Legal/Creative Vendor Agreement Tracking System – Warner Bros. Discovery Consumer Products
Project Summary
Designed and developed an Airtable-based solution for the Warner Bros. Discovery Consumer Products Legal and Creative teams to use in creating and tracking their vendor agreements’ statuses and streamline creation of inter-office memos and contracts
Requirements Gathering
I started the process by meeting with the Creative and Legal teams to discuss their needs from the solution and gather requirements. Both teams were having to track creative vendor agreements separately by maintaining separate record spreadsheets in Excel. We determined that they needed a shared database of records, along with customized views for each team.
In addition to the manual efforts both teams were making to maintain their agreement databases, they were also gathering the vendor agreement details, drafting inter-office memos to send to Creative leadership for approval, and drafting and sending out contracts to both the external vendor and internal legal team for signatures.
We wanted to create an input form to collect vendor agreement details and build in the capability to export the agreement details in a format that would be submitted to Creative leadership for approval, and could be transformed into the contract that would be sent to both parties for final signatures. Because the users are directly inputting the vendor agreement details into the Airtable form, the details are collected and displayed in a base, which is mainly managed by the Creative team. The details are duplicated to a separate base accessible by the Legal team, and any updates/changes to the details are duplicated across the bases via two-way syncing.
Solution Design & Development
I started the solution design process by determining the best components and tools (e.g. bases, interfaces, forms, automations) available in Airtable to use for the requirements that I gathered from the two teams.
I created a basic setup that included two-way sync bases for both teams, the vendor agreement details input form, interfaces for viewing the data, and automations that would generate an email (in the absence of exporting to Word as an available option) with the agreement details in a format that would require minor . I tested this proof-of-concept version and made adjustments as needed before it was ready for review with the teams and an eventual initial rollout.
For the initial rollout, I met with the teams, walked them through the proof-of-concept, and collected feedback that I implemented before releasing the final version to the teams to start using the tool.
Permissions Setup and Management
I set up the initial permissions with both teams’ users having control and viewing permissions over their respective bases. While everyone went through the first phase of using the tool, I helped with managing existing permissions and granting permissions to new users. Some temp employees only needed limited permissions to perform their assigned tasks.
Feedback and Enhancements
At first, the teams had varying degrees of familiarity with Airtable, ranging from complete novice to having some experience in the tool. In the early stages of requirements gathering and development, I could sense their trepidation about having to use a new tool, to the point of some initial skepticism.
After we launched the solution and they got hands-on experience with it, the users very quickly learned how to use the tool and adopted it as part of their usual process. As soon as they were comfortable, they began requesting enhancements, such as notifications when comments are made, adjusting what’s included in the export to email, and updating the item statuses.
I received an enhancement request to add a Master Service Agreement (MSA) master list table, which would display the vendors, duration of their agreement, whether the renewal was in process, and other pieces of data. We launched this new addition with a strong positive response from both teams.
Since the response from the Legal and Creative teams was so positive, we wanted to roll out the solution and onboard additional teams, including Marketing and Franchise Management. Additional requested enhancements included creating dashboards showing spend by Creative Directors and other metrics the teams wanted to track.
Upper Management’s Response
The Legal team’s main user loved the solution enough to take it to their upper management and show it off, receiving positive feedback that they relayed back to me. The Creative team’s leadership had a similar positive response.
The users’ growth and shift in attitude from initial skepticism to positive enthusiasm about the tool was highly rewarding to experience as part of the overall process. During this project, we traveled the full path along the change curve, from shock and denial through to experiment, decision, and integration. It was quite the journey to experience and witness first-hand. I hope to have similar success with future projects.
Learnings
From this project and working with two teams that don’t typically deal with learning new software, I learned that through showing interest in their issues, building out a proof of concept, and making sure that the users are heard and the corresponding changes and updates are made to the system, as well as providing ongoing support, really helped with adoption and eventual advocacy of the custom solution and Airtable as a whole.
Due to the confidential nature of the information contained in the agreements, no screens are available for viewing
Training Session Sign-Ups in Airtable – Warner Bros. Discovery Consumer Products
Project Summary
Created clickable cards containing training session date/time details and linked to out to their respective Microsoft Teams webinar sign up form
Development Process
During every forecast cycle that our licensees submitted their data to us, we offered virtual instructor-led training (VILT) sessions. We set up Microsoft Teams webinars and signup forms. We created a clickable calendar in Visme that linked to the corresponding signup form for the training session’s date/time.
After we decided not to renew our Visme license, we moved the training session signup calendar into Airtable. I created cards that contained the date/time details for each training session, and linked them to their corresponding signup form.
The main reason we decided to shift the training calendar to Airtable was because it offered a link accessible to external viewers.
No work samples available for viewing