Clients & Case Studies

Effectively Managing Thousands of Contracts

Microsoft Products & Solutions: Business Objects

The Business Need

Business Objects' legal department manages thousands of contracts ranging from software licenses to non-disclosure agreements. Under a previous system, these contracts were difficult to access for the legal, management, sales, and services staff who were located around the globe. Complicating things further, the signed paper contracts were stored primarily in Business Object's Palo Alto legal office.

Business Objects recognized that license agreements and service contracts were lapsing without sales staff knowledge, which was resulting in reduced sales, lost revenue, and impaired customer service. They partnered with Habañero to develop a document management system that would turn this situation around.

The Solution

The basic solution concept involved scanning paper contracts and importing them into a document management system. There were a number of proprietary systems on the market that addressed this precise scenario, however, these specialty solutions were generally expensive and did not mesh with Business Objects' overall technology and knowledge management strategies.

Using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server, the new contract management system was designed to provide the following:

  • Instant access to contracts from any location throughout the world via a Web browser. Searching can be done by free text and/or key word queries.
  • Notification when contracts are about to expire. Using SharePoint's subscription feature, Business Objects personnel subscribe to their client's contracts and receive notification before a contract expires. This significantly reduces the chance that contract expiry dates will be missed.
  • Built-in indexing of scanned TIFF images. SharePoint uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology transparently to increase accuracy of text-based searches. This solution does not require text versions of documents to be stored alongside the scanned TIFF documents.

The Result

Business Objects' employees now spend far less time and effort locating contracts, and the company is enjoying an increase in revenues due to more frequent contract renewals.

The company currently utilizes a fully functioning content management system:

  • Once contracts are signed, the paper and Word versions are ready for input.
  • Paper contracts are scanned and matched to the original Word versions in SharePoint.
  • Scanned contracts then get checked into SharePoint and their document profiles are automatically updated.
  • SharePoint stores both Word and scanned TIFF documents.
  • End users can browse and search using free text or key words or receive notification of contract expiry.