Contract Management Success Story: Streamlining Execution of MNDA Agreement For FedEx

Headquartered in Memphis, TN, FedEx is an American multinational shipping and logistics company that has built a vast infrastructure of logistics channels and technology, enabling businesses and consumers to ship items anywhere in the world. Working with FedEx Compatible Partner Group — a division of FedEx that enables partners to interface with FedEx’s vast logistics capabilities and tech suite — Rainmaker dramatically streamlined execution of their MNDA agreement process, FedEx’s highest volume type of agreement.

The Challenge

For every technology or ecommerce company that wants to partner with FedEx, there is a contracting process that involves the prospective partner, leaders of the Compatible program, and legal representatives on both sides negotiating the terms of the relationship. FedEx negotiates thousands of agreements with partners and vendors every year, but the lion’s share of those contract negotiations start where most partnerships start; the MNDA agreement. FedEx’s legal department was inundated with redlines to MNDAs, resulting in a backlogged review process by in-house attorneys that were spending a disproportionate amount of their time working on these relatively innocuous agreements. 

In an effort to free up the legal team’s time to review and negotiate more value-added agreements, FedEx wanted to eliminate unnecessary redlining in the MNDA process, simply by making them easier to accept as-is.

Since this approval can be long and tedious, it posed the risk of FedEx Directors and Executives unnecessarily spending time reviewing and approving these documents. They needed a way to streamline this process as well as have it live in a platform where it could be documented and timestamped to help with future processes involving new partners. The MNDA was such a standard process that took up so much time in these early stages of negotiations, removing the need to approve this boilerplate agreement was essential to freeing up time to focus on more important initiatives for the respective parties. 

The Solution

Rainmaker conducted InnovationLabs workshops to identify the problem and to help FedEx Compatible’s leaders envision a solution that could enable them to:

  • Easily send clickwrap agreements from inside of Salesforce, to gain partners’ consent
  • Streamline the approval process internally
  • Convert other types of agreements to the clickwrap format, as appropriate, without having to write code or configure new approval processes in Salesforce

To accomplish this, Rainmaker developed a Lightning Web Application to manage the setup, sending, and tracking of clickwrap agreements. Leveraging Docusign’s Click service offering as the cornerstone, we developed Lightning Web Components to help FedEx Compatible’s channel managers or account executives to initiate a new clickwrap MNDA, and to usher it through the appropriate approval channels. New types of agreements can be set up as templates in Salesforce, as can the approval process, without involving a Salesforce administrator, enabling the business to administer its own clickwrap agreements easily. This has paved the way for more types of agreements to be offered digitally. 

Because the entire process leverages Docusign’s legally-compliant digital signature offerings, click wrap agreements are legally binding, and transaction data is auditable; an important feature to ensure compliance with program guidelines and regulatory requirements.

Example Of Lightning Web Application Process

Step 1: Contract Types Object Home Page where you can create different contract “templates”

Contract Types Object

Step 2: Once you’ve confirmed your template, the Contract Request ready to be sent for approval by the Compatible Manager and Compatible Director

Contract Request

Step 3: Compatible Manager or Compatible Director clicks “Approve” on the contract, after which the clickwrap is sent to the prospective Provider

Agreement Provider

Step 4: The recipient receives an email from FedEx asking them to accept the Clickwrap Agreement

FedEx Clickwrap Agreement 

Clickwrap agreement

Step 5: Example of the Clickwrap Agreement, as merged and displayed to the prospective Provider after clicking on the link.

MNDA Clickwrap Agreement

Step 6: The Contract Request record after it has been signed by the prospective Provider.  The Clickwrap Agreement ID has been written back to Salesforce

Clickwrap Agreement ID

The Results 

It’s estimated that over 20% of the agreements sent out by FedEx Compatible Solutions Program each year are Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreements. These MNDA’s can clog up business pipelines and to-do lists and halt the progress made on potentially more important agreements. FedEx Compatible projects that the new capability will virtually eliminate the need for attorneys to review MNDAs, freeing up hundreds of hours of attorneys’ time, freeing them to focus on more complex contract negotiations.

Interested in learning more about how the experts at Rainmaker can help streamline your MNDA agreement process? Drop us a line today!

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