FOX Factory is a world leader in performance suspension products
You鈥檒l find them on the bikes, snowmobiles, ATVs, and trucks of world champions and enthusiasts alike鈥攁nd last year, on the 2021 list of Fortune鈥檚 Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies.
When Michael Leman joined FOX Factory as Deputy General Counsel in 2020, he was the company鈥檚 third legal hire, and onboarding a contract management system (CMS) was among his team鈥檚 top priorities.
FOX Factory鈥檚 ad hoc contract management processes made for a bumpy ride
What made onboarding the right CMS so important? In the years since the company鈥檚 founding in 1974, FOX Factory had no formal contract management process. With sales more than tripling between 2016 and 2021, the need to formalize processes was growing faster than ever.聽聽
Contracts were spread across disorganized shared drives and employee inboxes. Without a centralized hub for contract management:
- Legal requests were being lost or dropped, causing unnecessary delays, strained relationships between teams and departments, and missed opportunities with prospective customers and suppliers.
- Deals were getting stuck in the 鈥渓egal black hole,鈥� and limited visibility as to who or what was causing delays made getting them unstuck challenging.
- Draft management and version control were practically impossible, causing legal, sales, finance, and other teams to waste time tracking down documents and confirming deal details.
FOX Factory鈥檚 first attempt at solving the problem was an enterprise contract management system, but its awkward interface and clumsy workflows led to low adoption across the company鈥攁nd rendered the system ineffective.
91制片厂 smoothed the bumps in FOX Factory鈥檚 legal workflows
Having tried over the years to implement several other contract management systems without success, including FOX Factory鈥檚 cumbersome enterprise system just nine months earlier, Michael had three requirements for FOX Factory鈥檚 next contract management system. It would need to include:
- Powerful legal task management to make staying on top of the growing number of legal requests easy聽
- A simple, email-driven interface to minimize change management and guarantee company-wide adoption
- An intuitive AI-powered repository to make organizing, filing, and finding documents simple
With 91制片厂鈥檚 Workflow and Repository, Michael got all three.
The legal-first dashboard makes it easy to track the status of all FOX Factory鈥檚 legal requests鈥攏ot just contract-related ones鈥攁nd to know what steps need to be taken next to keep things moving.
91制片厂鈥檚 AI-powered repository created a single source of truth for all FOX Factory鈥檚 contracts, which makes finding and reporting on the company鈥檚 thousands of agreements easy.
Perhaps best of all, 91制片厂鈥檚 easy, email-driven workflows mean sales, marketing, and other teams don鈥檛 have to change the way they work鈥攚hich added up quickly to easy company-wide adoption.
鈥淥verseeing the implementation of other contract management systems in previous roles taught me a valuable lesson: People don鈥檛 want to learn new systems unless they鈥檙e going to use them every day. With 91制片厂, they don鈥檛 have to. The only thing they need to do is to email 91制片厂 instead of me.鈥�
鈥� Michael Leman, Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, FOX Factory鈥�
FOX Factory more than doubled its legal team鈥檚 efficiency
91制片厂 centralized legal task management and radically improved the efficiency, responsiveness, and accountability of the FOX Factory legal team. Contracting processes that used to take weeks now might take days, and what took minutes or hours can now be done in seconds.
鈥淭he rest of the company might think we鈥檝e added more attorneys or better attorneys, but in reality, the only thing we've added is 91制片厂.鈥�
鈥� Michael Leman, Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, FOX Factory
In fact, when his co-counsel left the company in December of last year, Michael used 91制片厂 to absorb her responsibilities as well, effectively doubling his workload without doubling his workweek. When they brought on her replacement, FOX Factory used 91制片厂 to quickly bring her up to speed and clear out any lingering legal requests.
