Custom solutions by vLex

Ecopetrol Case Study

Working with the largest company in Colombia and government-owned energy market leader, Ecopetrol, vLex provided customised, intelligent technology to support an internal digital transformation initiative. With the help of vLex’s AI-powered solutions, Ecopetrol can now access a wealth of in-house material through a single interface, run predictive models for claims, and utilise an ecosystem of connected tools to enhance the productivity of in-house and external lawyers.

Large-scale digital transformation

With the motivation to digitally transform in-house processes, this qualitative risk management lead initiative aimed to connect and improve access to a large amount of information produced by the lawyers at Ecopetrol over many years, at a time when the volume of information being produced continued to grow across different departments. By collecting information that often existed within silos, this project aimed to increase knowledge transfer, promote better communication, and enable greater access to relevant documentation.

As part of supporting Ecopetrol’s digital transformation, vLex provided a hands-on review to understand any existing problems and solutions that were needed. A review of existing processes, data and documents was conducted, resulting in a report detailing the opportunities and key changes that were required to assist Ecopetrol in line with its overall objectives. This enabled vLex to understand the complexity of the information used on a day-to-day basis, and fully ensure that a digital solution would not only enhance and empower existing teams, but also cater for the ever-evolving needs of a growing organisation.

Intelligent, scalable and custom solutions

To transform access to documentation and knowledge sharing, vLex developed a localised ecosystem of tools, and a centralised, searchable and intuitive service, enabling quick access to documents throughout departments.

vLex’s custom solution included a wide range of features, from intuitive searching across internal documents that were enriched with links directly from citations, to provincial and global precedents, and quick access to the most up-to-date information, case law, legislation, and regulations. Additionally, prediction models were designed to support Ecopetrol lawyers in understanding the potential outcome of claims, enabling important decisions to be discussed ahead of time.

A renowned and award-winning legal research assistant, Vincent AI, was also used as part of the custom solution to make highly relevant recommendations in relation to Ecopetrol’s production of legal documents in both the web app and in services such as Microsoft Word. This helped to keep production documents up to date and enriched with links directly to current legislation.

“vLex technology was designed and personalized with flexibility in mind, enabling it to adapt to the different document types and processes used by Ecopetrol. This project also demonstrates the scale and longevity of the custom solutions offered by vLex.” – Robin Chesterman, Global Head of Product, vLex

Working together for several months, Ecopetrol’s digital transformation initiative is now supported by vLex’s technology to help provide access to more information across teams, breakdown existing silos within the organisation and embed technology that can provide a sustainable service for achieving better productivity across Ecopetrol’s legal department and beyond.

“From a personal perspective, I feel vLex is the best provider in the transformation process. Everyone we had contact with in vLex helped to guide us through the process, and empower us with information that we need to ensure everyone knew what to do.” – Andres Felipe Parra, Legal Adviser to the Digital Vice President