Boosting deal velocity & legal team response at 8x8 with Streamline AI

Executive Summary:

Key Challenges: The legal team at 8x8 encountered inefficiencies and scrutiny from internal stakeholders due to their email-based legal request system. This outdated system made it difficult to track conversations effectively, resulting in some requests being lost. Consequently, productivity was hindered, the workload was unevenly distributed, and meeting the needs of internal business units became challenging.

Solution Design: 8x8 implemented Streamline AI, a legal tech solution specifically designed for in-house legal teams. Streamline AI offers a centralized platform for submitting and managing legal requests and matters, automating workflows, and providing robust reporting capabilities.

Outcomes: By adopting Streamline AI, 8x8 significantly improved the operational efficiency of their legal team, immediately saving 30 to 60 minutes per request. Improved reporting and data fostered better communication and trust with internal business units, and enhanced visibility into workloads and bottlenecks enabled data-driven process improvements throughout the organization.

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Detailed Case Study:

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Featured Customer: 8x8

Industry: Cloud-based Communication Solutions (UCaaS, CCaaS, CPaaS)

Size: 2500+ employees

Location: Campbell, CA (Silicon Valley)

Ticker: NASDAQ: EGHT

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The Problem:

8x8 is a leading cloud communications provider driven by core values of innovation, customer-centricity, integrity, and collaboration.

Despite the company’s ability to innovate with its customers, the legal department at 8x8 was working with an antiquated and disjointed intake and handling process for legal requests from business units.

Requests were submitted through a shared email alias for the legal team. Each geographical subgroup within the legal team was matched to an email alias, putting the onus on the business requestor to ensure the request was made to the right email address. If team members were out of the office, it was difficult to get the complete context of a legal request. 

The process was time-consuming for the legal team, and it was challenging to search email inboxes for related past emails and files to track conversations. With no comprehensive view of everyone’s current task bandwidth, the team had to have frequent conversations to ensure fair distribution and workload balance.

The team knew that they needed a better solution, and looked for one that would give business users a centralized place to submit legal requests and provide a consolidated, automated system for legal intake and triage. They considered numerous legacy intake tools such as Jira, but they found that those solutions didn’t work for the legal department; they wanted a cleaner and more seamless way to meet their specific requirements.

“We didn’t have a great experience with traditional ticketing tools,” explained Joseph Vitelli, Director of Procurement & Inbound Licensing Counsel. “Legal needed to be able to implement a tool with minimal IT involvement, and that didn’t rely on an IT admin for changes or support. It had to be a tool within the Legal department — we had to be able to manage the entire thing.”

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‍The Solution: 

After evaluating several competitor tools, 8x8 chose to implement Streamline AI. 

“Because Streamline AI was founded by an experienced in-house attorney, there's a built-in understanding of what a legal team would actually need in terms of functionality and reporting,” explained Legal Operations Lead Jess Orlando. “We were just really drawn to the team.  Everyone who we talked with understood our needs. The continued customer success support after implementation was huge for us.”

The implementation of Streamline AI felt like a true partnership with the 8x8 legal team.

“Our Customer Success Manager was really willing to take our suggestions,” shared Jess. “We loved working with a team that really listened to what we wanted and was willing to work with us.” 

“We were guided throughout the entire process. It was a lot easier to build in Streamline AI than I thought it would be,” said Joseph. “We were able to just get in there and figure things out. The team at Streamline partnered closely with us, took feedback, and we’ve seen changes come through very quickly.”

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Key Features that Streamlined Operations:

They found that Streamline AI was exactly what they needed for consolidating legal intake, ongoing legal matter management, and tracking key legal metrics. The workflow automation features of Streamline AI reduced manual administrative work, ensuring a smoother and more efficient review and approval process.

“There’s more cohesiveness across the company for legal requests because it’s all consolidated in Streamline AI automatically,” Jess shared. "Our sales team puts requests in Salesforce. For everyone else, we have a tile in Okta, and if they don’t use Salesforce, they can go there to access the Streamline AI forms. You can go in and enter all the information needed, and it’s all tracked.”

Streamline AI’s real-time reporting has also helped improve 8x8’s processes across the business.

“We added a ‘Waiting On’ category in our reporting dashboard to track delays with outside counsel,” emphasized Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Ilan Hornstein. “This helps me initiate discussions with partners about billing more effectively.”

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The Outcome: 

8x8 saw significant improvements to the legal team operations after implementing Streamline AI. 

“We’ve cut down on the email conversations we need to have,” Joseph noted. “We’re saving anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour right from the start. Our business team is happier with how easily they get the information to us and how we’re able to respond without unnecessary back and forth. Before Streamline AI, there would be five emails back and forth to get an understanding of what was needed to get started. Now, all that information is generally in front of us.”

8x8 was able to reduce intake form questions and create a faster request process for their sales team by mapping fields from the Salesforce opportunity level, and Streamline AI has empowered both legal and sales teams to get deals over the finish line faster. 

“It’s resulted in significantly less back-and-forth between sales reps and the legal team,” added Jess. “It’s created trust with the sales team because they’re getting the email notification right away that the legal team has received the request and is working on it. It helps provide transparency because they know it’s not just sitting there.”

Streamline AI’s reporting capabilities have also helped the legal team showcase the legal team’s impact and improve team morale.

“It’s helping us go to other departments, such as Deal Desk and Finance, and identify where things are sitting and the ‘why’ behind bottlenecks,” explained Jess. “It's nice to see the reporting because we can really hone in on where we need to create more efficiencies across the organization.” 

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Recommendation to Peers:

“Streamline is not just great for Legal, but also for our internal clients. We've added accountability for Legal, and our partners and our teammates understand that there's accountability there, too,” Joseph noted. “It's made it easier for them to come to Legal with requests. Not only are we more easily reached, but they're also prompted to provide the details Legal needs when they're submitting requests, so we're getting a much clearer picture from the start, and we're able to execute their requests faster.”

“One of the amazing things Streamline AI does is showcase where legal requests sit— whether it’s with lawyers, with parts of the business, or with outside law firms,” Ilan explained. “We’re now able to bring data to the table, and highlighting our team’s success with concrete data through Streamline is incredibly empowering. Our legal team really welcomed this transparency, finding immense value in providing visibility on work distributed among the team and visibility on the value the legal team is providing outside of Legal.”

Jess emphasized why Streamline AI stands out for its product and ongoing support in her eyes: “There are so many companies out there that just want your business and your money and don't focus on listening to feedback or tailoring anything to the customer. Streamline AI is truly special in that regard. It’s been white-glove customer service. We have a really collaborative experience, and I fully trust our Customer Success Manager to make things better for us and to teach us what we need to know. Our Streamline AI Customer Success experience has been phenomenal.”