In the legal world, processes tend to be tedious and slow due to the need for precision, organization, and cooperation of various parties. In response to this problem, we created Parallel, the platform that simplifies and accelerates the management of legal processes.
Within the platform, an essential component is the "parallel," an instance of a process that can change state and become part of a larger process. This article will guide you through the lifecycle of a parallel.
Definition of a parallel
At its core, a parallel is the tool that helps you get and organize the information you need from other people, and keep track of everything in one place.
For this purpose, Parallel has been designed to keep track of different states to better manage the lifecycle of your process.
Parallel states
A parallel evolves through several states: draft, pending, completed, and closed.
Draft: This is the first stage of a parallel. When starting a new parallel, it is in the draft state.
Pending: When a response is added or the parallel is sent to a recipient, the stage changes from draft to pending. This status indicates that the parallel is awaiting action.
Completed: A parallel goes from pending to completed when the form is submitted. It means that all fields are replied and someone has clicked on the finalize button.
Closed: A parallel goes from completed to closed when the user clicks on the closed button, marking the end of the parallel's lifecycle.
It is important to mention that a parallel can also return to certain states. For example, a closed parallel can be reopened, returning to the pending state. In addition, a parallel can go from pending to closed directly in special situations.
Extending parallels for more complex workflows
In the real world, your workflows are more complex than just requesting information from third parties. That's why you can extend a parallel to manage more complex workflows with other features.
For example, you can extend a basic information request process with other tasks such as generating documents, sending documents to sign, exchanging comments, and managing the approval of the responses.
To understand how this works, we will go through an example with one of the most frequent use cases with Parallel, a know your customer (KYC) process that has these requirements:
Q&A: The process requires the customers to be able to ask questions since the information requested can be complex and challenging to understand for people not familiar with legal terminology.
Approvals: Once the customer has submitted all the information, the replies need to be reviewed and approved by the compliance team.
Signature: Once reviewed, the company also needs a signed document including all the replies submitted by the customer, certifying that the information provided is accurate.
Alerts: Once signed, the process needs to be manually closed and then added to a CRM or an alert management system for the renewal of the process (commonly known as KYC refresh).
Q&A during the process
To solve the 1st requirement, you can extend Parallel to centralize all the questions from the customer and the answers from the sender in the same place with the "comments" field option.
Actually, this is an option that is enabled by default for every new field you add.
Including a review flow
In the same field settings panel, you will find an option to add approvals to the process.
Once included, Parallel will automatically include:
An "approve" and "reject" option in every field in the Replies view.
An indication of who has approved a reply.
An event of this action in the activity log.
Adding a signed document to the process
Parallel provides a seamless experience to include signature processes to its parallels. To do so, Parallel has partnered with some of the top e-signature solutions to provide a native integration.
Including a signature process to the parallel is as simple as activating the option:
When enabled, every time that a signature process is initiated, Parallel will automatically manage the process logic and lifecycle taking into account the options chosen.
Storing the process in a legal CRM and creating alerts
After completing the signature and closing the process, you can create a profile for that customer or link the process to an existing profile, and add the date the process needs to be renewed.
Once set, Parallel will automatically create an alert and notify you as the date of renewal approaches.
