Swinburne Uni folds DocuSign into processes across organisation

Swinburne University will be using e-signatures in 21 functional areas by the end of the year, after first going live with a DocuSign-based capability in its people and culture function in May.

Swinburne University's Kosta Nicolaou.

Speaking at DocuSign’s annual Momentum conference, digital solution manager Kosta Nicolaou said the university is standardising on DocuSign, after previously using “various e-signature solutions” as well as wet-ink signatures for documents.

The program, which is being run by an internal team augmented with DocuSign professional services resources, began late last year, before being first implemented in the process for onboarding new hires.

“We focused on one particular use case first: the onboarding experience, so new starters onboarding with Swinburne,” Nicolaou said.

“I was one of the people two years ago who had to sign all the [onboarding] documents manually, and it was a horrible process. One of the first things I did when I came into the university was [to encourage] modernisation of our e-signature process.

“It took about three to four months getting it right with people and culture, for a range of documents, and we went live in early May.”

The efficiency improvements from using DocuSign as part of that process were significant, according to Nicolaou.

“We went from a six-day turnaround from a contract being issued and returned by a new starter to under two days, which is quite amazing,” he said.

“If you think about the experience for that new starter, it’s quite paramount and profound, and if you think about the recruitment manager, it gives them certainty that people are going to start on a day.

“It also creates efficiency for the people and culture [function].”

The technology has since been incorporated into processes for research, procurement, property services, and student residence documentation -- again, with strong results.

“When you look at research, the results are even more profound,” Nicolaou said.

“We’ve gone from 18 days from a document being issued to a research partner and being returned and signed, down to under two days. 

“That has a significant impact on the university in terms of cash flow… because the sooner we start the research, the sooner we bill, and we become a sustainable business.”

Swinburne is now on track to apply the technology in many more parts of the university.

“We’ve got another 15 different stakeholder groups that have expressed an interest in getting on board with the rollout, which is quite amazing, so between now and the end of the year, we’ll have over 21 stakeholder groups using the platform to meet their specific requirements,” Nicolaou said.

In addition to “doubling down” on the deployment of DocuSign for e-signature, Nicolaou predicted other use cases for technology from the vendor.

He said the intent is for Swinburne “to take a first step into proactive contract management”, utilising DocuSign intelligent agreement management (IAM), an AI-powered tool.

“We’ve got a subscription to IAM, [and] there’s capabilities there that we could definitely leverage and benefit from as an organisation,” Nicolaou said.

“Taking a signed document, scraping some key information out and being able to get that information to the right people at the right time to take a course of action is the next step that we need to take as a business, as a segue way into larger-scale contract lifecycle management.”

Nicolaou said that additional work would see DocuSign become more tightly integrated with other systems that the university either runs today or is implementing, including Workday, ServiceNow and Salesforce.

“We’ve got several solutions in place that generate a lot of documentation - Workday for HCM and employment contracts, [and] we’re also using Workday in the future for finance, [for] purchase orders and the like that probably also need to be signed ideally. 

“We’re in the process of implementing ServiceNow for service management, and again, that’ll handle all below-threshold procurement, so certainly a use case there.

“Then [there’s] Salesforce from a CRM perspective. We shared in a presentation about a month ago [the workflow of] a deal moving through a sales pipeline and getting to the point where an agreement can get issued and signed and automatically come back, and that updating the deal status.”