Customer Success Story

As an expert in legal agility architecture, Polderon was able to work alongside the team to re-invest the knowledge gained from the Microsoft Excel-based solution into shaping a scalable cloud-based Microsoft Teams/Azure Boards solution that would enable and boost operational business agility practices while at the same time providing PTC Legal with data-driven insights, enabling them to reduce latency in decision making on their continuous improvement journey.

INSIGHT INTO EFFICIENCY AND COLLABORATION

PTC Legal wanted quick and easy metrics on team efficiency and effectiveness, including intra- and inter-departmental collaboration. “Rather than being reactive and doing additional, manual reporting-style work later on to fill in a spreadsheet, we started collecting data as soon as work arrives. This enables shorter and faster feedback loops, which in turn helps deliver better outcomes”, explains Jason Padman, founder of Polderon.

This created the opportunity for visibility and for the team to collaborate on work, resulting in more data being created automatically – data without effort. PTC EMEA Paralegal Katharina Debray reflects on the enhanced team collaboration:

“One of the best parts ... to me is the frequent exchange about actual work items. This connects the team very well and gives a great overview on the capacity level of the team as well as a feeling of belonging and being seen for every single team member.”

INCREASING THE VALUE LEGAL IS ADDING  

As the Legal department within PTC, they wanted to build on the value they bring to the wider organisation. The longer-term goal is a new value proposition for Legal and from Legal.  

One of the key business agility concepts introduced by Polderon to support this goal was the user story format. As soon as a matter is captured, the user story format gets everyone understanding the business value early on and thinking about how the work they are doing is adding value to the business. As Jason explains, “PTC Legal started to ask the right questions much earlier on in the process. Now they are using that business value they’ve identified as a kind of north star for completing the work”.  

COACHING THE TEAM TO MAKE THEIR OWN PATH 

Another goal was to coach the team in business agility practices using their new standard Microsoft tooling to achieve their normal daily tasks. The mindset for the team was:  

• Build on existing foundations   

• Evolution over revolution   

• It’s a process, step by step   

• It’s a team effort 

As one of the other goals was to achieve an efficient way of collecting metrics, Polderon coached the team to come up with their own way of shaping the tooling to achieve that goal. With the right mindset and a ‘local guide’ expert showing them around the Microsoft technology, the team shaped not only how they wanted to use the data but also where to get it from. They also configured the tooling to match the terminology they use with their customers in order to enhance communication flow.

Key Results 

The transformation helped the team achieve a number of key results:  

• A scalable platform to manage legal matters in a flexible and transparent way.  

• High level of knowledge sharing, even in the earliest pilot phase. 

• Access to data-driven insights and reporting through Microsoft Power Bi. 

• A workflow to enable ongoing improvements to business agility practices & technology in the team.                                                                                          

Jason sums up the engagement with PTC as follows: “PTC Legal really wanted to be data-driven; they just needed a bit of help and some more sophisticated tooling to get there. The engagement shone a light on a path that led them to gathering quality data in a quicker, easier and more valuable way.”

“The results achieved with HALO so far propel us to a new level of operating, knowing and being able to communicate with data, all that without really spending much time on the tracking itself or any kind of red tape (it is very easy and comfortable to use).” 

Michael Goldstein, Director Legal, PTC Legal EMEA

LOOKING AHEAD

Now that the foundations within the PTC Legal team are in place, they are turning their attention to cross-collaboration with the wider organisation.  They plan to onboard other departments like Sales and Finance so that requirements to the Legal team can be made directly using the technology. Moreover, HALO 2.0 will also look at automation and linking other platforms like Salesforce.

“In my view, we are only scratching the surface of what can be achieved moving forward. Connecting HALO with other key business software (such as Salesforce) and existing initiatives can be a game-changer in terms of streamlining our legal reporting with the business and driving further efficiencies.”  

Agisilaos Karpetas. Senior Legal Counsel, PTC Legal EMEA   

Alongside that they will continue to iterate on their Power Bi analytics to enable end-to-end business agility from the data that is available to them.

“HALO is all about establishing a digital thread for legal operations combined with an agile collaboration scheme that together enable and enhance operational efficiency and effectiveness – while capturing data along the way that provide insights into improvement opportunities for the foregoing. This leads to a continuously learning and self-improving organization through “effortless” knowledge transfer and information exchange.”  

Dr. Tobias Broda, SVP EMEA Counsel, PTC Legal EMEA

Some more reflections from PTC Legal members:

“The non-transactional and non-commercial fields of our work such as HR questions and cases, as well as the structural topics that result from fruitful discussions in the team are more visible, traceable and get improved attention and execution.” 

Axel Heltzel, EMEA Corporate Counsel Director, PTC Legal EMEA 
 

“The Agile methodology also helps us direct our team mindset to enhance more and more our collaboration so the output is that of a true team instead of a collection of individual work from members of the same team.... I feel even more connected to the team and feel more fulfilled in my work.” 

Mariana Genton, Senior Legal Counsel, PTC Legal EMEA 
 

“...we will be able to have all stakeholders of a deal (or a project) around a unique platform, thus interacting in a much more agile and connected way, speeding up closing for example.”  

Marion Kischkat-Eloit, Senior Legal Counsel, PTC Legal EMEA  
 

“HALO helped me to have a better and quicker on-boarding!” 

Meriem Bonet-Monserrat, Legal Counsel, PTC Legal EMEA  

(Meriem joined the PTC Legal team just on the very first day of implementing HALO) 

“HALO will make our data collection more effective, efficient, finer (more metrics). Thanks to MSTools like Azure DevOps and PowerBI we are already able to see many different analytics.” 

Fabian Großkopf, Legal Counsel, PTC Legal EMEA 
 

“It is a very powerful tool and if all our internal PTC contacts could work with HALO, it will save a lot of time, energy and make information sharing smoother.”  

Sophie Marmorat, Senior Legal Assistant, PTC Legal EMEA