Efficient Contract Management with E-Signatures

Sarah Coleman, 11 May 2020

With most of New Zealand working from home at the moment I’ve been thinking about the challenges of keeping contract management and project approvals ticking along. Currently New Zealand businesses will be facing constraints of people not being physically in the same room, not all contract signers/approvers having a printer and scanner at home and potentially the security risks of contract signers just adding a PDF of their signature to a document. When things are operating normally, companies waste a lot of time trying to get contracts signed off or obtaining internal sign off from managers on initiatives. This is likely more challenging now while many are juggling work and home life.

One answer to these logistical issues, with time and money savings thrown in for good measure, is an e-signature solution.

Magnetism implemented an end-to-end e-signature solution for one of our clients over a year ago to manage their 1000 plus annual contracts with their partners. The solution combined custom Dynamics 365 contract records with mscrmaddons.com DocumentsCorePack templates and AssureSign e-signature integrations.

Due to some complexity in the contract terms, the documents themselves were set up as DocumentsCorePack templates, merged individually and then checked by staff. AssureSign then took over and emailed the partner a link to review and sign the contract online.

Once the partner had signed the contract, the automatic update on the AssureSign record status in Dynamics 365 triggered the custom contract record to be automatically updated to Active. All document steps were captured in the AssureSign document history with the contract signer’s IP address recorded, example screenshot below.

Apart from the original trigger to merge the document and to check the content was correct, no further work was required by our client’s admin team. And because the whole contract process was managed in Dynamics 365, a chart was added to the Account Manager dashboard so they could see at a glance how many of their partner contracts had been signed and follow up personally if needed.

The solution saved our client 5-10 minutes per contract (so somewhere in the vicinity of 80 to 160 hours of admin time). It was also a better customer experience for their partners and meant that more contracts were signed in a timely fashion as the partners no longer needed to print, sign, scan and email the contract back. So, there were further time-savings for the client by not having as many contract signers to chase.

That old chestnut ‘work smarter, not harder’ applies here. The time staff saved by not having to create contract documents, PDF-ing and emailing them to contract signers, and then filing and tracking the signed contracts once they’re returned can be better used on value-add activities.

If your business would like to look at how e-signatures can streamline your contract management or approval workflows please get in touch, we’d be happy to help.