About

Being a worldwide global leader for the provision of telecom and IT services, Orange Business Services presides over a significant global operation in 160 countries, gathering €6.4bn revenue in 2015 and having around 4,000 multinational companies worldwide as customers. The Business Services legal team is similarly dispersed, with a notable legal presence in North and South America, Asia Pacific and Europe among other areas, though around a third of the 100 total is based in their home market of France, where the company is the number one telecoms provider. Rémi Dujon, general counsel and executive vice president for legal and regulatory for Orange Business Services, oversees the legal function and is meticulous in ensuring that all new recruits to the team fit the company’s mind-set. ‘I personally interview all the lawyers at the end of the hiring process’, he explains, ‘so that I can have teams of people who are consistent with my vision’. This has led to a shared goal and culture of excellence within the team as they look to provide excellent service to their customers, especially in the area of contract management which has been honed to a fine art through innovative new methods. Dujon describes the team’s effort while ‘working on a very important project which is basically a contract management tool, with the idea that the legal department is to digitalise this first face for the company as much as possible’. This has seen great success, and soon the contract process will be entirely automated via ‘a tool that can draft the contract template for the customer, proceed to electronic signature and also deal with invoicing, legal services and other requirements’. When fully bedded in, this will allow the legal team to focus their resources on other rewarding activities for the group, a great example of a legal department taking a proactive and long-term view as to how to provide exceptional value to their company.