In every company there are countless contracts with customers, suppliers or various service providers. Deadline checks, extensions or terminations should ideally be constantly monitored, which is usually done manually, which is time-consuming. ContractHero has designed a digital solution for process optimization.
Mr. Wengryn, you are one of the two founders of ContractHero. Would you like to briefly introduce yourself and your company in your own words?
I’m Sebastian Wengryn, 32 years old and Founder and CEO of ContractHero. ContractHero is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for the clear and efficient management of corporate contracts. ContractHero helps small and medium-sized companies in particular to manage their contracts efficiently and transparently.
The companies import their contracts (service provider contracts, customer contracts, supplier contracts, rental contracts, etc.) into their ContractHero account. These are then automatically read out via OCR and analyzed for important key data such as contractual partners, term information and financial information. In this way, we enable our customers to access the essential information directly and to make it transparent and measurable. Based on this, our software offers the possibility to define contract periods and recurring reminders, to manage user groups and access rights and to automatically analyze and evaluate certain contract areas. We are dedicated to helping organizations save time, resources and mitigate risk associated with poor contract management.
How did the collaboration with your partner Gerry Koch come about? Did you have the idea for the software together from the start?
My co-founder Gerry and I met during our voluntary service in Chile. Years later, after graduating, we both worked in the Berlin tech scene and regularly exchanged views on various topics and also about work. The idea for ContractHero came about when Gerry was looking for a solution for his former employer, because he and his team (finance) still managed the contracts manually in folders and that was almost impossible from a certain size and led to constant chaos, disappeared documents, missed contract deadlines and conflicts. When he told me about it, I noticed that my company had the same problems. So it happened that we took a closer look at the problem. The more we delved into this and the more experts we interviewed, the more we realized that this was a widespread problem and that there were thousands of companies we could help. This led months later to us quitting our jobs to start ContractHero.
What are the major advantages of the software compared to manual contract monitoring?
The main advantages of ContractHero compared to manual contract monitoring are the time and resource savings and the minimization of errors and risks. ContractHero creates overview and transparency and automates and simplifies tasks related to the management of contracts, such as monitoring contract deadlines, liquidity planning, reporting, invoice releases and much more
As a result, companies not only save direct costs through efficiently used working hours and proactively managed contract deadlines and the avoidance of unnecessary costs. You can also exploit potential for optimization in contracts, for example by reacting early to pending adjustments to conditions in supplier or rental agreements.
At ContractHero, we have one for calculating the savings potential or return on investment (ROI) of digital contract management with ContractHero compared to manual contract management ROI calculator developed with which companies receive an estimate in advance, based on information about their company, of how much they would save annually by using ContractHero. As a rule of thumb, companies save about five to ten times the cost of ContractHero per year.
Do you offer other products or services besides the software or do you plan to expand your offer to other areas?
With ContractHero, we focus primarily on contract management and on continuously improving and expanding our tool. For contract management, we have started to integrate additional services via interfaces, such as contract templates or digital signatures. Our customers can now create new contract templates directly in ContractHero, have the contracts digitally signed and then manage them clearly and automatically, all in one tool. In the coming months there will also be other useful integrations to connect the contract data with other software.
The software solution is intended for companies dealing with a large number of contracts. However, sole traders or private individuals could also benefit from this idea. Have you thought about offering the software for other target groups or even for specific sectors?
ContractHero is a pure B2B solution, primarily intended for small and medium-sized companies. We want to continue to be a purely corporate solution in the future. We are very familiar with this area and also see huge potential. We are currently collecting an enormous amount of feedback and information about the various contract categories and what is actually important if, for example, a property manager wants to evaluate their rental contracts and construction contracts with ContractHero. We are in constant contact with our customers to understand exactly what their processes and workflows look like and where problems arise in order to be able to respond even more precisely to specific problems in certain industries or target groups in the future.
Mr. Wengryn, thank you very much for your time and for answering our questions openly!