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. 

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.