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The Forgotten Signature – Leveraging Automation to Limit Risk
Chelsea Sauder • Jan 17, 2019
Every business owner knows the feeling – you’ve been working on a project and it was going great until something went wrong and now you’ve got a major conflict.
You’re stuck...
You want to enforce payment terms, cite the other person’s noncompliance, or prove that something is out of scope…but you can’t. It all started with the engagement letter, contract, or agreement that you never got around to actually getting signed. What’s worse is that when it all started everyone was on the same page and would have signed it with no problem – but you’re busy and it just didn’t happen…
In our last blog post, we talked about the untapped potential in Office 365 – features that many organizations are paying for (and may have been for years) but aren’t using. If you missed that post, you can read it here. Today, we’ll look at how your business can mitigate risk and become more efficient through the Automation capabilities of Office 365.
Every business deals with contracts, agreements, and other signed paperwork. Let’s consider a couple of scenarios:
First, a Consultant, who finds his strong suit is anything other than proposal writing. He often reaches a verbal agreement or perhaps exchanges terms via email with his clients but ultimately, he starts work without a signed contract very often. This may go on for years without any significant issue, but now he has run into a client that doesn’t want to pay – they claim the work wasn’t complete, there was another part, the fixed price was lower, etc. A simple contract with a few places to “fill in the blank” might have avoided any of this disagreement.
Alternatively, the case of a midsized business with 35-50 employees. They experience moderate turnover and, as a result, the HR department stays fairly busy with onboarding/offboarding and recruiting. As part of every employee’s onboarding, they are required to sign multiple paper documents from Employee Handbook Agreements to NDAs to Direct Deposit Authorizations. Unfortunately, as can happen with any growing company, not everyone they hire turns out to be a great fit and they let some people go. One of the terminated employees doesn’t agree with their decision and tries to retaliate by violating provisions in the Employee Handbook. The company would like to pursue the employee but can’t locate all of his onboarding paperwork and is left with limited options. A more efficient way to sign and store their documents could have easily put these within reach.
Many organizations solve these problems with manual processes. They build checklists and flowcharts to make sure that nothing gets missed. They have audits of employee records and the file cabinet of contracts. They know that it can be easier, but they feel like that means new systems to learn, company politics to navigate around buying and installing new software, and worst of all a substantial investment. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be quite that way…
Imagine if our Consultant from the first scenario had a standard contract drafted by his attorney – maybe even a couple of them, one for fixed price projects and the other for hourly work. Then, as a habit before every engagement began, he would open an app and supply a few details such as the rate and client contact information. When he saved his entry in the app, his contract would be automatically filled in with the pertinent details and sent via an e-signature tool to the client. Once they signed, his system would automatically file the contract back in his document management system with the appropriate tags so that it would be with the rest of his project documents. He could do all of this automation within Office 365.
Similarly, for our HR team, rather than wading through a sea of paperwork they might have an interface where new hires are registered in the system and automatically sent onboarding documentation for electronic signature before their first day in the office. Once they’ve signed it, not only is it stored permanently in their HR file, it also triggers notifications to other departments to start key activities, so the employee’s first day is smooth. They may even choose to integrate further, unifying their Recruiting and Applicant Tracking with their Onboarding process. They could do all of this automation within Office 365.
Automating business processes in Office 365 results in significant benefits for most companies. From larger and more complex risk mitigation scenarios like we’ve mentioned to the simple increase in efficiency by eliminating manual repetition, the value that results from these projects is often realized shortly after implementation.
What else can automation in Office 365 be applied to? We’ve seen it quite a few places:
- Business Operations – Contracting, Forecasting, Customer Service, Project Management
- HR – Applicant Tracking, Onboarding/Offboarding, Benefits Enrollment, Annual Reviews
- Facilities Management – Catering, Meeting Space Reservations, Event Scheduling, Visitor Registration
- IT – Helpdesk Request Management, Asset Assignment
Does your organization have an opportunity to be more efficient by implementing automation? Have questions about how to get started? Contact us here
and let’s talk!
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