Automated NDA Generator: Driving digitalization holistically together

No more lists and forms – that was the common goal of Beiersdorf Shared Services IT (BSS IT) and the legal department. The result is a self-service tool that automatically generates non-disclosure agreements. The NDA Generator reduces the workload and simplifies the day-to-day work of Beiersdorf employees – from the creation of an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) to the signing of the agreement.

Dr. Philipp Hofer: The generator works very simply: the user answers a total of nine questions and the tool creates an NDA tailored to the specific case based on the answers given, which can even be signed directly thanks to DocuSign integration. In this way, it maps all the necessary steps for an NDA in one solution and can be used independently by Beiersdorfers 24/7, i.e. without involving the legal department.

The legal departments of other DAX companies are also increasingly trying to automate standard tasks. However, something like our NDA Generator – a self-built self-service tool created for direct use by business colleagues – is rare.

Dr. Philipp Hofer: We create an average of two NDAs per day. Before the NDA Generator, these were created manually by the legal department. This was very time-consuming – for us, but also for the business colleagues themselves, who were busy filling out questionnaires in Word and answering our follow-up questions during the NDA creation process. With the new tool, this creation process is now more efficient and helps colleagues to move faster through the entire process.

Ivan Brkic: A key part of our new IT strategy involves the “cloud first” approach. Derived from the overarching strategic direction into a practical implementation, it means that we need to embrace cloud-native concepts. In the context of the NDA generator, the following are important: containerization*, microservices* and Infrastructure as Code. Theory is one thing, what is important is that there are also practical use cases for it at Beiersdorf. Together with Christian Schwarz and Philipp Hofer, we identified the NDA generator as the perfect practical application.

The underlying cloud infrastructure was provided by IT in Microsoft Azure’s so-called “Platform as a Service” area, and the application for this, i.e. the underlying logic and configuration, was carried out by Christian Schwarz and Philipp Hofer as technical experts. And last but not least, the cyber security and data protection teams were of course also involved in testing the tool.

Christian Schwarz: We were able to gain further experience on the topic of automation with this project, and for BSS IT it was the first use case for the topic of containerization. We all had to familiarize ourselves with the topic and acquire knowledge. We were only able to do that as a team.

Ivan Brkic: For us as the IT Operations team, it was new to deal with this technology, and two areas in particular challenged us. One was to link the individual components together in this “Platform as a Service” environment. The other is automation on the infrastructure side, because nowadays you don’t just build software, you build infrastructure code based. We had to learn how to do that based on this project. So, we opened ourselves up to a new technology and way of working and laid the groundwork for more cloud-native use cases.

Ivan Brkic: One of the goals of our digital transformation is to automate 20 percent of Beiersdorf’s main business processes by 2025 – and that is exactly what we are driving forward with the NDA Generator. With the project, we have achieved a high degree of automation overall on both the business and IT sides. This is an example of how we as IT add value to the business.

I have the impression that the entire Legal Affairs area likes to be underestimated when it comes to digitalization and automation, but that’s not right. We have already built many solutions together that just don’t immediately catch the eye. For example, the highly automated Data Protection Portal or Tax Compliance Monitoring. And that’s certainly just the beginning.

Thank you for this exciting interview and the great insights!

In very simplified terms, containers are the decoupling of the application and the execution environment. This approach enables us, for example, to switch cloud providers quickly. Microservices are separable, independent, scalable, and loosely coupled application components. The digital services for our consumers NIVEA Skinly and NIVEA SKiN GUiDE work in a similar way. And individual application components are also decoupled from one another in services such as Netflix, Amazon, or Zalando. For example, payment, product information, the shopping cart, search, and much more can be completely independent. These services communicate with each other via interfaces. All these services then come together in the user interface. The big advantage is that the application is not a large monolith. This means that a microservice can be optimized during operation without having to shut down the entire system.