netLex VisionBringing Procurement and Legal together in contract management
I would say this is one of the best implementations we have ever done here. Having better management of our activities, and of the contract, helps a lot in our day-to-day work.”
About Grupo OLX
Legal and the procurement team at Grupo OLX shared one challenge: how do you organize the lifecycle of supplier contracts, gaining efficiency and making the relationship between the two departments flow more smoothly?
The question is not trivial. Procurement and Legal have different incentives — one chases deadlines and prices, the other clauses and risk — and when the process does not put them in the same flow, the friction between the two areas turns into operational cost.
Key points
- Contracts and powers of attorney in a single cycle, with status visible to the requester
- The Legal–Procurement relationship structured by process, not by email
- Native Slack integration, in the channel the company already used
- Reports with deadline alerts, replacing spreadsheet control
Two areas, two parallel controls, no data
Legal had no contract governance: control happened by email and in spreadsheets. Procurement lived the same problem from the other side, also managing its flows by email. Two parallel controls for a single process.
The effect showed up in the relationship between the areas — a lot of friction and lost efficiency — and in the absence of visibility: nobody could see where the approval or the signature of each contract stood. For managers, the next layer was missing too: there was no data to analyze contracting or team performance.
- Legal had no contract governance, running controls by email and in spreadsheets;
- Procurement struggled to organize processes, also managing flows via email;
- The relationship between Legal and Procurement had a lot of friction, reducing the efficiency of operations;
- There was no visibility into the status of contract approval and signature flows;
- Managers had no data to analyze contracting or performance.
How netLex helped Grupo OLX
Grupo OLX needed to manage contracts and powers of attorney well, guaranteeing efficiency, visibility and data intelligence, and with a lean team. In netLex it found the tool for that.
- Full visibility for requesters into the status of the contract or power of attorney;
- Reports on contracts, with alerts for tracking deadlines;
- Native Slack integration, centralizing communication in the channel already used at the company;
- Data extraction for intelligence, flow assessment and decision-making;
- Automation of templates and workflows, reconciling legal security and speed.
Stop asking questions via email
From Procurement's side, the reading is direct: one of the best implementations ever done at the company. The gain the area points to is management — of its own activities and of the contract — which in practice means no longer asking by email where each request stands.
The Slack integration is the detail that sustains adoption: instead of requiring people to enter yet another system to follow along, the flow notifies them in the channel where they already are. With automated templates and workflows and reports carrying deadline alerts, the friction between Legal and Procurement stopped being resolved by insistence and started being resolved by the process.
Conclusion
The Grupo OLX case is less about contracts and more about the border between two areas. When Procurement and Legal operate in the same flow, with the same status in plain sight, the argument about who is holding what simply stops existing, and a lean team is freed to do what matters.
