Air New Zealand Takes Flight with NDA Document Automation

Situation

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Air New Zealand's legal team is responsible for advising the business on an extensive range of legal issues, from consumer law obligations to fleet transactions. The work is demanding, high volume, complex and sensitive, driving the need for an automated solution to manage less complex workstreams, such as non-disclosure agreements, to free up counsel time for more core, high-value and strategic activities.

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Challenge

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Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are vital for protecting sensitive information in any business. But for the legal team at Air New Zealand, the highly manual process for negotiating NDAs had become a major sticking point. It was creating frequent delays and impacting the team's ability to focus on more significant work.

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They desperately needed to automate the process, but budget and resource constraints meant that finding the right tool that could do it all for less was a challenge.

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Solution

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Leading the charge to find a solution was Senior Legal Counsel, Sam Bailey. Having looked at a few options, it was proving difficult to find the right system that balanced the appropriate functionality and support with the budget and resource constraints of the airline. "We had been exploring a few options to try and get it right. The tool we were using prior did an okay job, but it wasn't where we needed it to be in terms of relationship management and budget."

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Time was not on their side. Air New Zealand had just four weeks to find and deploy a solution before they needed to renew their current system. Failure to do so would mean the team would have to go offline.

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The team was at a crossroads: venture back to old manual processes or keep looking. Fortunately, they came across Checkbox, which offered the automation specifications, dedicated support, speed to market, and budget requirements the legal team required. Without hesitation, Checkbox was brought in.

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The speed at which the project was able to get up and running was a testament to how well Checkbox can execute their system and how easy they make it for clients to onboard the platform.

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"The whole process has just been incredibly seamless," said Sam. "That's not easy to achieve when you've got so many moving parts, especially within a large organisation like Air New Zealand where attention and resources are being dragged in every direction."

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Ease of functionality is a big plus for the team. "Checkbox is so simple to use," said Sam. "The business accesses a page through our intranet, fills in a simple pop-up form with a few details and the tool will populate a standard NDA document in the back-end, which kicks-off a workflow that sends that document around to all parties for electronic signing.

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"Once both parties have signed, Checkbox begins a final workflow that will send finalised copies to both parties and our legal team for record keeping. The Checkbox system has really removed all the friction and created better outcomes for everyone involved."

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In all, Sam concludes that the automation of the Checkbox system allowed the legal team at Air New Zealand to focus more on their efforts on the larger strategic activities that make a difference.

Outcomes

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Checkbox's no-code automation platform allowed Air New Zealand to fully automate their NDA process. This enabled the legal team to improve the NDA processes for all stakeholders and deliver significant time and budget savings.

• The legal team saves between 30-60 minutes per NDA
• Kick-off to go-live date took just four weeks
• The end-to-end NDA process is now much faster and more streamlined
• The legal team are seen as 'innovative' and the business has a positive perception of them
• Automating manual processes has given legal more time to get involved in high value and strategic work

The Future

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Given the functionality and flexibility available through Checkbox, the Air NZ team is currently exploring what other standard documents and legal workflows can be automated with the tool. With plans already in discussion to streamline how the legal team and the customer care team work together, we look forward to seeing where this partnership will take the legal practice of Air New Zealand.

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To law firms and in-house legal teams weighing up the value of automating their practice, Sam says, "There will be an upfront cost, but it's so important to think about the time and resource you'll be saving in the long run. If it results in your team providing a better service to your business stakeholders, then you should definitely take the opportunity."