We all can constantly learn more and gather confidence how to be successful and fast when building digital solutions, business models and services. Watch the video and learn more!
In less than 3 years PACTA – as a new born German LegalTech Startup – was able to create a holistic solution for the entire lifecycle of legal contracts (and similar documents). This solution is already in full use by several large and well know brands and many other clients in Europe.
Based on the PACTA solution and experience this presentation gives an overview how great digital products can be built, choosing the cloud as a platform, using modern methodologies for creating and running software, deciding for a good architecture and technology stack and leveraging limited resources and time.
Fabian and his team were able to create an amazing SaaS solution, integrate it with a lot of other solutions and continuously improve and extend it with Enterprise grade quality and security. The solution also leverages AI and blockchain. There is nobody better to tell us the full story than Fabian.
Speaker:
Fabian Pohl (Co-founder and managing director of PACTA by BlockAxs GmbH)
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I will guide you today a little bit about our our story I will give you a brief introduction about pacta what where we are what we’re doing and who we who we are and what we are doing and especially our road how we build our product so at from the scratch to our
Enterprise grade I I heard the panel beforehand it was super interesting about no Code and low code and the introvert Enterprise grades and I will guide you or you can follow me through our complete life cycle of our company firstly maybe to me um my background I I studied Information Systems so I’m
Uh yeah I’m able to to develop I started in our company as a developer as well so I I helped to develop our MVPs for example the two-factor identification um our really first MVPs um and my second yeah second laugh I I can mention it like that is blockchain so
What I’m doing since 10 years is just pushing blockchain and all kinds of fields in front and on the political on the development side and I invested in several companies and blockchain companies as well and for five years I met two lawyers one I.T specialist and me
And then we thought about to create a Cloud solution a very scalable Cloud solution for legal processes because to lawyers one economic or half developer and one full developer so our strengths are combining legal and development and therefore our developers all the time say okay they
Never thought that they have to work so much with lawyers because development lawyers are yeah I think it’s not uh yeah it’s not often takes place but it’s necessary in the future so that’s to me um then to uh to pakda to block access um we are currently based in in Germany we
Are operating in the complete Europe in the EU we have 50 plus Enterprise customers plus small medium sizes like Volkswagen for example and we build our product in two and a half years um and that’s yeah we we had to do it because we have big competitors from the US which have a
Lot of money so they can put in they can put into the development much more money than us and uh what’s maybe also important for our company we are Venture Capital based so we got money to do it as well but not that much um at the moment we we have 30 plus
People from five countries so we have a developed in Germany and uh in the Ukraine in Switzerland Austria in Germany and um yeah and we are operating in several sectors from banking to real estate up to law firms so and firstly I will introduce our product and then we can go through the
Story because we have an um holistic approach but um as you said or they are in the local or no code panel we are modular based so all what you see here is a module so you can use it for your own you can just say okay I need a document creation tool
Then you can just use that so we have a modular based holistic approach um and that’s uh one USP and our complete solution is supported by AI we are also using a little bit of blockchain because I wanted it and it’s beneficial for the signature process and I can guide you a
Little bit through the through the product then you can understand our process afterwards a little bit better um because what what we are doing is we help companies from from 200 employees up to 100 000 by automating their legal processes in the procurement in the I.T in the sales
In the legal department in what department whatever where contracts or legal processes are included and what we’re doing here is that we start with a document creation so we completely a no code platform um but of course not every module has a no code component so for example for
Negotiation you don’t need a no code solution it’s it’s not needed it’s not necessary and therefore we created some tools where we use no code some tools where yeah it’s a simple good intuitive user interface and what we’re doing is that we that we are starting with a document creation so
People can just click first questionnaire and get a lot of documents automatic created afterwards and that’s our our latest our newest module as a contract audit tool so you can run your incoming contracts on employee or framework agreements or an NDA for example you you often have NES
If you work with some some other people you can run through the complete contract and get the risks out of it from an from an AI so that’s the first part where we are testing at the moment the new llms so because we don’t we we are looking for the right solution or
The right AI model for the right module of on our side because for this tool we need a big module for contract extraction and for data extraction for example we need a smaller one but that that’s our new thing and that’s the part where we automatically extract risks from from external contracts
Then we have a normal document management system with some AI components like classification so there we have an uh a combined AI module model with some rules because it’s the best way to do it we have a negotiation collaboration room because our complete solution is about the collaboration
Because in the future or in the in in my opinion the future of all companies is collaboration collaboration is key if you can speak with people if you get all stakeholders in one boat then you get efficient processes and therefore collaboration is a key point of our solution as well
The third step is one no code module you can create your own processes so you can create a approvals approval processes with signal combined with signature processes we’re working at the moment on a solution that you can automate automatically extract data and from from current tracks and directly the right
Approval process started starting so you have a very easy solution to create your own processes and without to be a coder um the fifth module is a data extraction tool because you don’t want to read documents you want to know the most important data out of it so we extract
It within smaller AI model it’s completely machine learned so we collect data and we learn from from our customers data when they allow allow us to allow allow us to do it and the sixth is a a clause base so it’s a little more a little bit more legal
Legal tool so they can extract their Clauses automatically just to know that that’s our our solution and it’s completely no code base because we said we want to scale and we don’t want to have a customer support we don’t want to waste I.T resources in companies because
It’s it’s not an existing resource it resources are super low and therefore completely um no code base it’s just a few things because one more thing we tried and we all the time try to have an apple approach so it must be very easy everyone have to or is willing to work
With it and therefore we we invest a very or very much time into the user interface into into the ux design and when we started our solution pacta um for two and a half years because beforehand our company is a little bit older and before we we just had a think
Tank for blockchain Solutions we we are facing a lot of air challenges um and one or the most important point in my opinion is firstly solve these challenges and then starting developing the development because if you doing something wrong at the beginning it takes a lot of time to solve it and um
Then it’s yeah it’s it’s a kind of working together with product development and legal and management sometimes but that’s the three most important stakeholders because in the EU at the at the moment we have the very high security um uh standards and we have the gdpr so
You have to think about it because you have to think about your infrastructure which cloud provider I choose and that’s and first very important Point what you have to solve before and before you start develop developing and of course your solution maybe in our case we need
Intuitivity because we want to scale we want to on board a lot of people in a short time the next thing is the pricing because as I said at the beginning we have a lot of different AI models and AI models are pretty expensive at the moment to train
It and therefore you you need a good pricing at the beginning because you don’t want to just waste money and never earn money that’s not the best way but it happens often um and in my opinion uh it has to be an an automation tool as well because
Automation is is one of the most um or the the biggest the biggest point in the in the Innovation and um and The Innovation part of companies the third point is of course the value proposition you need a value proposition you need something where you can help companies with and that’s the third
Point but how we started with our company firstly we’ve had um we want to have in cloud provider where we can scale with and of course the gdpr it’s not that easy with these three mentioned providers but they are the easiest and best ones in my opinion because
In in Germany we have a telecom we have an sap and smaller ones but with Google Cloud for example we are super fast we have Microsoft we have a microservice we have easy apis from from Google and we can kick start it and as I said yesterday I
Think Google also RBS and Azure AWS and Azure helps you at the beginning to hide bad code you can refactorize afterwards but you can just put more money into it and yeah then the the quality of the code not that important um the tech stack is of course a little
Bit uh yeah you need the people to decode it because at the beginning I we started with Java because my CTO and me was able to code the arbor perfectly and therefore we start with the other after and we ate uh four to eight weeks we
Said okay it’s not the best way to do it with the other we switch um and therefore we are using right now A JavaScript with angular node.js and for the AI part with python and that works perfectly the um the people or the the developer um want to work with it because
We we spoke with a lot of uh developer who wants to yeah better work with JavaScript than Java the third part was exactly what I said the the stakeholder because in the product design fast so firstly maybe I can jump that that looks like that at the beginning
And therefore we had the we had to put the stakeholder in one boat to create firstly the models SS as you see here and then to give him the or the developer for example to to give him the opportunity to take part on the road on the product that they know okay we
Create value we we don’t code anything what helps no one and therefore what that the third and maybe the most important step until now we we do it every week that we have a big meeting with all our developers Etc to explain the value explain the use case explain everything includes inclusively sales
Um numbers Etc so that’s and running and running process in our company um and but I will explain it later a little a little bit deeper the fourth the fourth point was our approach we said directly we are just Cloud only um we want we don’t want to have an uh
To manage an I.T system and data center we want to have an ready to go solution or infrastructure we said we want to be no code and we want to be scalable so Cloud what the way to do it and Google hws and Azure was the way to do it
Of course the the project management is one part of it that uh but in in our in our company and I speak with a lot of high scaling companies um a lot of people say okay we have to do scrum like this and this and this
We don’t do it like this we we are often very very strict and and then uh in the description of something but afterwards it’s in yeah time boxing process is it it’s in yeah we have a deadline we have to do it until then so yeah and the last step
Um for the for the creation of the of the mo of the tool are the AI models I’ve write it down don’t take a sledgehammer to crack a nut um that was that is what I said choose the right model for the right solution otherwise you you fire your complete money into too
Much Firepower and yeah then the most important point on our road was our our step to come from this handwritten sketches to our design design employee we hired them four weeks after these sketches um in in a woman from from Kiev and she built us schedules like this in two
Weeks and our developer was completely on fire because with it with that kind of scheduled they can do nothing they have to think about the design they have to think about everything and they are super slow and therefore we create all the time the The Click dummies we all the time create um
Sometimes the components that the uh the front-end developer for example can use it and of course we have reusable components um our CTO haven’t big big rule catalog where how the developer have to write code how we can reuse components Etc that we get faster and faster and more efficient
And one more very very important thing in our complete company is our Pareto I think everyone knows Pareto because of course we are never perfect we in the development bugs exists of course and we never get all customer satisfied the customers say oh I have
This wish I had this wish we can do it 10 years and I we also at the 85 percent maybe and therefore we said directly at the beginning that we co that we develop that we um communicate every time the 80 of our product and that’s the the point all
Modules what I said are 80 80 of our real final solution um but the 20 percent are made in maybe two or three years but we have a working product an Enterprise grade because we have to think about a lot of Security Solutions and that’s all
The the 80 the security the gdpr the working solution the scalability but the the dream features can come later and that’s a super important part for everyday development and every kind of solution in the cloud in my opinion that you don’t try to be to have the perfect solution
For everyone because not it’s not possible and yeah that’s that’s Um one of of my favorite Parts because as I said we haven’t very very strict process internally with our team with our externals as well with our Freelancers with our customers um because we want to have one solution or we have one holistic solution everyone gets the same solution
Um some some get just one module of it but every everyone has the same solution and a lot of people have the same problems and therefore we may we made a lot of meetings firstly of course with the team with externals to explain the value proposition explain the use cases
Again explain the these uh the the numbers um we speak with with all people it not depends in internal or it’s in management all get the same information informations on our site and that’s the key in my opinion to get the people the developer and legal Partners in one boat
To create a solution when you need it because what what maybe what I forget to say um of course we have personal data on our on our solution so we have to think more and more about security and legal stuff and that’s the part um
Or the the key facts what I want to mention on my last slide we try to use internally a lot of no code solutions for our internal processes made that I I wanted to ask it here uh how of you or who of you are using for in every field in the company
No code tools or low code tools in the development and sales marketing wherever someone okay right um because we we try to do it in every in every um in every kind of or every kind of people get the opportunity to use it because you can automate marketing tasks you can
Automate sales tasks you can I hope we can soon use copilot for development when we are able and we the gdpi allow allowed us and the security part as well because at the moment they see the code that’s not a good decision to do it um therefore it’s it’s a huge step to
Automate as much as possible into in our internal processes as well then as I said the transparents so be transparent as transparent as possible I think it’s the key in all companies and um what we doing or what we said at the at the beginning of our road we have to
Invest in this security we have to invest in external um external free Freelancers or advisors to help us to get the best possible Security Solutions because I’m not a security expert I someone need to say okay we have to do that that and that we have to do an SOC 2 certification for
Example we have to do an end-to-end encryption that’s all part where new Cloud Solutions are new Solutions in general have to invest in because the the data the data is gold and therefore the data is more and more important for blackheads or something else as well and
Last but not least as I said the value proposition at all the time the best way to create a solution because all employees know why they work for us and if they know that they can have a good lunch because they are happy thank you [Applause]