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De­prec­ated element
Re­quire­ments in
Con­tract Man­age­ment
un­der­stand

Group-wide con­tract man­age­ment
at Deich­mann

Over 100 years ago, Deich­mann was a small shoe­maker’s shop in Essen-Borbeck. Today, the company is a prosper­ing global cor­por­a­tion that is active in 30 coun­tries. Di­git­isa­tion helps com­pan­ies with ad­min­is­tra­tion. A suc­cess­ful di­git­al­isa­tion project at Deich­mann SE: the in­tro­duc­tion of the con­tract man­age­ment soft­ware otris con­tract.

Keeping an over­view
“With over 4,200 shops in Germany and abroad, we have to be well struc­tured in ac­count­ing to keep everything in view,” says Ines Padovan, who works in In­ter­na­tion­al Ac­count­ing at Deich­mann SE. An im­port­ant task of her de­part­ment is to monitor the company’s con­trac­tu­al re­la­tion­ships within the frame­work of a func­tion­ing ICS (In­tern­al Control System).

Uniform solu­tion
Deich­mann SE stores con­tracts with sup­pli­ers for mer­chand­ise – i.e. shoes, socks or T-shirts – in a system that is linked to the central ERP soft­ware. A uniform solu­tion was sought for all other con­trac­tu­al re­la­tion­ships, from con­sultancy con­tracts to IT licence agree­ments. A team led by Ines Padovan there­fore ini­ti­ated an IT project to­geth­er with col­leagues from the legal de­part­ment. The goal was to di­git­al­ise and stand­ard­ise con­tract man­age­ment through­out the company. The plan to use special soft­ware was obvious. The main re­quire­ments for the system were: central data storage, loc­a­tion-in­de­pend­ent access, easy filing and re­triev­al of con­tracts/data, auto­mated dead­line mon­it­or­ing, ex­tens­ive au­thor­isa­tion set­tings, easy ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Un­der­stand­ing re­quire­ments
“With otris we im­me­di­ately had the feeling that they un­der­stood our re­quire­ments. This feeling did not deceive us: from the initial meeting to the re­quire­ments ana­lys­is to the im­ple­ment­a­tion, the co­oper­a­tion worked ex­cel­lently,” Ines Padovan sums up.

The system is cur­rently running at the headquar­ters in Germany. Ap­prox­im­ately 180 em­ploy­ees use the soft­ware. The de­part­ments have access to the con­tract files re­leased for them. The au­thor­ised em­ploy­ees file new con­tracts and link con­tract periods on their own re­spons­ib­il­ity. The system’s uniform struc­ture makes it easy to find filed con­tracts. More trans­par­ency in the con­tract port­fo­lio makes it easier for staff to obtain in­form­a­tion in order to achieve optimal results in con­tract ne­go­ti­ations. Se­cur­ity is another benefit of the system: otris con­tract warns the re­spons­ible em­ploy­ee of up­com­ing con­tract dead­lines. A valu­able func­tion when it comes to not missing rene­go­ti­ations or pre­vent­ing un­wanted ex­ten­sions/ex­pir­a­tions of con­tracts.

„From the initial meeting to the re­quire­ments ana­lys­is to the im­ple­ment­a­tion, the co­oper­a­tion with otris has been ex­cel­lent.“

Ines Padovan
In­ter­na­tion­al Ac­count­ing, Deich­mann SE

In­ter­na­tion­al roll-out
Ines Padovan is cur­rently working on rolling out the system in­ter­na­tion­ally. She is cre­at­ing new users and com­pan­ies as well as their access rights on her own. Without using in-house IT re­sources or hiring ex­tern­al con­sult­ing. In each country where Deich­mann is active, a sep­ar­ate ad­min­is­tra­tion is re­spons­ible for the na­tion­al busi­ness. The struc­ture with all its com­pan­ies and cor­por­ate units is stored in otris con­tract and at the same time forms the basis for the rights and roles concept. “The admin func­tions we need to scale the system are largely self-ex­plan­at­ory. We can create new de­part­ments and com­pan­ies without a lengthy as­sign­ment process and make otris con­tract avail­able to them.”

A well-struc­tured admin area is one thing. Even more im­port­ant is the us­ab­il­ity for the user in the re­spect­ive de­part­ment. Ines Padovan tested the us­ab­il­ity with a small sample: “In a test, we asked col­leagues to create a new con­tract with otris con­tract. The col­leagues had never worked with the soft­ware before and yet had no prob­lems filing and sub­sequently re­triev­ing a con­tract doc­u­ment.”

Con­clu­sion
Un­der­stand­ing a cus­tom­er’s re­quire­ment cor­rectly is a basic pre­requis­ite for a solu­tion that meets the cus­tom­er’s needs. This is far less trivial than it sounds and is the key to success in many soft­ware pro­jects. Deich­mann SE had con­crete ideas of what a group-wide, digital con­tract man­age­ment system should look like: easy to use without an ex­cess­ive range of func­tions and at the same time scal­able as re­quired with little ad­min­is­trat­ive effort. “With otris, we found the project partner we were looking for,” Ines Padovan sums up and adds: “I’m an otris con­tract fan!”

The Deich­mann SE
Deich­mann SE op­er­ates more than 4,200 shops in 30 coun­tries and employs around 43,000 people world­wide. This makes Deich­mann the market leader in the German and European shoe trade. The tra­di­tion­al company from Essen has been family-owned since its found­a­tion in 1913.

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