PrestaShop offers a turnkey CMS (Content Management System) solution that equips e-merchants with websites. This successful French company was created in 2005 by five students from Epitech. Today, 250,000 e-commerce sites are online thanks to its technology!
Domitille de Caslou is a lawyer at PrestaShop. Within the company, the legal team is instead a generalist, and covers all areas of law. Florent Dafour is Sales Operations Manager. The sales ops department was created when he arrived. What is the objective of this department? To streamline exchanges within the team and maximise commercial efficiency!
A few months ago, the PrestaShop team started using Hyperlex, and in particular the connector for HubSpot to connect customer and contract data. We interviewed Domitille and Florent to understand how it changed their way of working.
Hello Domitille and Florent, thank you for accepting this interview. To begin with, what aspects of contracts are you both working on?
Domitille de Caslou: In the legal department, we are responsible for drafting contracts and creating models with the teams, depending on the products and needs. We also provide support during the negotiation phases. Finally, we are responsible for creating an up-to-date contractual database, which we have to present in the event of litigation.
Florent Dafour: In the sales ops department, it's mainly a question of helping the sales teams to make the contractual aspect of their job more fluid. When they sign a new contract, they have to go through a number of stages to be able to retrieve reliable information. The idea is really to be able to centralise all this data in one place so that the contract can be used as easily as possible and, above all, be signed quickly.
Did either of you know about the existence of contract management tools before using Hyperlex?
Domitille de Caslou: I had heard about it because I have a background in new technologies. I also worked in a legaltech company, so obviously I was a bit aware of it.
When I arrived at PrestaShop three years ago, and I saw the difficulties the team was having managing the entire contractual cycle, centralising the entire contract database and interactions, I did some research into what was available. It was I who chose to implement Hyperlex.
Florent Dafour : I didn't know anything about it. It was Domitille who introduced me to the tool. I was quite taken with it from the start, because I could see the strength of the tool, both for legal and commercial purposes.
So it's a great discovery, which deserves investment, monitoring, and parameterisation, but which now makes it possible to streamline processes, which was not possible without the existence of such a tool.
How did the implementation of Hyperlex go?
Domitille de Caslou: For me, who was in charge of the project from the beginning, I don't think I was aware of the extent of the work.
In particular, in the history phase: we had to bring out the entire database of up-to-date contracts and at the same time clean up the existing ones. While implementing it into the software, we had to take care of what was in progress. How do you list all the contracts and try to clean up our 10-year company database, making sure you only put in those that are relevant?
Another point was the deployment and training of the teams. We did some of this change management with Florent, but it happened at a time when I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to do it. Except that the teams need personalised support. Whether it's for the handover, to really show them the interest of the project, and for internal purposes.
What else made you turn to Hyperlex?
Domitille de Caslou: The main criterion for Hyperlex was artificial intelligence, the ability to read contracts, the intelligent database aspect. For us in the legal department, this is huge.
In the other solutions, it was more of a database that classified, but there was no keyword search or intelligent search that could simplify our daily lives. It was a bit like the Google Drive tool.
Was Hyperlex easy to learn?
Domitille de Caslou: Getting started was quite smooth, with occasional difficulties... But with valuable support! I had a few return visits with the Customer Success team, which was very responsive each time. So that's really great.
Florent Dafour : I didn't have any problems with the tool, strictly speaking. I was able to get all the answers I was looking for from the tool.
What are the qualities of Hyperlex for you?
Domitille de Caslou: For us, on the legal side, it's obviously the fact that it's a centralised database that we can update.
But also: the keyword search, the fact of being able to find the clauses, the types of clauses, it's great! And the fact of having a single base of templates for the whole company, and not each one its own template (which each one adapts or not and updates or not).
Florent Dafour: On the sales side, Hyperlex allows us to increase productivity and transparency. Productivity gains, because we fill in the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) information once and for all. It is immediately extracted into the contract on Hyperlex. This is in line with the positive points of the legal system, because we will be able to have all the information centrally. Invoicing information and legal information are put in the same place in our CRM. Requesting them once really saves time and makes exchanges and processes more fluid, which reduces sales cycles.
Transparency, because the interoperability between our CRM and Hyperlex allows for an up-to-date status and therefore efficiency and transparency at this level. Because without Hyperlex, otherwise, it was a Slack channel or an email channel. And as a result, transparency is not instantaneous. The statistical monitoring aspect is also useful for managing our activity, because it allows us to say "OK, we're going to be able to include the renewal phases of our contracts in a calendar and therefore have times and momentum defined within the year and therefore special attention from management".
How much time does the HubSpot and Hyperlex connector save you?
Florent Dafour: Without the connector, there would not have been any support from the sales staff. That was the most important thing on the operational side.
To quantify the time saved, it is best to understand what the process was like before Hyperlex. Before, it was a matter of: taking your document from Google Drive, retrieving your contract template and filling in all the information. Then you had to send it all to the legal department for proofreading and validation of the clauses and specifics of the contract. And once everything was validated internally, we sent it to the client. Then the negotiation took place and the contract was sent back to PrestaShop. And finally, it was time for the final validation and signatures.
With the Hyperlex-HubSpot connector, a contract can be generated straight away using HubSpot data that has already been filled in. So we avoid that part. I think it's 15 to 30 minutes per contract if you don't have all the information. And once again, there are days when we have a longer latency time because we are waiting for customer feedback on the information we have requested. Knowing this in advance helps us to be quicker!
The fact that we don't have to go back and forth internally to find out the status of the contract saves us time. The fact that Docusign is directly integrated into Hyperlex saves us time. So the productivity gain is there. We save almost half a day per contract.
Domitille de Caslou: On the legal side, the Hyperlex-HubSpot connector saves us time too. We no longer need to go back and forth between the different tools. We centralise the information, when we send a new template, we update it in Hyperlex, and it is sent automatically.
What added value does the HubSpot and Hyperlex connector provide?
Florent Dafour: The direct link with the CRM tool, i.e. the possibility of taking all the information from the tool and integrating it directly into the contracts, avoids redundancy of tasks and this was one of the biggest pain points for the sales staff!
The HubSpot and Hyperlex connector also allows the status of the contract to be monitored. This is very important, because today, sales people are able to tell me "my contract is in the validation phase" for example. Or: "I know that in the signature process, such and such a signatory is missing".
Would you have any advice for legal departments that want to start a digital transition?
Domitille de Caslou: First of all, I think that the project should not be carried out solely by the legal department. It must be well prepared with the managers of the other teams that could be concerned. It's very important to prepare this area and, if necessary, to choose the tool with them, to give them a decision-making power in the reflection.
What next? It is important to have a small map of what is already being done in terms of contracts.
Then comes the change management. I think you need a dedicated person whose objective over the year is to get the tool adopted, because that takes time! The legal department needs to be involved in training, deployment and communication.
And by the way, why not pair up for this task? With a person from the legal department and a person from the sales ops side, as we did at PrestaShop, it was great. My contact person, who allowed me to understand the needs on the operational side that I didn't understand, could himself translate the needs and benefits of this tool.
Hyperlex for you in three words?
Florent Dafour: The ability to listen, commitment and vision.
The ability to listen to our needs, because the support was there, understood us and moved forward with us. That's great.
Commitment. Because it requires a lot of internal commitment, it requires work, effort. But I'm sure we'll get the reward in the end.
Vision. Because Hyperlex is a company that seems to have great ambitions. And we saw with the team that we had possibilities of evolution in the future. And when we talked to the Hyperlex teams, they shared this vision. It was also important to commit to a partner who didn't want to stop there, but who really wanted to go further.
Want to know more about the PrestaShop + Hyperlex adventure? 👇
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