A global life sciences company set out to improve its commercial contracting process. While a self-service model was in place, there were clear opportunities to improve turnaround time, reduce help desk volume, and shift internal legal teams away from lower-complexity work and toward more strategic matters.
The company’s legal operations and innovation team prioritized simplification, better time zone coverage, and tighter alignment between legal review and business needs. They needed a partner who could embed seamlessly, support change, and deliver measurable improvements with a focus on user experience.
From Launch to Seamless Collaboration
Factor was selected to support the company’s transformation across multiple business areas, including Marketing, Technical Operations, and R&D. Ahead of launch, both teams worked closely to refresh contract artifacts, conduct knowledge transfer sessions, and align on processes to ensure a smooth transition.
A collaborative cross-functional model was established to present a unified legal function. Factor team members were added to day-to-day communications, received internal email addresses, and were referred to simply as part of “Legal” — supporting a consistent experience for internal business users.
This integration eliminated silos, improved responsiveness, and helped reinforce shared ownership of outcomes.
Visibility That Drives Change
A key goal of the partnership was to support data-informed decision-making. Factor implemented a structured tracking solution that provided insights into turnaround times by contract category, frequently negotiated terms, off-platform activity, and overall workflow volume.
This level of visibility helped surface bottlenecks, inform prioritization, and identify areas for continued simplification. Even early in the program, tracking just a few data points yielded actionable insights that helped the legal team guide internal change.
“The insights you get from the data — that’s where all the gold is. Start by looking at the data and see what it tells you,” said the company’s Head of Global CLO Operations and Innovation.
Tangible Business Impact
The partnership delivered measurable improvements across legal and business functions:
- Contract turnaround time improved by 20 to 30 percent
- Help desk tickets related to contracting dropped by 88 percent
- Nearly 70 percent of contracts were completed without legal review
These results were achieved through streamlined processes, applying and learning from the guidance, and closer coordination between legal operations, attorneys, and Factor’s delivery team.
Legal as a Simpler, Smarter Business Partner
The legal team continues to evolve the program through a jointly developed innovation roadmap. With shared governance, integrated delivery, and clear data visibility, the company has built a more scalable, efficient, and user-friendly legal function — one that’s focused on business enablement, not bottlenecks.
As part of that roadmap, the team has begun leveraging generative AI in key areas — starting with AI-assisted reviews of contracts on third-party templates, and analysis of negotiated contracts to surface trends, outcomes, and deviations from the playbook. These early insights are already informing template and playbook refinement, with more opportunities to come.
This case demonstrates how simplifying systems, empowering teams with the right data, and embedding the right external partner can unlock lasting transformation in legal operations.
Find out more about Factor’s AI-powered contracting solutions.
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