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Volkswagen Group Sales India retains a six-person legal team, led by head of legal Vijay Kamath and supported ably by the next most senior lawyer in the team, assistant general manager for legal Salil Date. Kamath is proud of the progress the team has made in recent years, driven by new legal technologies, which have seen the team enhance and expand its capabilities to become an indispensable business partner to Volkswagen. ‘My legal team has successfully managed the automation of contracts management systems’, he comments, ‘which we now term as contracts lifecycle management. The contracts lifecycle management system provides a universal view of every contract that the organisation has entered into, and also delivers prompts for contracts nearing expiry or those contracts which have expired’. Though pushing ahead with these innovations, the team has not lost sight of the core need of a legal team to ensure the safety of the business from a compliance and risk management perspective. ‘Non-compliance with laws and regulations can lead to serious complications and business continuity issues’, Kamath says, ‘and hence the business teams are trained regularly on various aspects of law covering various areas of business. My team has always emphasised the need to be 100% compliant, and this is a part of the compliance culture that my team has developed’.