METRO France : From contract drafting to signature in just 4 minutes

METRO connects French producers with hospitality professionals. With 9,000 employees, 99 wholesale stores, and €5 billion in revenue, the company has undergone significant transformation in recent years.

For Fanny Menia, Deputy Legal Director, the challenge was clear: support business growth without becoming a bottleneck. As contract volumes exploded, the legal team needed to industrialize its processes.

“Our goal was simple: keep up with the pace of the business.”

The answer? Transform contract management across the organization with Gino.

When 28,000 contracts a year overwhelm operations

The pressure on legal teams keeps increasing:
contracts are becoming more complex, while business expectations continue to accelerate.

At METRO, the numbers spoke for themselves:
28,000 contracts per year managed by only 15 lawyers.

Three major challenges were slowing the organization down:

• Productivity issues
  Legal teams were spending too much time on repetitive contracts. Workloads kept increasing and approval cycles became painfully slow.

• Lack of visibility
  No reporting, no reliable KPIs, missed deadlines, scattered data. Answering strategic questions from leadership was nearly impossible.

• Compliance and governance risks
  No reporting, no reliable KPIs, missed deadlines, scattered data. Answering strategic questions from leadership was nearly impossible.

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For Fanny Menia and her team, the challenge was clear:
how do you support business growth and transformation without the right tools?

The legal department needed to:

• streamline and secure contract workflows
• improve collaboration with operational teams
• give business teams more autonomy
• while maintaining full legal compliance

Without the right platform, this ambition was simply unreachable.

“We needed a solution that could centralize contract management while giving autonomy to the different stakeholders across METRO.”

METRO launched a formal RFP process in 2022.

Why METRO chose Gino: 4 key criteria

Several major vendors were evaluated. Four elements ultimately drove the decision.

Ease of use

The interface had to be intuitive and easy to adopt. With more than 1,400 users from different departments, onboarding needed to be immediate.

End-to-end coverage

METRO wanted a platform covering the full contract lifecycle:
document generation, approval workflows, e-signature, and archiving — without multiplying tools.

Strong support

Beyond technology, the legal team wanted a true partnership:
responsive teams, daily support, and close collaboration throughout the project.

Enterprise-wide adoption

Non-legal operational teams participated in product demos during the selection process. METRO wasn’t looking for a tool only for legal — they needed a company-wide platform.

“If I had to recommend Gino, I’d highlight the ease of use, the responsiveness of the teams, and the quality of the day-to-day support.”
— Fanny Menia

A controlled rollout: from sales to the entire organization

The project started in June 2022.
Within six months, METRO and Gino:

• defined the project scope
• configured workflows
• integrated DocuSign for e-signature
• connected customer databases for automatic contract prefill

“We integrated Gino with our internal tools to create a true end-to-end workflow. Information is automatically populated.”
— Fanny Menia

The platform first launched within the National Sales Department in December 2022, then expanded to HR in March 2023.
During 2023 and 2024, adoption progressively extended to:

• Insurance
• Security
• IT departments

Today, more than 1,000 active users rely on Gino daily.

The results: faster processes, higher volume, natural adoption

Sales teams can now generate, approve, and sign a contract in just 4 minutes — up to 10x faster than before.

“It creates a seamless experience for our teams: generating and signing contracts in just a few minutes.”

The operational impact is significant.
Between 2023 and 2024, METRO increased contract generation volume by 193%.

“The platform gave us a centralized archive for all our agreements and made contract access dramatically easier.”
— Hortense Pauly, Legal Counsel — Sales & Operations

But perhaps the strongest signal was adoption itself.
Employees proactively reached out to the legal team asking for access to Gino after seeing the efficiency gains experienced by their colleagues.

What truly changed: the role of the legal department

Giving teams autonomy while bringing work back in-house

With Gino, METRO’s legal department shifted from reactive support to a strategic business function.
Legal teams now create intelligent contract templates that operational teams can use independently.

Sales teams answer guided questionnaires depending on the contract type, and documents are automatically generated using clauses validated by legal.

“Approval workflows ensure that only legally validated versions are used.”
— Hortense Pauly

Templates are centralized in a shared contract library, standardized, and accessible across the organization.
Each template includes:

• variables
• conditional clauses
• automated logic based on user input

And when a clause is updated, changes automatically propagate across all relevant documents.
Best practices spread naturally across the business.

Every contract created or updated automatically feeds the contract repository, enabling real-time reporting and reliable data visibility across teams.

As a result, METRO’s 15 lawyers can now focus on:

• operational support
• strategic matters
• high-value negotiations

instead of repetitive administrative work.

“Gino allowed us to bring work back in-house that we previously outsourced. It’s a huge time saver for both our teams and the legal department.”
— Fanny Menia

A legal department becoming a true business partner

Real-time access to contract data enabled METRO to answer operational and commercial questions that were previously impossible to track:

• processing times
• bottlenecks
• contract volumes by segment
• acceleration or slowdown in contract cycles

Legal teams now rely on dedicated dashboards to monitor:

• volumes
• turnaround times
• risk exposure

This data is now actively used by operations, sales, procurement, and finance teams.

The legal department gained credibility with executive leadership by bringing measurable visibility into contract performance and business impact.

Structured governance to secure and accelerate workflows

Approval workflows were fully redesigned with:

• sequential or parallel approvals
• conditional approvals based on contract value, clauses, or risk level
• automatic delegation during absences
• real-time action tracking

Automated reminders now prevent missed deadlines and secure the entire contract lifecycle.

Approval history, audit trails, and access controls helped formalize a robust contract governance framework shared across operational teams.

What’s next: 2,000 users and AI-powered negotiation

METRO plans to continue expanding adoption across the organization.

By the end of 2025, the goal is to reach 2,000 active users and extend Gino to additional departments.

At the same time, the legal team is exploring generative AI features to automate even more complex tasks.

METRO is also improving collaborative negotiation workflows to accelerate exchanges with external partners and shorten contract turnaround times.

For METRO, Gino is not a static tool deployed once and forgotten.

It’s a platform that evolves alongside the company.

“We’ve found the right balance between team autonomy, legal security, and operational efficiency. Today, the platform evolves with our needs. It’s not a one-off project — it’s an ongoing transformation.”
— Fanny Menia

In just two years, METRO France fundamentally transformed its legal operations.

The legal department gained:

• speed
• visibility
• autonomy

Operational teams now work within a standardized and secure framework, while legal teams can focus on higher-value work.

With growing adoption and the integration of generative AI, METRO now has a strong foundation to scale performance over time.

The result?

A legal department that no longer reacts — but leads.

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