Case Study
Chartered Accountants
Seshani Bala
Former Group Executive - General Counsel & Corporate Assurance
Manage legal compliance at scale with Dazychain
Be a difference maker
As a professional body of leaders in business and finance, Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ) have made it their vision to empower difference-makers. That cultivated culture of opportunity is one that Seshani Bala, Group Executive – General Counsel and Corporate Assurance describes being closely aligned to in discussion of her recent work maturing the legal operations function at CA ANZ with Dazychain.
"I wanted to establish an efficient in-house operating and service delivery model with the ability to manage compliance at scale. I am a big believer that investing in legal operations and technology is a critical component of this and one that generates long-term cost savings and efficiency gains."
Prior to her work at CA ANZ, Ms. Bala had international remit in her role at the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) chain, Gloria Jeans. There, she had the benefit of exposure to legal operations in European and US markets, where industry counterparts are steaming ahead with adoption of new legal technologies.
"Most GCs and in-house teams [in Australia] are fairly time poor so there is never time to sit down and focus on legal operations. We’re always juggling several balls, managing competing risks and trying to do more with less in a cost restrained environment. There isn’t a lot of time in the day to compare and understand what’s out there in the market in terms of legal operations."
For Ms. Bala, taking her legal operations experience from Gloria Jeans to her role at Chartered Accountants ANZ was essential in effectively managing work across six jurisdictions across Asia-Pacific and the UK.
"Managing all legal, risk and compliance matters responsibly and cost-effectively in an environment of constant regulatory change is key to ensuring our business maintains its social licence and grows sustainably."
As the search for suitable legal technology at CA ANZ commenced, Ms. Bala and her in-house team spent considerable time reviewing internal operations, measuring efficiency and return on investment while process-mapping and scoping stakeholder needs and business requirements.
"To ensure the legal team’s service delivery model was fit for purpose, we mapped out the legal team’s vision and strategy in the context of our enterprise strategy. Once we had mapped out what we do, why we do it and how we deliver legal services against our strategic pillars, this provided the foundation for what data we wanted to collect and report on for management, c-suite and Board reporting purposes."
After exploring the legal operations market for a product that would meet the CA ANZ legal team’s requirements, Ms. Bala chose Dazychain for its security, user-friendly and intuitive interface and integration with 0365.
Since commencing work with the platform, Ms. Bala has been able to collect significant data in order to make data-driven decisions and improve operational efficiency.
"Dazychain has been critical in helping us capture key data points – we can measure the proportion of legal work that is strategic versus business-as-usual, identify our high use stakeholders, analyse legal work that flows from core compliance obligations and transparently manage workflow and capacity."
For Ms. Bala, the rise of COVID-19 has only validated her decision to implement Dazychain at CA ANZ.
"During the pandemic, our in-house legal team has been able to seamlessly pivot to digital service delivery and manage risk at pace in an stressed environment of constant change – Dazychain was a key enabler of this and if we weren’t using it when the pandemic started, we wouldn’t have been able to run with the business."