Legal Digital Transformation

Our client, a mid-tier legal firm were the market leaders for conveyancing services to property development organisations across Australia.  The legal firm managed the settlement of approximately 10,000 property transactions annually.  Each property transaction would involve a sales agent overseeing the execution of a paper contract of sale for each off the plan property.  Each transaction required 4 copies of a paper contract which could consist of several hundred pages. The industry was moving towards digital signatures and our client were at the forefront of this technology transformation.  By managing the process on a digital platform the cost per transaction could be reduced by approximately 70%.

Our client had launched an electronic contracts (eContracts) pilot platform in 2016 but were experiencing challenges scaling the current product.  We were engaged to conduct a review of the current platform and to help them develop a solution that would enable them to scale the service nationally.   Since launching the eContracts pilot platform in 2016 a number of key issues had been identified with the existing service.

Technology platform – The existing solution required costly custom development and did not meet all of the mandatory business requirements

Policy, process and procedures – Comprehensive policies, processes and procedures had not been clearly defined for the delivery of the service with sales agents

Support costs – The existing platform was difficult to use and required significant support from internal IT resources over weekends during sales launches.

The property team were becoming frustrated with the current limitations. They wanted to retain their market leading position within the industry and did not want to transition back to manual paper processes.  This meant we needed to help them identify and implement a new solution fast!

Clarit-e assisted our client to evaluate potential products to deliver a scalable and streamlined digital process.  The guiding principles for the delivery of this new eContracts platform were to:

1. Identify a scalable and secure platform that required low capital costs
2. Develop a solution that was easy to use for sales agents and property purchasers
3. Develop standard policies, processes and procedures for the delivery of the end to end service

In order to select the right solution a detailed process mapping activity was undertaken to understand the current process and issues in more detail.  A detailed cost analysis also provided insights into the current cost per transaction.  The development of a future state process helped to confirm the mandatory requirements and focus the technology selection process.

A dedicated SaaS product was selected that could be configured and rolled out in 6 weeks.  This enabled the existing pilot platform to be phased out quickly.  A change management strategy was developed and implemented to transition existing clients across to the new platform.  This included significant engagement with sales agents at display suites to help them understand the new product and to also refine their procedures to ensure an optimal customer signing experience on launch days.

The new eContracts solution delivered an immediate improvement in the end to end service.  Sales agents were more confident in the platform on sales launch days. The product had significantly improved performance and was easy to use.  The project had delivered the following key improvements to the legal firm and their clients:

• A reduction in the costs of printing contracts, posting and other administration costs by 70%
• A reduction in the overall time to execute and exchange a contract from 30 mins to 5 minutes
• The ability for the vendor to be able to sign the contracts from any location on any device
• Weekend support from the SaaS vendor which eliminated the need for internal IT services

The new process significantly improved the digital signing experience for property buyers. The future plans for the platform were to enable integration with the key property development CRM and to continue reducing the cost per signing transaction.  We also helped our client deliver significant improvements to their property development CRM and you can read more about how we helped support them to transform this process in our eConveyancing case study.