Simplifying Procurement through Effective Contract Design with Stefania Paserra

Welcome to this episode of  Procurement Reimagined, brought to you by Gatekeeper. Today, we are joined by Stefania Passera, the Founder and Contract Designer of Passera Design. 

Join Daniel and Stefania and discover the importance of applying information design techniques to contracts to make them more accessible and readable. Learn how contract design differs from legal design and explore the challenges of creating user-friendly contracts. Stefania also shares real-life examples of her work, including projects in public procurement and utility companies.

Stefania is an information designer specialising in contract design and simplification. Her mission is to help organisations transform their contracts and policies into user-friendly and effective business tools. Stefania has 15 years of experience in creative design, and her work draws upon information and service design, a minimalist design philosophy, user research, and UX.  She is also the co-founder of the Legal Design Alliance, co-author of its Legal Design Manifesto, and a sought-after keynote speaker and trainer. 

Key Highlights:

• 04:57 - 08:45  - What is Contract Design, and How is it Applied to Procurement Contracts?

Stefania considers design as the functionality of the document; design is about how it works, not how it looks. Procurement contracts are highly complex documents, and design functionality aims to simplify the document for ease of reading and understanding for all stakeholders. The stakeholders include people from the legal, finance, and procurement teams. 

• 09:54 - 12:53 - What is the Biggest Challenge in Implementing Contract Design

A big challenge is adopting a one-size-fits-all approach that certain procurement organizations have. As a micro-entrepreneur, Stefania has been part of many procurement contracts that are really carefully drafted, but they have been drafted rehearsing the most risky scenario. However, contracts drafted with too many high-risk scenarios are tilted toward the clients and lead to a transactional relationship. Organizations really need to assess and create a more dynamic case-based portfolio of procurement documents. 

• 18:31 - 23:53 - Four Examples Where Contract Design Aligned Buyer and Seller Interests

Stefania shares four examples where contract design helped create tokens of trustworthiness by the act of trying to communicate in a more transparent, inclusive, and culturally aware way that builds trust, openness, and goodwill between the two parties.

Quotes:

• “There’s different types of design. But what is important is that we are applying a human-centered lens to it so that we come up with solutions that, of course, are desirable for the people who are impacted”.

• “How do we make procurement contracts more functional?  I would say that part of the challenge is the complexity of a typical contract “. 

• “Organizations really need to assess and create a more dynamic case-based portfolio of procurement documents”.