Wanted
An innovative way to scale up legal operations without increasing headcount.
Context
The Kraft Heinz Company, a daily presence in people’s lives around the world, has ambitious targets to grow the business. And as at all growth-oriented companies, this creates challenges as well as opportunities for its legal teams.
Challenge: do more with the same
In 2021, the company’s legal team in the Benelux and UK & Nordics region faced two challenges. First, despite already working flat out, they needed to increase their capacity to meet a planned ambitious increase in the number of contracts they managed. Second, they wanted to do so without expanding their headcount. Nor did they want to pass the additional work (and oversight) to an external law firm.
Solution: a custom legal managed service
These parameters led them to try something innovative: the Managed Services model from Legadex. With a reputation for combining skilled legal professionals, cutting-edge technology and efficient business processes, Legadex could offer The Kraft Heinz Company a solution that ticked all their must-have boxes.
Implementation: start small and refine
The partnership commenced carefully, with Legadex providing support for so-called indirect procurement agreement reviews in the Netherlands. Under this setup, we undertook to thoroughly review the agreements and provide our findings to our client’s legal counsel and procurement team. They would then use our findings as a basis for further negotiation. It proved successful. Not only did this approach enable our client to alleviate the pressures on their internal resources, but it also offered a blueprint for scalability and efficiency.
Having learned more about each other and demonstrated Legadex’s capability and added value, it wasn’t long before The Kraft Heinz Company asked us to extend our support to encompass direct procurement contracts. And not long after that, they extended the geographical scope to take in the UK & Nordics region, underscoring the adaptability and scalability of our managed services offering.
Implementation: continue to add and evolve
As the partnership matured, our services for The Kraft Heinz Company continued to evolve, both in volume and geographic coverage. We extended the service to other parts of Europe, performing contract reviews for various procurement teams, including a project to support the construction of a new manufacturing plant in Spain. This expansion was a testament to the seamless integration of our support with our client’s operations, highlighting the flexibility and responsiveness of Legadex’s service model.
Another milestone in the partnership was the introduction of full end-to-end contracting support. This new service dimension enabled procurement teams within The Kraft Heinz Company to communicate directly with Legadex throughout the contract negotiation process. From the initial drafting to the final signature, we provided comprehensive support, facilitating efficient contract negotiations, ensuring timely completions and so further reducing the pressure on internal resources. This evolution represented a paradigm shift in legal support, offering The Kraft Heinz Company a more dynamic and integrated solution to its legal challenges.
Results
The Kraft Heinz Company’s partnership with Legadex is helping it to manage the complex legal requirements faced by a global corporation in a period of growth and transition.
The initial focus on indirect procurement agreement reviews in the Netherlands demonstrated an effective model for alleviating internal resource pressures. As the collaboration evolved, the expansion of our services into direct procurement contracts, to the UK & Nordics region and, ultimately, into the provision of full end-to-end support, further underscored our adaptability. Today, this full end-to-end approach is enabling the company’s procurement teams to manage contract negotiations more efficiently while also significantly reducing the burden on internal resources. It’s a showcase model of flexibility, responsiveness and integrated legal support.
Conclusion
Managed services are a journey – a process rather than a hand-over – that requires openness and an investment in mutual understanding from both sides. With support from Legadex’s Managed Services model, the lawyers at The Kraft Heinz Company can concentrate on high-value, business-critical work, while ensuring that routine-but-vital contracts aren’t overlooked. The addition of Legadex as flexible support allows the legal department to provide timely support even in times of high demand, and the pricing structure agreed with The Kraft Heinz Company ensures that there are no unpleasant surprises in terms of costs of this flexible support.