Digital signatures propel Australian Unity with rapid time to value

When Charles Lie proposed his employer, Australian Unity, onboard customers with digital signatures, sceptics pointed to how difficult it would be for its elderly home care customers, typically in their 80s by the time they take up home care services.    

Chief among the hurdles was how customers would respond to digital agreements amid a perceived resistance to technology among seniors. And converting staff in up to 35 branches and 50 sites wouldn’t be easy, they told Lie, General Manager of Service Operations for Australian Unity’s Home Care Services.

But through an empathetic program that offered customers the option to sign ‘wet’ or digitally, while elevating internal champions, Lie confounded naysayers. He beat his own optimistic adoption forecasts, achieving staff buy-in within a few months while four in five customers now sign new agreements digitally.

“We focused on our [branch] leaders… to drive change locally… because there's no way we could push through such complex change across hundreds of staff and thousands of customers without local buy-in and leadership,” Lie told delegates to an  .

It was part of Australian Unity’s ‘A Better Day’ program to standardise and digitise best practices for its more than 270 Service Coordinators and 38,000 home care customers. For Lie, showing rapid time to value was a critical success factor for a project that aimed to lift the burden of manual processes to offer a more secure and ‘human’ approach to home care.

“Time to value was hours and days opposed to weeks and months,” said Lie who estimated less than a month to derive benefits.

Half of users receive value from digital signatures in less than a month

Lie’s experience aligns with Australian executives deploying SaaS solutions who responded to a market survey from ACA Research, said DocuSign Strategic Value Engineer for Australia-Pacific and Japan, Lindsay Macdonald.

It found that 45 per cent of respondents received value in less than a month, while 85 per cent received value in less than two financial quarters — beating out content management for top spot.

“If you can get something implemented, adopted and be driving business value inside a quarter, that is a terrific result. We can implement within three or four weeks, but… business readiness for change and adoption” often takes far longer, Macdonald said.

“Wherever you're adopting a SaaS solution, you shouldn't be digitising the existing process; it's an opportunity to refine and improve the way you do business. So there's all those internal elements, which are really key to achieve value as well.”

ACA research also showed that, unlike other quickly implemented SaaS solutions, digital signatures held their lustre — 88 per cent of respondents were satisfied or extremely satisfied with their time to value, while 45 per cent reported faster time to value than expected.

Digital signatures light the way for future business opportunities

Charles Lie said digital signatures would help Australian Unity grow while best redeploying scarce skills.

“We went after the biggest bang for buck [to] get runs on the board early… and show value, and that was onboarding because you can see how much time that takes,” Lie said.

“We'll look at… our customer journey and where we can digitise… processes to make things easier. And we'll focus on our people and how we can create operational efficiencies.

“If we can save a couple minutes, couple days, couple weeks, across the year, then that's big for us. So we might look at care planning, service delivery and scheduling… for a service to be delivered.

“We've only just scratched the surface, and I'm excited about using the momentum [of a successful digital signature rollout] to create ‘a better day’ for our people.”

To view iTnews’ digital signatures event with DocuSign, visit our recorded live stream .

Did you know this about Australian Unity?

• 3 million hours home care services (2021)
  
  
• 2496 independent living units
  
  
• 700,000 customers (38,000+ in home care)
  
  
• 7500 employees (5000 in home care)
  
  
• 400,000 members

Source: Australian Unity Impact Statement 2021