At Company Notary, we work alongside legal, company secretariat, treasury and finance teams, supporting them and document stakeholders in the process of document execution. Our involvement means we get insight into document approval workflow processes. Here are our key take-aways:
- All stakeholders to a document (and the underlying transaction, project) should be identified.
- Your notary support is a stakeholder – engage early to understand and notarisation and legalisaiton ramificatons.
- Implement a well-defined document approval workflow process, linked to your corporate governance policy. Be intentional about applying rigour to that process. Don’t impose the process – collaborate across the document stakeholders and devise a process which works for your organisation, taking from best practice as inspiration.
- Collaboration, communication and transparency are vital components in risk management and decision making for corporate and commercial documents.
- Allow time for feedback – not doing so can increase risk, cost or result in a document which does not meet the objective or commercial intent, or is not aligned with compliance policies.
- Do not think of legal as ‘business prevention’; instead consider them custodians of profit and collaboration. It is far better to iron out issues pre-signature than have issues afterwards.
- Sounds obvioius, but do you know can sign, on what basis will they sign and are the going to be available? Are other steps necessary to authorise that person, for example, further up the organisation, board or shareholder meetings? We have seen deadlines missed and transactions paused due to these easily addressed matters.
- Affidavits and Sworn Statements
- Back to the future – do you look at these activitieis through the lens of M&A and transactions? What documents would I need to present in a due diligence exercise on a merger, disposal? What would you need to have in place to support your valuation or the asset’s prospects that is being acquired?
- Pre-trial (conference, brief, lists)
- It is all about planning – the documents can get overlooked in project management or the process.
We are corporate commercial practioners, with decades of integrity experience. With Floodight Business, we provide support to teams in developing their protocols and toolset for document riigour, approval and signature. That activity also extends to facilitation sessions with teams (across departments) to help team members get their ‘why’ for document governance. Speak to Dawn for more information.
