Executive Summary for CFO's and senior management
The Weagree Wizard accelerates contract drafting. In addition to an excellent user-friendly interface, it has many advantages:
1. Time saving and improved productivity. In most contexts, the time required to create a first draft contract can be reduced by up to 70 to 90 (!) percent. Accordingly, the productivity of legal counsel improves significantly. Time saving may be up to 210 to 320 hours per lawyer per year. This implies that external support can be minimised (e.g., interim lawyers, local counsel).
2. Minimising a legal department's response time. Because drafting routine contracts and more complex contracts requires much less time, the response time of the legal department minimises. Business performance improves. Providing a ‘simple' first draft business contract does not take weeks.
3. Improved quality of contracts. Introducing the Weagree Wizard is a catalyst for upgrading model contracts (so top class model contracts are not a precondition to using contract assembly). With the Weagree Wizard, model contracts and contract building blocks are managed from one central location. The central availability of model contracts and individual model clauses in the Wizard contributes to a higher quality of all contracts created by a legal department.
4. Reducing the transaction cycle. A first draft contract will not contain superfluous contract clauses. A contract that is circulated promptly, contributes to momentum of a transaction. Also, because (1) the productivity of legal counsel improves, (2) the response time of the legal department minimises, and (3) the quality of a first draft contract improves, the finalisation of a business transaction requires less drafting time and less drafting cycles to repair sloppy drafting. Negotiation issues are clear from the outset. A shortened transaction cycle is the result.
5. Compliance and risk management. Because the Weagree Wizard is much faster than the copy-paste and search-replace drafting, business people are inclined to create their contracts via the Wizard. Moreover, if a legal department's response time and performance level are excellent, business managers will be inclined to adhere to contracting requirements. In other words, if legal counsel performs professionally, business managers would less often seek to avoid the legal department. Furthermore, routine contract drafting work can be delegated to the business (where desired, subject to prior legal approval before release of the contract).
6. Control over your own work. The Weagree Wizard contains a workflow. A workflow (i) structures standard processes in a standardised manner, (ii) prevents that business opportunities fade out because of lack of responsiveness anywhere in the process, (iii) keeps track of contract approval status, and (iv) provides for powerful realtime monitoring functionalities.
7. Realtime monitoring of internal activities. The workflow shows the actual status of all contracting work-in-progress. Senior management gains realtime insight into all transactions (and other activities) by their business groups and units. Separate reporting by business managers can be reduced.
8. User-friendly: happier staff. The Weagree Wizard is simple and very easy to use. The Wizard requires no major process redesign or change management and is easy to integrate in any existing office environment. The Q&A function is an intuitive user interface and provides explanatory notes and default answers to each question. After completing the questionnaire, the Wizard automatically generates a fully fledged, crisp contract in Word-format. The Weagree Wizard contributes to the pleasure in everyone's work.
9. Your IT-environment. The Wizard is a state-of-the-art, web-based (asp.NET based) software application in a powerful (Microsoft SQL) database environment. Obviously, users will work in a company- or business-unit-dedicated server environment.
For more information see the frequently asked questions (FAQ) section (click here).