Powerco transforms legal efficiency with Plexus

For over ten years, Powerco relied on its custom contract management platform. However, it was not user-friendly and lacked ongoing maintenance. Many staff could not find the templates they needed and, when agreements varied from the approved templates, would simply avoid the platform altogether. Business users sought help directly from legal, creating a flood of support requests and leaving the team swamped with admin.

Jemma explained,

“The platform was filled with unused templates, contracts left half done and a legal team overwhelmed with low-risk support requests.”

Manual processes plagued critical workflows. Approvals, signatures, and contract storage steps were regularly missed or incomplete, leading to unreliable data and frustration throughout the organisation. Legal’s efforts were spent acting as an internal ‘help desk’ and uploading contracts, rather than providing value-adding legal advice to the business.

Powerco chose Plexus, the world’s most advanced legal operating system, combining automation, matter management, and contract management in one integrated platform. Selecting Plexus was only half the journey, the real challenge was user adoption, especially during remote working.

Legal made the transition fun and accessible, using a pizza-making analogy and light-hearted training videos (“As easy as pizza!”) to drive engagement. Super-users were trialled before a wider rollout and virtual workshops let staff experiment with the system.

Senior Legal Counsel Sharon Heighway highlighted the difference:
“We kept coming back to ‘less is more’ and that it needed to be a bit of fun. We aren’t technology people, and neither are lots of our end-users.”

The adoption paid off. Admin time for legal dropped dramatically, from a full-time help desk role to just 30 minutes a week. Now, the team focuses its efforts on higher-value activities and targeted reporting using Plexus data insights.

Sharon shared,

“Our old system called for hours of manual contract uploads each week, leaving little time for any targeted reporting. Now Plexus does the heavy lifting so we can focus on users who might need extra help, or value-adding activities for the business using data-based insights.”

• 90% Admin Reduction: Legal’s “help desk” workload dropped from hours to just 30 minutes per week.

• Contracts Accelerated: Simple contracts signed in half a day, it previously took 2–3 weeks.

• Self-Serve Adoption: Business now empowered to manage the contract lifecycle with ready-to-use templates.

• Data and Oversight: Dashboards display contract status, expiry, and automatic reminders chase signatures.

• Process Satisfaction: Staff regularly provide positive feedback, calling Plexus “easy”, “cool”, and “a dream”.

• Training Engagement: Fun, accessible training methods led to broad, excited buy-in.

With Plexus, contract owners are more autonomous and empowered than ever before.

Property Legal Executive Karissa Tooman noted,

“Plexus’ drag and drop function is amazing. I can record extra information just like that for other people to see in the context and people who need to know are empowered to find the information themselves.”

For Project Manager Craig Aplin, Plexus is

“a dream,” completing contracts for busy builds in hours instead of weeks.

Legal is now seen as a valued partner to the business, not a bottleneck:

“It was surprising the number of people who have proactively gone out of their way to contact me or the other team members to say 'hey, Plexus is really easy and really cool’, and from some surprising parts of the business too!” Jemma observed.

For Powerco, Plexus enabled a culture of efficiency, connection, and empowerment, moving contracts faster and transforming legal’s role in the business.

As Karissa put it, the change is “a thing that’s changed my life”, while Sharon called Plexus “a breath of fresh air”.