Westpac's national leasing portfolio

Background

In March 2012, Westpac identified its everyday property portfolio as an area where hard and soft cost savings could be made. It had costed bringing the service back inside the bank, but Westpac wanted to test the market to see what other alternatives existed. Westpac invited a small number of its panel firms to put forward proposals and selected Sparke Helmore.

Client objectives

Westpac wanted a solution that would deliver substantial process improvements to the management of its national leasing portfolio, sustainable hard and soft cost savings and a smooth transition to one supplier.

Our role

We developed a web-based solution for Westpac, which ticked all the boxes and has been in place since July 2012. Collaboration was the key to success for this project. The bulk of the ideas for our innovation came from workshops we facilitated with stakeholders from Westpac Property, Westpac Legal and DTZ, the outsourced facilities manager.

Outcomes

Within 12 weeks from appointment, we provided a web-based solution (that we built at our cost), which delivered to Westpac a reduction in hard and soft costs, including no need for managing purchase orders, individual matter invoices and scope creep. We also brought about greater efficiency due to on-line matter instruction, live information about matter progress, status and volume, easy access to precedents and completed documents, and everyone knowing who is responsible for the next task. This solution won the Business Innovation Award at the 2013 Knowlist Awards - an international award with a judging panel of heavy hitters in the UK and global legal IT industry.  

When Kylie Gray, Westpac's Head of Commercial, Technology & Intellectual Property, Legal & Secretariat, and the project team leader for the everyday property project, spoke at the Janders Dean Legal Knowledge & Innovation Conference in Sydney in September 2013, she told the audience that:

• our solution represented the best overall value because it saved Westpac in excess of $1.6 million in hard costs over the term of the three year contract
• substantial soft costs savings were achieved because of the innovative service delivery model which eliminated a number of steps in the process and improved the "speed to signing", and
• the fixed price retainer and invoicing arrangement reduced invoice processing from 2,000 per annum to 12 per annum.