Why the partnership with Linte mattered in Accenture’s process automation

In early 2020 the world was caught off guard by the start of the coronavirus pandemic, and companies found themselves facing new, unimaginable situations. Accenture was no exception. The company, however, had been a Linte client for more than 3 years and brought us a challenge that turned out very well.

Legal Counsel Manager Brazil at the company, Alexandra Camargo says that beyond all the more obvious adjustments to remote work and online meetings, a new question came up about monitoring attendance and even the health of suppliers, who by then already numbered more than 20 thousand: “I said ‘we have to automate this, because we will never keep up’”.

She recalls that the occupational physician was receiving test results by email, with no organization at all, and asked Alexandra for help in structuring such sensitive information.

I brought Linte in and said “I know this is not your focus, but right now I need a partner to help”. We led that effort and were pioneers inside the company here in Brazil in building something fully automated. We could find out very quickly when an employee got infected, and the medical department would step in right away and call to see how the person was doing. It was a great experience.

Accenture’s history with Linte

Going a little further back, Linte’s partnership with Accenture began in early 2017. Here are a few figures that help translate what this joint work has been like ever since:

• More than 11 thousand suppliers registered and managed on Linte.
• More than 7 thousand requests opened for Legal by Accenture Latin America employees through Linte.
• Corporate cards and vehicles requested and signed through Linte.
• Vaccine, risk group and testing control handled on Linte during the most critical period of the pandemic.

Alexandra believes that adopting Linte back then was very important, because it helped automate the Procurement area and contributed to smoother, more efficient work with other teams, such as Legal:

Even though we had the ideas from both Procurement and Legal, how do you assemble that and design it as a single flow? We managed to understand what made sense between Procurement and Legal and to build that synergy, and the whole thing still works beautifully today.

She also highlights how both areas worked alongside the Linte team to build something functional and efficient for everyone.

It is not enough to hire a supplier and say “go do it”. Taking part is extremely important.

Alexandra Camargo’s path

Going back even further, we reach the time when Alexandra was only 15 and was already elected to the CIPA (the internal accident prevention committee) of the company where she worked, despite some colleagues doubting that someone so young could play that role.

And it was exactly in that dispute over whether or not she could join the committee that Alexandra started to take an interest in law.

I started thinking “this is really cool!”. At first I was going into computing and I decided to change course, but I think in the end things connect.

After graduating and going through several corporate experiences, Alexandra lived in Argentina for a few years, and from there she started working for Accenture Brazil. Back in the country, she took an active part in a major transformation at the company.

That was the moment when Accenture decided to automate the Procurement process, and it was great, because we designed a process together with Legal to automate everything from supplier registration to the electronic signature of contracts.

The present and the future of automation

We have talked plenty about the past, so how about coming back to the present, already looking ahead? According to Alexandra, lawyers today need a clear view of how to add value to a process, and in many cases that innovation runs through automation. Her message goes especially to professionals who are still very resistant to technology and to the benefits it can bring to legal teams:

Automation is not meant to replace people, it is meant to optimize the work by taking away the administrative part. The team gets far more motivated, because they will work on things that add value to them, instead of doing manual activities like stamping paper.

Building on technology as a tool for a more productive day-to-day in law, Alexandra draws attention to the revolution that Brazil’s General Data Protection Law (LGPD) brought, especially for the country’s largest companies.

You have a company with 40 thousand employees. Think about the registration form for each one of them, with data about their children, their spouse... That is 40 thousand pieces of paper. And when you are allowed to dispose of those documents under the law, it is far easier if the process is automated. If it is an electronic document, you simply press a button. And you have to manage all of that. What works better, an Excel spreadsheet or a software?

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