What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

I act as the main legal advisor to Kellogg’s business units across the AMEA region on indirect procurement transactions. This entails a broad range of legal works at a regional scale; from contractual negotiations for energy contracts in Australia to marketing contracts in the Middle East. It is always fascinating to experience how the applicability of local laws and regulations are intertwined with contracts at a regional level.

Notable works include leading contract negotiations to be an exclusive snack partner, and the non-exclusive designation as the official regional partner of LaLiga in the Gulf Cooperation Council region with LaLiga DMCC. This involved promotional and marketing activities for Pringles in partnership with LaLiga in the GCC region.

I am also part of Kellogg’s regional centre of excellence, established to provide continuous strategic innovation our contract processes and policies. This entails enhancing existing contracting workflows and introducing our stakeholders to the end-to-end digitisation of the contracting process using TIGR – Kellogg’s contract lifecycle management software.

In general, what would you like to see change about the external law firms you use?

Legal expertise is only the foundation for an excellent law firm. It is also vital to approach issues from the client’s perspective. This involves looking at the bigger picture and processing information with a strategic mindset to provide appropriate solution-centric options to meet clients’ business goals.

It is worth noting that the business climate is ever-changing. Consequently, legal issues are becoming more complex, especially during this post-pandemic period. These are interesting times to be working in a large global organisation. It will be beneficial to possess in-depth awareness of the industry and business the client operates in. This awareness is key to developing a deeper understanding of transactions, which enables improved collaboration between in-house and external legal teams.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

It is fair to say that we are a robust and dynamic team that continuously looks for ways to operate better. Legal teams can be notorious for its heavy workloads and competing priorities, which may stifle business momentum in the organisation.

There is a misconception that the legal team’s value is based on the workload they can handle. There is a pressing need to prioritise tasks – saying yes to everything that comes our way inadvertently means saying no to the work that brings more real business value, active legal risks management and strategic input to the organisation.

To address this, we decided to empower our stakeholders by introducing them to TIGR, on which we uploaded contract templates, signed contracts, and enabled contract alerts and reports. This established TIGR as an AI-powered self-service centre, streamlined communications, and automated processes.

We also made legal information accessible to our stakeholders, eliminating departmental barriers and assisting the legal team in reducing the time spent on various administrative tasks. Having and sharing all the relevant contract information also ensures that the stakeholders understand the key details involved, which empowers them to proactively monitor the contracts.

At the end of 2022, we managed to introduce TIGR access to most of our stakeholders in Kellogg’s AMEA region. We are also continuously testing new solutions, software, and processes to enable the legal team to perform more efficiently.