Built on ServiceNow®, more than 20 major processes have been implemented already for more than 90 countries globally. Workflow automation, and self-service to address repeatable tasks, establishing process SLAs and creating regional centres are just a few aspects of this transformation.

Following a decision by Bayer’s Legal, Compliance and Data Privacy team to select ServiceNow as platform for its digital transformation, smartvokat was selected as its implementation partner. “A true collaboration,” according to Thomas Pfennig, Global Head of Compliance & Data Privacy at Bayer.

smartvokat rendered comprehensive assistance including process mapping and harmonization, customising and development leveraging its own “legal tech translator” methodology to introduce legal and compliance workflow automation and self-services to Bayer across more than 90 countries. Other services included post-go live managed services (full report for download).

Joined by iTSM Group, a ServiceNow Elite partner, the partnering between both companies led to the formation of “Inspiring Legal”, a Joint Venture focusing exclusively on the delivery of ServiceNow-based legal and compliance solutions.  

Bayer worked alongside smartvokat to build the platform architecture and service applications. Flexibility was essential. Processes that were expected to be straightforward were revealed to be more complex. To maintain the project’s momentum, feature prototypes were designed, tested, and production-ready in as little as a few weeks.

Automated workflows resolve standard requests faster and a smooth-running, end-to-end self-service portal is available 24/7 to Bayer’s workforce. “It was important to me that we had a user-friendly interface,” says Thomas Pfennig, Global Head of Compliance & Data Privacy at Bayer. “To win over users, it had to be appealing. Compared to the others, the ServiceNow platform, offering broad capabilities to customize as well as establishing out-of-the-box functionalities, is just more enjoyable to use.”

The impact is transformational. Since the first service was rolled out to the organization in the last year, close to 30,000 requests were handled via the LPC platform. Among other activities, more than 4,600 general legal requests, 3,400 third-party due diligence assessments, and close to 20,000 Fair Market Value checks (a requirement according to pharmaceutical industry codes) were processed via the LPC platform, with an automation rate as high as 80% for some processes. There have been nearly 10,000 users with a rapidly growing adoption rate within the organization of 100,000+ employees.

User engagement can be tracked via growth in the knowledge database, the number of questions being submitted, and the speed at which queries are closed. Current user satisfaction is running at 4.1 out of 5.