Specsavers Customer Success Story

Thomson Reuters Contract Express: Specsavers

The Goal

When Specsavers opens a new store, there’s a pile

of paperwork that comes with it. From shareholder

agreements and software licenses to employment

contracts, there may be up to 20-30 documents

needed to close a single deal. The same is true if joint

venture partners want to sell their shares in the local

store company. On average, Specsavers’s legal team is

involved in about 30 interventions a month. That’s a lot of

document production – and a lot of repetitive information.

While Specsavers had standard templates for its

documents and a mail merge system, it wasn’t very

sophisticated. Many variables required manual

intervention, which was time consuming and inefﬁcient. A

small amendment to a standard document, for example,

had to be updated in multiple versions. Even with an

experienced workforce, it could take days to produce a

suite of documents. “In an ever-expanding business where

we are relatively thinly resourced, it was becoming more

and more of a challenge to keep pace,” says Andrew Kidd,

Legal Director of Specsavers.

To meet the demands of its rapidly growing business, the

legal team recognized the need for process change. It

wanted a new way to produce accurate, timely agreements

that would enable its business to open stores or make

transfers more quickly.

“It wasn’t just about adopting new technology, but it

was about doing things better, doing things smarter,

looking at where we could improve processes and

adopting technologies to support that,” said Mr Kidd.

The Solution

In its search for the right solution, Specsavers encountered

a number of law ﬁrms that were able to extol the virtues

of Thomson Reuters’ Contract Express solution. It became

clear that it was the only solution on the market that

could cope with the complexity of automating multiple

documents with multiple variables.

Contract Express developers worked with Specsavers

to create the initial suite of documents, enabling it to

create a great ﬁrst draft contract in just a fraction of the

time. Now when it opens a new store, about 70% of its

templated contracts can automatically be completed by

ﬁlling in the web-based questionnaires. The real value,

though, is its ability to handle variables. The addition

of dropbox options and yes or no questions help ensure

that all the nuances of a contract, including requests for

supporting documents, are addressed.

The Result

The company has been using the solution for almost two

years. But within just six months, there was no turning

back.

“From a user’s point of view, it’s completely changed

the way the team work and they wouldn’t want to go

back,” said Mr Kidd, adding that training people to use

the system is quick and easy. “It means we can have a

consistent approach to the way we do things. Mistakes

are reduced.”

Today, Contract Express produces between 90-95% of all

Specsavers store contracts. When Specsavers now opens

a new store or the ownership changes, it’s done almost

entirely in Contract Express. What used to take around

two days now just takes a couple of hours. Specsavers can

produce documents quicker and more accurately, which

also makes the review process easier, faster and more

reliable because the rejection rate has also decreased.

This efﬁciency and speed is saving the company money,

helping it to keep pace with its rapidly growing business.

The Future

Specsavers continues to enhance the system, adding more

options, templates and approval parameters. It also plans

to close the loop even further on the end-to-end legal

process for opening new stores by integrating Contract

Express with DocuSign. One of the most time-consuming

tasks is getting documents signed. But having one

automated system to handle this exchange will continue

to help reduce both time and effort.

Recognising that the value of its data extends beyond

its legal operations, Specsavers also plans to make its

contract questionnaire data directly accessible to the

company’s business teams, helping it to make smarter

decisions about growing its business.

For more information about

Contract Express please see our

website: legal-solutions.co.uk/

contractexpress