BORA auto­mates con­tract man­age­ment

Re­cog­nising the po­ten­tial
BORA sells its products via trade part­ners (e.g. kitchen studios or fur­niture stores). The BORA sales de­part­ment creates newly ac­quired trade part­ners in the CRM system. Before the in­tro­duc­tion of auto­mated con­tract gen­er­a­tion, the sales staff created a new trade partner con­tract from the in­form­a­tion stored in the CRM by se­lect­ing the correct con­tract tem­plate. The sales rep­res­ent­at­ive filed the draft con­tract for counter-reading on a plat­form ac­cess­ible to the trader. “The con­tract cre­ation process was error-prone and up­dat­ing the con­tract tem­plates was time-con­sum­ing,” recalls Bernhard Johne, General Counsel at BORA. “On the other hand, the process con­sisted of re­pet­it­ive and easy-to-isolate process steps. It was there­fore clear to us: there is enorm­ous po­ten­tial for auto­ma­tion here.”

Three systems, one process
The proven CRM system as well as the well-func­tion­ing partner plat­form were to be re­tained for the auto­ma­tion project.

Bernhard Johne and his team were there­fore looking for soft­ware that could take on a “work­flow-con­trolled in­ter­me­di­ary func­tion” between the systems. “The solu­tion that the otris con­sult­ants pro­posed to us finally con­vinced us,” Bernhard Johne states in ret­ro­spect. “We wanted to replace the time-con­sum­ing and error-prone manual work from the con­tract cre­ation process with digital pro­cesses. With otris con­tract, we suc­ceeded.”

The new con­tract cre­ation work­flow now runs through three systems that com­mu­nic­ate smoothly with each other: The CRM system, otris con­tract and the partner plat­form. The CRM system has master data sov­er­eignty. This is where the data of ex­ist­ing part­ners and newly ac­quired pro­spects with the ne­go­ti­ated con­tract con­di­tions are stored. otris con­tract is con­nec­ted to the CRM system via an in­ter­face and pulls the data created there at the touch of a button to create a draft con­tract. Another in­ter­face con­nects otris con­tract with the partner plat­form in order to assign the draft con­tracts to the re­spect­ive dealer.

otris con­tract as the control centre
“With more than 10,000 new con­tracts or con­tract ad­just­ments per year, it was ex­tremely im­port­ant to us that the new process be easy for the user to learn and work re­li­ably despite its com­plex­ity,” Bernhard Johne ex­plains one of the most im­port­ant goals of the project. To im­ple­ment the re­quire­ment, the con­sult­ing firm con­figured otris con­tract so that the con­tract man­age­ment soft­ware op­er­ates as a central control system in the back­ground. The user con­tin­ues to work with the fa­mil­i­ar CRM system in the sales process and the cus­tom­er can also con­tin­ue to act via the fa­mil­i­ar partner plat­form.

The process in detail
In con­crete terms, the work­flow for con­tract cre­ation works as follows: The sales em­ploy­ee creates a newly ac­quired pro­spect in the CRM system and enters the ne­go­ti­ated con­tract con­di­tions (e.g. the terms of payment). At the touch of a button, he then trig­gers the auto­mated con­tract cre­ation process. otris con­tract pro­cesses the data from the CRM system into a draft con­tract. To do this, the system first selects a con­tract tem­plate in the rel­ev­ant lan­guage that cor­res­ponds to the data. The tem­plate con­tains vari­ables which the system re­places with clauses ac­cord­ing to the ne­go­ti­ated con­di­tions (read here in detail how clause man­age­ment works in otris con­tract). The com­pos­i­tion of the con­tract tem­plate and clauses creates a con­tract doc­u­ment that the user can now check and approve at the touch of a button. The ap­prov­al trig­gers another work­flow: The system sends an email asking the trader to re­gister on the partner plat­form.

After suc­cess­ful au­then­tic­a­tion, otris con­tract trans­fers the con­tract doc­u­ments to the partner plat­form. The re­tail­er checks against and – if he agrees to the con­tract – will be listed as a partner in the CRM in future.

Con­tract data­base
otris con­tract con­trols the con­tract cre­ation and ap­prov­al work­flow. On the other hand, the soft­ware serves as a con­tract data­base. Clearly ar­ranged and easy to search, sales staff can find all active con­tracts and those under ne­go­ti­ation. The system sends a re­mind­er after a pre­defined period if a dealer does not react to a draft con­tract. Like­wise, the system auto­mat­ic­ally de­ac­tiv­ates draft con­tracts after the binding period of the offer.

Con­clu­sion
Re­think­ing es­tab­lished tech­niques and im­prov­ing them by re­design­ing them – that is the prin­ciple by which BORA hob fume cup­boards were created. The extent to which this prin­ciple in­flu­ences all parts of the company is shown by the courage to di­git­al­ise in BORA’s ad­min­is­tra­tion. The auto­ma­tion in­tro­duced in co­oper­a­tion with otris con­sid­er­ably sim­pli­fies and ac­cel­er­ates the con­tract cre­ation process. At the same time, the new system allows more complex situ­ations to be managed with the same amount of effort and min­im­ises many risks that arise from manual data trans­fer. “Working with otris has been ex­tremely pro­duct­ive. We are very sat­is­fied with the project ex­e­cu­tion and the result,” Bernhard Johne sums up.