Multi-document creation and collaborative contract creation

Those who dare to innovate discover blue oceans*! We are proud to have released upgrade version 5.0 of the Weagree Wizard. During these weeks, it will become available to all our customers. In 2015, Weagree took worldwide ‘product leadership’ in automated contract creation solutions – we are now developing it into exciting directions and it is only promising! The upgrade of the Weagree automated contract creation application (“Weagree Wizard”) once again introduces great functionalities, a major one developed together with Endemol Shine and one with BASF. Take a minute to see how this upgrade may reshape contracting processes.

A. New functionality.

1. Multi-document creation:

a functionality permitting to link several templates together, avoiding having to answer Q&A questions twice. This powerful functionality reveals unexpected opportunities:

Example 1: first create a term sheet, then the definitive agreement based on the term sheet. The answers already entered for the term sheet are reused and can be updated (in the Q&A of the definitive agreement, they are clearly marked as reused). Example 2 (‘click your closing together’): in connection with an SPA (share purchase agreement), you can create all closing documents of the transaction in one single go: powers of attorney, shareholder resolutions, deeds of pledge and all related (intra-company) agreements. For each acquired legal entity, closing documents can be grouped into subprojects, and relevant Q&A questions simply clicked together. Generate the documents in just a few mouse clicks (if the closing is postponed by a few days: recreate updated closing documents by reanswering only the Q&A question regarding the effective date). Example 3: all contracts with the same customer or supplier are kept together: when, at any time in the future, an extra contract (or amendment) is required, you can add it with just a few mouse clicks (and the relevant contract data are linked and reused almost automatically). Think of a master agreement with statements of work. Example 4: create a contract in one language and switch, reusing (virtually) all Q&A answers, to a contract in another language. Or: create two identical contracts in different languages without unnecessarily repeating questions. Example 5: alongside creating a contract, tailor a contract approval form automatically, or an executive summary of the contract’s terms.

Altogether, setting up and tailoring a transaction is highly intuitive. Linking the relevant template Q&A’s is largely automated. Both a user and an administrator can do that.

2. Collaborative contract creation:

users can now collaborate on the creation of a contract (or set of related agreements). After creating a project, users can invite colleagues to join the transaction and to link up their already created templates. Obviously, the functionality includes the possibility to see who has answered which question, in which template and when. Every user will only see those transaction or project-related templates in the project which that user is authorised to create (corporate lawyers the corporate agreements only, technical people the templates for statements of work, and the project leader everything). We believe that the functionality under 1 and 2 above will reshape the practice of contracting, making contract creation much more ‘social’ (i.e. co-creation by several disciplines involved, as well as the counterparty, who collaborate in the completion of a transaction). 3. External connectivity: the Weagree Wizard is equipped with a very flexible and highly user-friendly functionality to synchronise with external applications: contract management solutions, document management systems, contract lifecycle solutions, workflows, including Sharepoint, Salesforce, SAP et cetera. Linking Weagree templates to external applications has become more intuitive: hardly any training is required. 4. Sharing Weagree templates: we have upgraded our import and export functionality. It is possible to export Weagree templates (including the Q&A) and import them into the portals of others. As a result, we are able to share a complete SPA (share purchase agreement) with our corporate customers – see below. The import functionality also means a significant reduction of implementation time. In particular, as regards larger templates timesaving may even exceed 35 percent. Given that we are able to insert some 500 model contracts in less than seven weeks, Weagree’s competitive advantage on this ‘hidden’ implementation effort is tremendous. We will continue to improve this functionality. 5. Upgraded hosting: due to the considerable growth of our customer base, we experienced reduced performance. Accordingly, we upgraded the server capacity. Of course, the security of our hosting services is still of the same high quality. 6. Various small features.

• Updated templates and finished contract entries. When a template is changed after the Q&A was answered, on your my contract page both the contract’s entry date and description turn magenta instead of black (and upon hovering over it, a tooltip will explain the possible inaccuracy of the created contract).
• More interface languages available. We translated the English Weagree Wizard interface into French, German, Dutch and Suomi (Finnish). Let us know if you wish to upload it into your portal.
• Simplified UX. The interaction design for approvers has been simplified: the workflow page ‘remembers’ the most recent filter settings and returns to it upon return. Part of this improvement of the user experience (UX) is that we replaced all buttons, both permitting a multilingual interface and anticipating the forthcoming ‘responsive’ interaction design.
• User accessibility of templates. It has become possible to make one template available to more than one user group.
• Forcing Q&A answers improved. A year ago, we introduced the possibility to force users to answer a particular Q&A question. The way it worked was rather prohibitive because the user could not continue the Q&A until the answer was indeed given. We made this friendlier: a user cannot generate the contract until the question is answered and is properly notified of such impossibility.
• Filtering answer options. It made it possible to filter Q&A answer options, based on user authorisation level. This was already possible for regular Q&A questions, it is now also possible for global questions (the questions that affect the template in several places).
• No generate both Word and PDF. We removed the green button for generating both a PDF and a Word-document, uncluttering the screen.
• Copy contract. On the my contracts page, you can copy and reuse the Q&A answers of a previously created contract (and reuse the Q&A answers for creating a similar contract).
• Party details not inserted. If certain party details were not entered by the user (or imported from a connected external CRM or other application), the contract can mark the unfilled contract text with a big blob or any other character.
• Tailoring contract description. In case the intermediate ‘contract properties’ page is ‘bypassed’, users are prompted to enter a contract description as the first Q&A question. It makes the descriptions on the my contracts page more descriptive.
• Out-standing navigation tabs. The top-navigation tab (either ‘new contract’, ‘my contract’ or ‘workflow’) from which the user entered the questionnaire stays up, indicating where the user started.
• Reassign a contract entry. It will be possible to hand over contract entries created by one user to another user.

If you wish to join one of our webinars during which we demonstrate and discuss the possibilities of the new features for you or of the further implementation of the Weagree Wizard generally, please let us know.

B. Weagree – ASML: a highly successful fit

We recently evaluated the adoption of the Weagree Wizard within ASML, our launching customer. “How many contracts did we create in 2015?” Well, that appears to be very impressive: not just a few hundred first-draft contracts per year, but they are using a very substantial part of the full contract know-how base of about 60 templates (including ASML’s enterprise-wide automated NDA tool). Since their start with Weagree more than six years ago, we obviously knew of the improvements in productivity, response time, quality of contracts and contracting process, the increased compliance with contracting requirements and pleasure of working, but still, the actual numbers simply impress. Curious fact: ASML’s share value on Euronext and Nasdaq increased almost 500 percent since they started with Weagree.

C. An SPA-template for our corporate customers

With great thanks to our customers Eneco and JanssenBroekhuysen (click here), we have been developing a full-fledged (purchaser-friendly) share purchase agreement. The SPA will be available to our corporate customers, and although useful in acquisitions of any size, the template may be particularly supportive for ongoing (portfolio) investments in start-ups. It provides for all regular clauses, in all varieties of transaction structures.

D. Weagree core-customer meeting

We have always been in close contact with every customer, evaluating our performance and the Weagree Wizard continuously. Obviously, this is the only way to innovate effectively and maintain the high level of user-friendliness of the Weagree Wizard. Now that we are welcoming large new customers almost every week, at the request of AkzoNobel, we planned a meeting with the close circle of our long-standing and larger customers. With this somewhat exclusive group of Weagree ambassadors, we want to further improve our services, to share experiences and to define the roadmap of the Weagree Wizard.

E. Weagree reseller programme

We’re benefiting tremendously from our efforts, last summer, to formalise and standardise all internal support processes and procedures. Because legal IT providers and publishers have been approaching Weagree to become a reseller, we are now able to train them efficiently and effectively and to provide second-line support. In view of this, we are setting up a complete reseller programme enabling us to scale up quickly in other jurisdictions. * A ‘blue ocean’ is the metaphor used in a bestseller by INSEAD professors Kim and Mauborgne on strategies for groundbreaking innovation. It refers to an innovation approach into the great wide open: the blue ocean reflects an unexplored space of opportunities, as opposed to a blood-red ocean where competitors, like sharks, fight for ever decreasing profit margins. Weagree achieved this thanks to lucky timing: because Weagree was established after 2003 (when Microsoft opened up their document format into .docx) the Weagree Wizard was not forced into Word-integration (but enabled contract know-how management based on a database) and accordingly, the contract automation is visualised (Apple-like) as opposed to a (DOS-like) complicated, time-consuming programming language. Also, Weagree has always been truly web-based, so we never had to make the transition from a PC-installed application, as almost every software solution from before 2006 had to accomplish.