5 ways to digitalise corporate housekeeping at your legal department
In-house lawyers play a major role in facilitating corporate governance so that businesses can be sustainable and financially stable in the long run. It is important to set out a framework with standards to attract equity, ensure credibility and remain competitive. With compliance and regulatory obligations and complexity around organisations and their sub-entities, corporate governance can be challenging to any legal department regardless of the size or capabilities.
The key is to prioritise the value-generating activities. However, that might not be easy when the legal department is caught up with repetitive tasks. If the processes around corporate housekeeping are manual, you are looking at hours wasted on low-value work and exposure to risks due to delays and errors.
In this article, we look at 5 ways you can streamline corporate housekeeping processes to ensure corporate governance.
- Centralise information in one platform
Imagine you have been asked to collect information for an audit for which you need to dig up files related to different entities stored in several systems and folders. How many hours will you spend searching for information? What is the guarantee that you will find the exact information you are looking for? When files and documents are scattered across different servers, you will waste time, make errors, and expose the business to risks.
The solution: a repository to store all the entity related documents
When all the information is centralised in one platform, you will be able to find everything you need at the click of a button. You will save time, minimise errors and mitigate risks that can harm your business.
- Structure documents and monitor entity activities categorically
How many hours do you spend each week “filing” information manually in the correct folder/ folders depending on how many places it is used? Even worse, how many hours do you spend looking through emails and asking colleagues for status on documents or subsidiary activities? Having to do repetitive tasks manually is time-consuming and you will never have an overview of any updates.
The solution: an all-in-one legal management for activity and document management of entities
A dedicated legal solution will allow you to keep historical records of information, check their status and automatically generate and classify documents of the company and its subsidiaries in well-designed files/ sub-files (certificates of incorporation, articles of association, minutes of general meetings, registers, etc.). What’s more, you can automatically schedule and share information from your company anytime with stakeholders who will be able to view them based on their access rights and entities managed. You will also be able to generate a visual overview of the company and its entities on dedicated organisational charts. You can consult the structure of the company and the information of its entities at any date thanks to advanced reporting functionalities and analyse and monitor the activity of your subsidiaries (breakdown of capital by company, dividends paid by shareholder and company, etc.). With a dedicated legal solution, you will have access to the latest updates, see changes in real-time, share documents in a secure environment and ensure only those authorised have access to information.
- Track capital operations
Imagine having to keep an eye on all the capital operations of the company and update accordingly every time there is a change to the capital or conversion of securities, especially when the business is growing. You will have no overview of any important happenings and therefore risk making ill-informed decisions.
The solution – a legal management system with a dedicated feature to automate capital operations
By streamlining capital operations, you can track any merger of companies, increase/ reduction of capital, acquisition, disposal, conversion of securities, etc and always have a complete overview of any company happening and their status. You will be able to make well-informed decisions and be in a better position to answer the questions of the Board.
- Be alerted of risks
Let’s take the scenario in which a record of a transaction has been modified and there is an inconsistency that will impact outcomes. Most likely, you will come to know of this mishap only after the damage has been made, putting the entire organisation at risk.
The solution – a legal management software with edit rules
If there are edit rules that warn you in the event of inconsistencies, or risk of legal violation; check on duplicates, alerts when the age limit of an agent approaches, automatic monitoring of the number of shared issued and distributed etc., you can ensure compliance across the records of your transactions and mitigate any risks that can cause financial and reputational losses to your organisation.
- Streamline event management
A company’s business year is marked by several corporate legal events, including general and board meetings, which are important for the reputation and longevity of businesses. Organising these events can be tedious and stressful for those in charge. Between sending convocations by post, managing proxies, following up on votes, and drafting minutes, the risks of making errors are high. Adding to it, these processes need to be diligent and secure, making it even more so challenging to organise these assemblies and governance meetings.
The solution – integrating a meeting management tool with a legal management system
By automating general meetings, board meetings and other meetings according to the form of your companies, you can organise events easily and securely, while retaining full control over them. You can set alerts and tasks automatically for each template, so that you don’t miss key dates for meetings, press releases, etc. What’s more, you can visualise all the events related to the legal life of your company (expiry of mandates, general meetings, board of directors etc.) on dedicated dashboards. You can also offer a dedicated area for your participants, to keep them informed of all upcoming events and related documents and prepare meeting agendas and send invitations to participants online. You can also centralise and track your participants’ votes while offering shareholders, members, and directors a secure online space to consult documents, issue a proxy authorisation or cast a vote electronically.
By digitising the management of entity documents and activities, you can store and share specific information (statutory data, information about shareholders, authorised representatives, share transactions, etc.) for your company and its subsidiaries all over the world, in a single solution that respects your business rules. By linking the data, documents, people, and organisation charts of each entity, you have a clear overview and can stay in control.
