ReferenCE STORY
how Schill gmbh & co. kg future-proofs contract management with easy
about Schill
GmbH &
Co. KG
Founded in 1948, Schill GmbH & Co. KG is a family-owned company now run by the third generation. Headquarters are located in Fellbach near Stuttgart, with production based in Laichingen on the Swabian Alb.
With 67 employees, Schill is one of the world’s leading specialists in the production of high-quality cable reels for the B2B sector, used globally in industry, e-mobility, and the audio, video, and broadcast sectors.
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greater transparency in a time-honored company
Whether in the spotlight, behind the scenes, in the workshop, or on construction sites: at Schill GmbH, everything revolves – in the truest sense of the word – around intelligent cable management. Over nearly 80 years, this family-owned company has built a worldwide reputation with the development and production of cable reel systems. This success is driven both by the solid reliability of quality production “Made in Germany” and by a strong openness to innovation and inventive spirit: most recently, Schill launched a cable winder with an integrated wallbox for e-mobility.
Schill is also keeping pace when it comes to digitalizing business processes. Several years ago, Ingo Schill, managing partner in the third generation, digitalized document management with easy archive. He was then faced with another classic challenge: modernizing contract administration. Over time, documents had become scattered across departments, servers, and physical folders. With the introduction of easy contract, the company laid the foundation for digital, location-independent contract management.
the starting point: siloed knowledge and manual effort
Before Ingo Schill initiated the digitalization of contract processes, the structure was highly decentralized.
“Different departments received their contracts and then stored them somewhere on file servers,”
Schill recalls.
As a result, identical documents were often stored in three different locations – without transparency about who was working on which version or when critical deadlines expired.
Monitoring termination deadlines or automatic renewals was particularly cumbersome.
“You always had to keep track mentally: When does a contract expire? When is a renewal coming up?”
says Schill.
In a company with two locations – Fellbach and Laichingen – this way of working also made quick access to important documents more difficult.
a choice based on trust
The decision to choose an easy solution was also based on the positive experience gained from many years of using easy archive, as well as the high level of satisfaction with easy.
“We’ve worked very well together for years. There is a relationship of trust. And since easy contract met all our technical requirements, there was no reason for us to switch providers,”
explains Ingo Schill.
From a technical perspective, it was crucial that easy contract could operate completely independently and without limitations alongside the newly implemented cloud ERP system Oxaion. Because easy contract also runs in the cloud, the mid-sized company does not need to worry about operating the tool or ensuring data security.
transparent, simple use and secure storage
Today, easy contract serves as the “single source of truth” for all legally relevant documents at Schill. The benefits are evident in everyday workflows: thanks to centralized storage, employees can find all contracts in one digital repository. Access via VPN or Citrix is therefore possible at any time and from any location. The easily configurable deadline management system automatically reminds relevant users when contracts are about to expire.
Behind this is a finely adjustable authorization concept that ensures sensitive contract data can only be accessed and edited by a defined group of users. In addition, the history and current status of each contract document can be viewed at any time.
Ingo Schill particularly appreciates the high level of transparency in handling contracts. Transparency is also important to Schill GmbH for another reason – data security and cloud location. As a German company, Schill places great importance on data being processed in German data centers in accordance with European data protection regulations – a clear advantage of easy’s cloud solution, which is hosted on servers in Germany.
the human factor: digitization with a sense of proportion
In everyday use, easy contract has proven to be highly practical thanks to its intuitive design, as Ingo Schill explains:
“You are guided through the different steps, such as creating contracts, contract partners, and internal contacts. This allows everyone to quickly understand the process without needing specialized know-how.”
Based on his experience, Ingo Schill relied on a familiar approach when introducing easy contract – one that has consistently worked well in the company. His strategy is: start small, create quick wins, and then scale. This is based on the insight that digitization is not purely an IT project, but also work that focuses on people. In a mid-sized company with many long-standing employees who have worked with paper for decades, proactively bringing employees on board truly pays off.
In practice, this meant:
“We started with a small team of three people to gain initial experience,”
he reports. Skepticism about the initial additional effort required for data entry quickly gave way to the realization that the digital solution provides real relief.
“When employees see that a tool simplifies their daily workload, they become more open to further digitalization steps.”
digital contract management as a building block for the future
For Schill, easy contract is more than just a tool for managing contracts – it is a building block for the company’s digital future. The company is currently in the middle of transitioning to a comprehensive cloud environment, including an ERP change and migration to Microsoft 365. The positive experience with contract management is helping to increase acceptance for further digitalization across the organization. Even the current “media disruption” in signing – contracts are still printed and scanned – will be eliminated through digital signatures directly within the system.
create, edit, approve: your contract management – now easy.
- All contracts are available centrally.
- Send contracts and sign them digitally with DocuSign or easy eSignature.
- drastically shorten processes and be reliably reminded of deadlines.
- Set up and monitor clearly defined access rights.
conclusion: less administration, more focus on core business
For Schill GmbH & Co. KG, the investment in easy contract has already paid off. On average, five new contracts are added to the system each month, while older contracts are gradually scanned and incorporated. What may sound like a small number accumulates over the years into a critical volume that would be impossible to manage manually.
Ingo Schill’s advice to other mid-sized companies is clear:
“You need to carefully plan your concept and prepare your processes at the beginning. If you start small and identify the right multipliers within your team, you will quickly see how much work such a solution takes off individual employees’ shoulders.”
easy contract provides exactly the advantages that were missing before: a single place where everything is stored, the ability to define permissions, and to set deadlines. the whole process runs automatically in the background – something that previously required significant manual effort.
Ingo Schill
Managing Partner
Schill GmbH & Co. KG
