Airslate Contract management system at Kasha Global, Inc

In Detail

1) Business Problem  with Context: As Kasha scaled into South Africa and expanded its leadership and operational footprint, document execution became a critical operational bottleneck.

Key issues:

• Contracts, approvals, and internal documents were signed manually, via email attachments, printing, scanning, and WhatsApp follow-ups.

• Senior leadership became approval choke points due to volume and lack of visibility.

• No standardized approval paths, each document followed a different, informal route.

• No SLA or escalation mechanism for unsigned documents.

• Poor auditability - documents were scattered across inboxes, laptops, and shared drives.

• Increased regulatory and investor scrutiny amplified the risk of weak document governance.

Urgency:

• Delayed signatures were directly slowing:

• Vendor onboarding

• Commercial agreements

• Hiring and HR actions

• Compliance and regulatory readiness

• At scale, this was no longer an inconvenience, it was a business risk.

2) Objective / Success Criteria

Objectives

• Implement a centralized, cloud-based contract management and e-signing platform.

• Define clear, enforceable approval workflows by document type.

• Remove leadership bottlenecks through automation and visibility.

• Create a single source of truth for signed documents.

• Ensure audit-readiness and compliance support.

Success Criteria

• 100% of contracts and approval documents are routed via the platform.

• Automated reminders and escalations active.

• Clear ownership at every approval stage.

• Signed documents are automatically archived and retrievable.

• Leadership adoption with reduced approval turnaround time.

3) My Role & Ownership: Project Owner and Delivery Lead

I had full accountability for:

• Problem definition and executive buy-in

• Requirements gathering across Legal, HR, Finance, Procurement, and Operations

• Vendor evaluation and selection

• Contract negotiation and onboarding of Airslate

• End-to-end workflow design and configuration

• Stakeholder mapping and approval logic definition

• User training and adoption management

• Governance and post-implementation optimization

There was no delegated PM, this sat squarely under my ownership.

4) What I Did: I conducted document audits to identify all contract and approval document types. Classified documents by risk, authority level, and turnaround expectations.

• Designed approval matrices mapping, Who initiates, Who reviews, Who signs, In what order, and Within what time window

• Configured Airslate workflows per document type.

• Built automated routing with conditional logic

• Implemented automated reminders and escalation rules.

• Integrated Airslate with Google Drive for automated storage.

• Defined naming conventions and folder hierarchies for audit-readiness.

• Trained leadership and operational teams on e-signing and workflow usage.

• Led change management to normalize digital signatures as default.

• Established ownership for ongoing workflow maintenance.

5) Technical Depth

• Platform - Airslate (Cloud-based SaaS)

• Core Capabilities Implemented

  • Role-based document routing

  • Conditional approval logic

  • Legally binding electronic signatures

  • Automated email notifications & reminders

  • Document version control

  • Secure document storage & retrieval

• Integrations - Google Workspace (Drive, Email), and Role-based access mapped to organizational structure

• Security & Compliance with Controlled access by role, Full audit trails per document, Timestamped signatures, and Centralized document retention.

6) Results & Impact

• Before

  • Documents stalled for weeks awaiting signatures.

  • No visibility on where approvals were stuck.

  • Leadership overwhelmed by manual follow-ups.

  • High operational risk during audits.

  • Poor governance perception externally.

• After

  • Approval turnaround times reduced from days/weeks to hours.

  • Leadership freed from manual chasing.

  • Clear accountability at each approval stage.

  • Centralized, searchable contract repository.

  • Stronger compliance posture during audits.

  • Increased organizational confidence and professionalism.

  • Faster execution of commercial and HR decisions.

Strategic Outcome: Document governance matured from ad-hoc to enterprise-grade, supporting scale, compliance, and investor confidence.

7) Challenges & How I Solved Them

• Resistance to E-Signing: Some leaders were uncomfortable with digital signatures. I approached this through Legal validation of e-signatures, Pilot with leadership contracts, and Demonstrated audit trails and security.

• Workflow Complexity: Different departments wanted exceptions. Here, I Standardized 80% of workflows, Allowed limited, documented exceptions specific to some functions and approved by management, and maintained simplicity over perfection.

• Poor Historical Document Organization: Legacy documents were scattered. Here, we defined a clean break, legacy archived separately, and enforced strict rules for all new documents.

8) What I’d Do Differently Next Time

• Engage Legal earlier for faster validation.

• Introduce approval SLAs contractually in workflows.

• Build executive dashboards showing approval performance.

• Assign departmental workflow owners from day one.

• Integrate with ERP earlier for vendor contracts.