ZAMBON, from Paper to the Cloud

 The Metamorphosis of Contract Management 

Founded as a family business in 1906, Zambon is a multinational pharmaceutical company with Italian roots. It operates a research center in Parma focused on chronic diseases, the biotech accelerator Zcube, and a foundation dedicated to scientific outreach. With around 2,900 employees and nearly €899 million in revenue, the group operates in 87 countries through 23 direct subsidiaries and a network of distributors. 

Alessandra Fidone, Legal Affairs Director
Daniela Sambuco, Contract Management System Specialist

During the Yubiq Insights25 event

The challenge

Zambon faced a chaotic contract management scenario, relying on emails, Word drafts, manual signatures, and physical archives scattered around the world. Each agreement—whether related to distribution, licensing, consultancy, clinical trials, or marketing—required the inclusion of clauses on pharmacovigilance, privacy, liability under Law 231, and cybersecurity. Five standard templates were no longer sufficient to cover the increasing variety in a portfolio expanding with new markets and molecules. Technical departments intervened via email, deadlines were tracked on local Excel files, and the risk of losing attachments or missing renewals grew with each step. 

In a highly regulated sector like Pharma, the slowness and inconsistency of paper-based processes exposed the company to hidden costs, potential sanctions, and delays in strategic project launches. Zambon needed to transform contracts from static files into native digital workflows—with metadata, traceability, and legal validity—capable of speeding up negotiations and eliminating compliance risks. 

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TheApproach

In 2017, Zambon selected the Yubiq platform to redesign the entire contract lifecycle with a process-first logic. Since 2018, every agreement has been born in digital case file. The requester fills out a guided form specifying the company, counterparty, contract type, and sensitive elements. The platform then automatically generates the approval workflow, involving Legal or Compliance teams only when necessary. 
 All related materials—drafts, comments, emails, and financial attachments—are stored within the case file, and each status change triggers an alert, eliminating the “orphan documents” that used to get lost in inboxes. 
 In 2021, the introduction of digital signatures enabled remote signing, with documents instantly archived in the repository. Certified digital preservation ensures full legal validity. 

Templates have expanded from five to 51, covering NDAs, clinical trial agreements, and other specialized contracts, with clauses continuously updated. The solution—now known internally as “Contract Fox”—has become a single source of truth, accessible to Marketing, Finance, and Supply Chain. On the backend, Yubiq’s APIs integrate with the ERP and business intelligence systems, making contracts searchable by analytics and AI algorithms. 

The impact

In less than five years, Zambon has transformed contract management from a fragmented process into a lever for efficiency and transparency. Negotiation cycles have gone from weeks to a few days—or even hours with standard templates—with attachments and versions always available, and audits requiring no manual searches. 

Automation has eliminated couriers, printing, and physical archives, cutting operational costs and ensuring full traceability of responsibilities. Pre-expiry alerts have reduced penalties and simplified renewals and amendments. 
The platform is now willingly adopted by departments because it leads to faster sign-off. The group now operates with 51 globally compliant templates, a repository that preserves the full history of each clause, and data ready for predictive analysis. 
The next step focuses on AI to extract clauses, refine semantic search, and generate draft contracts already aligned with agreement type, country, and product—turning the contract into a living tool that keeps pace with scientific innovation and market dynamics 

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