Contracts365

Go with the workflow

contracts365.com

We helped make enterprise contract management processes more intuitive.

  • Alignment Workshop

    We bring stakeholders together in structured, facilitated sessions that are SWOT-like in spirit. Together we surface priorities, work through disagreement in the room and land on a shared path forward.

  • In-Depth Interviews

    Through deep-dive interviews we bring users’ unique voices directly into the design process, surfacing the real behaviors and the motivations behind their actions.

  • Competitive Analysis

    We study your competitors and the best practices beyond your category to establish the baseline users expect, and to find the openings that let you differentiate.

  • Experience Strategy

    We evaluate internal perceptions, user goals, and best practices to find what makes your experience worth having. Then we turn it into an action plan for what comes next.

  • Sketches

    When it comes to bringing ideas to life, the pencil is mightier than the keyboard. And much faster.

  • Prototyping

    If a picture is a thousand words, a high-fidelity prototype is the entire story. Testing with one gets us past hypothetical reactions and into real behavior, the kind of feedback we can actually trust. With AI-assisted prototypes, we go even deeper, real data, real interactions, insight we couldn’t get any other way.

  • Visual Design

    Through imagery, messaging, color and typography, we deliberate over pixels, consistency, readability, contrast, accessibility and creativity.

  • Usability Testing

    We ride-along as users navigate digital experiences while trying to achieve their goals. Sometimes we ask probing questions. Sometimes we just observe. Unearthing friction early costs a conversation. Catching it later could cost the business.

  • Design Handoff

    Final screens, specifications, documentation, and content assets—organized in Figma and AI-ready Markdown so both your developers and their coding tools can move seamlessly from design to build.

The Challenge

Today, contracts are ubiquitous. Most business relationships can’t start without one and most business transactions hinge on their being in place. Purchasing, sales, confidentiality agreements, MSAs, SLAs, real estate deals, licensing…it’s staggering when you think about it. That’s why that’s all Contracts 365, Inc. thinks about. 

When they came to us, Corridor Company (as they were known back then) was preparing for its next wave of growth. They wanted to evolve their intricate and highly engineered contract management software, making it ever-more usable and intuitive. They challenged us to help them deliver on what they term “The 30-Second Imperative”—their engineering design principle that users should be able to complete basic contracting tasks in 30 seconds or less. 

We said, “Grab your stopwatch.”

Reimagined dashboard to elevate key actions and statuses to where users need them
The core experience, reimagined and rebranded

Our Approach

The ZeroDegrees team began with the basics, redesigning Corridor’s main dashboard and contract record—home base for every contract manager—to make both more visually appealing and easier to use. In following sprints, we helped update the UX on approval flows, visual navigator tools, tables, emails, and more. Taking small, reasonable steps while ensuring the complex workflows driving it all wouldn’t be affected.

As the application improved, Corridor began to realize that their brand and communications materials needed the same kind of attention. Working closely with designers and strategists that included ZeroDegree’s extended partner team, Magnifico Design and Anders Magnus, they worked to modernize and elevate the brand experience. Leveraging Corridor’s beloved flagship product, a new name, a new logo, and a new brand emerged: Contracts 365®. 

Then, ZeroDegrees dove back in. We helped redesign the entire application to align with the new Contracts 365 brand. Then, honing our prior work, we continued to refine the user experience to ensure critical, routine tasks could be completed effortlessly (in 30 seconds, in fact) while helping to re-envision how the entire contract workflow could work.

Taking complicated workflows and simplifying their presentation to show status and actions needed
Taking complicated workflows and simplifying their presentation to show status and actions needed

Over the course of several years and many more sprints, ZeroDegrees has collaborated with Contracts 365 at every level—from helping with alerts and notifications to incorporating OpenAI into the application to speed form processing. And through it all, user centricity and intuitive interactions have become a hallmark of the Contracts 365 application, and a key differentiator for the company as they continue to grow.

AI is used to extract metadata from third-party contracts
AI is used to extract metadata from third-party contracts

The Results

We like to think that the proof is in our enduring relationship, as well as the great work we’ve been a part of. As one of Contract 365’s customers noted, “With other contract management software, it takes forever to get what you need. With Contracts 365, one or two clicks and you’re there.”

Matt and the ZeroDegrees Design Team have become an integral part of our software development process.

With their expertise, care, and challenging approach, we have fundamentally improved both our product and the skillset of our internal teams. We look forward to our continued partnership.

Jasmin Steely Chief Operating Officer