SAP Legal Operations’ Success with Checkbox

Jim Gray

Jim Gray

VP, Head of Global Legal Operations

SAP is a global technology leader and one of the world’s largest enterprise software companies, helping more than 400,000 customers across 180+ countries run at their best. Within SAP, the Legal Operations team plays a key role in enabling the company’s legal function to operate efficiently and strategically. This customer-focused, high-impact team supports a legal team of over 400+ people, legal leadership, business partners, and internal stakeholders by removing operational burdens and driving productivity, compliance, and smarter decision-making across the legal organization.

SAP
SAP customer story

Enterprise Software

INDUSTRY

In-house Legal

DEPARTMENT

100,000

COMPANY size

400+

LEGAL TEAM size

The Challenge

The challenge

SAP’s Legal Operations team originally implemented a widely used enterprise workflow platform to manage legal spend requests. The platform allowed in-house attorneys to request budgets and approve law firm selections while aiming to ensure a reliable user experience and compliance with corporate procurement policies. However, several pain points emerged as demand and complexity grew:

  • The system lacked real-time visibility into request progress, leaving internal clients uncertain about status or ownership.
  • Approvals required frequent manual intervention from the Legal Ops team.
  • The platform couldn't fully automate the approval process or adapt quickly to changing policies or regional business rules.
  • SAP’s legal spend ecosystem relied on multiple tools that operated in silos, namely Brightflag for eBilling and PERSUIT for law firm selection and procurement, creating inefficiencies and redundant data entry.

Together, these issues made it difficult for SAP to maintain compliance, ensure timely approvals, and deliver a streamlined experience for internal stakeholders.

“If it works at SAP, it can work anywhere. With Checkbox, we replaced complexity with clarity — automating approvals, enforcing compliance, and saving time every day.”
Jim Gray
VP, Head of Global Legal Operations at SAP
SAP customer story

Customer perspective

Checkbox saves the Legal Operations team approximately 30 minutes each day, by eliminating the need to manually initiate the daily approval workflow. It also allowed us to consolidate three separate workflow processes into a single platform.

Jim Gray

Jim Gray

VP, Head of Global Legal Operations

30+ minutes

Saved 30+ minutes a day for spend approvals

Centralized and streamlined legal

Centralized and streamlined legal intake, routing, and approvals across tools like Brightflag, PERSUIT, and Ariba

Created a scalable legal

Created a scalable legal infrastructure that reduces manual work and adapts to evolving business needs

Outcomes

The outcomes

Since implementing Checkbox, SAP’s Legal Operations team has realized substantial gains in efficiency, transparency, and compliance. A once-manual, disjointed approval process is now centralized, automated, and future-proof.

Benefit Result
Time Saved
At least 30 minutes saved per day by the Legal Operations team
Reduced Effort
Automated intake and approval flows eliminate manual coordination
Faster Approvals
Decision-tree logic and dynamic routing accelerate response time
Integration & Insights
Checkbox bridges PERSUIT and Brightflag for a seamless, trackable workflow
Stronger Compliance
Built-in controls ensure adherence to policy across global regions
Scalability
Consolidated three separate workflows into a single configurable platform

Checkbox not only improved internal efficiency. It elevated the experience for internal clients, who now have visibility over policy rules, next steps, and who's handling their request at any given time.

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