big one is investors and that investment and sustainable investment the amount of money that's now under uh under indexes that have mandates around sustainable investment is is enormous and growing every year and i'm sure everyone sort of is seeing that themselves but that produces a driver which wasn't there five years ago ten years ago when it when people were looking at corruption or money laundering because it was more seen as a cost to the business rather than now very direct benefit to the business if if an esg due diligence program can help the the investment side and help the business show themselves as being more compliant with esg standards or having a supply chain management that makes sure they really understand their esg compliance it helps either get access to funds be easier to divest um or just um to get themselves into a position to sell themselves so that that's really the driver for a lot of the change in the due diligence practices now because a lot of the other sort of historic risk factors like corruption and money laundering can actually fall under an esg program they're they're generally governance related topics um so that's where you know the whole kind of thinking about due diligence is almost getting flipped on its head and it's being much more esg due diligence rather than the more traditional versions um but beyond that we're also looking at other risk areas which for their own reasons taking enormous sort of prominence one of them is cyber security so certainly when you're working with your supply chain or anyone that has access to your own confidential information uh private information even even more so the cyber security impact is becoming part of that um it has been for many years as a almost a separate activity um so there's often a cso or a site a vendor management sys team that's looking at cyber security uh but what we're seeing now is is a combining of of that with the other more traditional or some of the newer areas so so cyber security gets brought into the overall mix because what you're really wanting to do is look at a in a supply chain looking at a vendor holistically for one of a better word because you want to see you're not going to look at the same cyber security review in the same depth if they're not holding data or confidential information so you've got to look at what you're doing with that partner you've got to look at the issues around that partner and cyber is one of the potential issues but it's only one and we're definitely seeing people move away from silos of um of due diligence cyber security is often an outside-in kind of exercise um and then swaps into a an inside out where you're actually looking at policies and you're getting questionnaires sent out to the vendor but you only do that when it's really important so so putting it into the same risk assessment model is what we're seeing clients and we're certainly advising clients to do to say if you're looking at a vendor look at everything about that vendor in some cases that will include cyber security in some cases it won't in the same way in some cases you'll be looking at corruption in in other cases you won't but trying to put it all together in a in a comprehensive review and not forgetting areas like cyber security or leaving them to be done independently by a totally separate team that's not involved in the um the overall review of a vendor or distributor or any of the partners that you might want to be working with and lastly financial so again another area that most of our clients have been doing credit checks looking at risk of default um but independently it's another one of those areas that has been very much a silo so credit management has been or whatever term in every business would look at credit but they wouldn't necessarily look at credit at the same time as they're looking at what the business justification is or or what some of the other risks are they tend to need there's a huge benefit in looking at them all together credit is one of those areas that can have implications across other other spaces if you're seeing reduction in credit terms reduction in the offering of credit to the particular vendor you'll often see that that correlates with either governance issues product issues or generally to the risk of other areas like corruption because you're seeing a a company that's in some kind of under some kind of a pressure so again that credit review by itself is important you do want to make sure that you're going to get paid or you want to make sure that there's continued continuity of service but if you're looking at it at the same time you can see weaknesses in one area might flow quite quickly into weaknesses in other areas which is why a holistic review allows you to look at all of those facts at the same time rather than finance saying the credit is okay even though there's some weaknesses that might lead into other parts of the business and lastly operational risk which is an area which traditionally has been left to the business if the business thinks that they want to bring on a new supplier um from a procurement and a compliance standpoint it's generally been nothing to do with with them uh it's been a business decision uh but what we're seeing now is is very much um the justification and and whether the particular company can do the job that they are being engaged to do has massive implications for many other risks money laundering is a good example if if you can't understand what the customer does you can't understand why they get their money you're very much in the money laundering it's a risk area similarly with corruption if someone has put a distributor or an agent in place and you can't see any experience in the role it flags a corruption issue so again putting all those risks together and saying that's not just a business risk it really needs to be reviewed at the same time as we're reviewing everything else gives you a better oversight of the um the reasons for any engagement um and it helps you again make a decision which is based on all of the the appropriate evidence that you need to gather so that's really what we mean by holistic due diligence it's looking across a far broader range of risks than just the one that you might have started off with historically whether it's corruption money laundering or sanctions or any of those or traditional risk areas what we're trying to say to clients is look more broadly across your partner universe and use risk assessment to get you in a position to say what is it that i need to be looking at for this particular supplier vendor that you haven't and that's really the focus is we're consolidating a lot of these were done um by different groups we're trying to say let's get lots of different stakeholders who are interested in the the results of a due diligence exercise to work together so first of all it helps with your onboarding process it can be a far more strength-looking process the third parties are generally happier if all the questions are coming in at the same time but you're really looking at them in one place it's been often a huge amount of replication across the different business groups asking very similar questions um to get to the nub of what they're really interested in so that's where huge amount of savings and efficiency in bringing all of these groups together but also ensuring that the due diligence exercise does cover this broad range of risk areas to make an overall decision which will improve your decision making um and now we have a quick poll question to give everyone a second really finding out where you are in this journey um so some of you will be at very early stages starting to think about a due diligence program some will be doing it ad hoc so not really thinking about a process it's just every now and then there needs to be some kind of due diligence um all the way through to having um some of you will be in a in this kind of holistic mode where you are looking at all the risks and all stakeholders at the same time so if i can give you a minute to to fill in your answer i'd be very interested to see we have a few people um making their choices right now i will leave it as a few more seconds 10 seconds and then i'll end the poll okay so i'm just ending the poll now and sharing the results there we are okay so that's good news i think most most of you they're two-thirds uh somewhat throughout through the process um of of having a due diligence process in place but i think that it looks like most people still have to think through that sort of merging of stakeholders getting everyone involved and having a single process it's good that there are a number of you that have got to that point i think that's certainly the maturity of our client base we're starting to see people more and more people think through that um mainly because of the efficiency they're getting from that process and also the impetus that the sg demands is helping again having that direct link between financial reward and a due diligence program i think is making a world of difference for for compliance and procurement teams to build up to what they need to have rather than trying to sell a future risk avoidance program okay so that's great great information i think i need to share my screen again uh we can see your screen you can see my screen okay okay so just wrapping up uh final thoughts um and happy to take questions after this first of all it's really for everyone to sort of think about their current processes and think about how the stakeholders are are working in their current world obviously every company is very different in the needs every company is different in the risks that they're exposed to so the due diligence programs generally will look different but i think it's worth at this point looking at how the due diligence programs are currently running whether there is scope to consolidate multiple can concurrent programs into a single holistic program but also looking at whether there are new risk areas that really need to be uh added to programs again mainly around the esg world uh potentially around cyber security and thinking if you're not currently looking at those thinking where the risks might be in your vendors in your suppliers in your potentially your customers and looking at really how you can go about combining that it's quite normal for it to be a process where you start off very independent because each each part of the business needs to really look and understand what it needs to do but once you've got to a certain level of maturity in each of those individual programs there's certainly benefit in in looking at how that can be combined because almost every time i've i've helped clients look at through that there's enormous amounts of overlap and inefficient processes just by the fact that they're they're totally independent processes but it does require those stakeholders to all agree on the need to change so it is very much a change management process compliance often is leading that that charge because they have that oversight of the risk topics but when we're talking about esg and the investment led it's often coming out of finance and procurement so that's also a change in the stakeholder mix those are the groups now that really have much more say and much more leverage in what those overall programs will look like um and then get on and and build that or rebuild those processes in a much more coherent fashion okay that was that was my uh my suggestion again would have been great to have it in person but very happy to take questions if there are any questions so andrew thank you very much we do have some questions many about outsourcing um i'll read i'll read out the first one would you recommend outsourcing these targeted due diligence areas to specialize providers or do it yourself as in keep it in-house um well notwithstanding that i am an outsourced provider obviously i'm going to say outsource it but it really depends on the the scale if you're doing very few due diligence exercises um and you're not covering topics that are outside of your knowledge then it's perfectly reasonable to do your own due diligence i think the areas that that would lead you outside of your own work is is languages so if you're a global business and you're working with partners all around the world you do need to do your due diligence in the in the language of the supplier or the partner secondly some of those areas like cyber security and credit do need specialist data sets so if if you're not going to outsource the overall process then you need to still look at the data sets that you're going to need yourself to help you do that review so definitely parts of it can be done internally the benefits of doing it internally are that you will have access to the people who actually know the partner and they know what the partner is is doing for you or proposed to be doing for you so you you need that part of it pretty much anyway so whether a provider gives you the raw data in a report and then you add to it with the internal knowledge or you do it the other way around you still don't want to outsource everything because the the external partner is just not going to know that business knowledge um but i think it comes down to scale and the languages and the resources and the access to resources thank you andrew and we've got a a a a more complex question uh in terms of new and non-traditional risks what changes is refinitive making to its approach around information gathering and and there's an expectation for the person asking the question that there will be less publicly available data points on some specialist area like esg um and that questions on those or more specialized topic will have to be more informed and targeted at the right function with the subject company the company that's that's being reviewed and my apologies to the person who sent the question if i've read it um badly no i i think i think i understand the question i think there's definitely a need to have different sources of data so the traditional source of data will give us some of that so media research database research uh business intelligence research is still going to be the basis of a lot of the the data gathering and so so media research for for infinitive we're looking at the same media sources but asking different questions so looking at more esg controversies in that area but what has changed is that we're also working with specialized data data partners so for cyber security we're working with a partner that focuses on cyber security and brings that kind of specialized content into the overall review which as i said it can be done independently so companies can engage with those data partners and get that data themselves um or come to a provider like like refinitive and we've already done that engagement but but it's definitely required us to go and find partners that had that specialized knowledge um the traditional due diligence company never had or or kind of needed um so that that's where we're going we're looking at sort of special data credit is another one there's credit bureaus who focus very much on on that topic um esg is slightly different because refinitive itself has a massive esg practice um mainly for public companies um and the investment and indices kind of business but there is you're absolutely right there's a lot of the esg data that is only available by the subjects themselves delivering that data and who we're asking the questions of has differed but again that's the same process that we've been going through previously where we're gathering information from directly from the subject it's just the the questions and the sourcing of those questions has changed but the same process and the same thinking is underway thank you very much andrew we possibly have time to squeeze in one more question if there's one from the audience um otherwise we are bang on time thank you so much for a um very timely and very informative sessions i and neither i cannot see any furthest questions coming in so we can probably close there thank you again andrew my pleasure