The Business Problem 

The existing business process to contract a new or existing customer was very manual. On receipt of a contract the customer must print, sign, initial each page, scan and send back their contract(s) to accept the service provider energy offer. The energy supplier Service Delivery Team then need to ensure all signatures are present and no markups to the contract have been made. This manual process is repeated for ~5000 contracts per year. 

Identified Business Challenges 

• • At least 39 clicks were needed to complete current CRM retention process and full process could take up to 30 minutes, resulting in a very inefficient process.
  • Complex hierarchy and inconsistency at various levels made navigation through folders very difficult. 
  • Limited discovery capability due to unavailability of document and full text search.
  • Frustrating and inconvenient process for customer to print, sign, scan and email contract.
  • High volume back log reduces customer focus. 

Solution Overview and Functionality 

• • A streamlined contract approval process: eSignature solution to streamline customer signature process. 
  • Improved management and discovery of content with availability of filter based on metadata categories, saved searches and full text search of documents to find keywords. 
  • Common working area across all customers, contracts, opportunities and quotations with automatically created workspaces for salespeople to store and manage documents inline to SAP data.
  • Drag and drop functionality to capture content associated with contracts.  

Business Benefits 

• • Simplified process with 80% reduction in processing time. 
  • Enabled customers to complete processes on the go and eliminated the need to print, witness, scan & email contracts to the utility organisation. 
  • Reduced service delivery handling time as contract validation and auditing is managed within DocuSign. 
  • Reduction in sales team re-work due to expired contracts as DocuSign manages the expiry and notification of contracts. 
  • Improved search functionality, search time reduced from 4-5 minutes to less than a minute on average to find a document.  

eSignature process using DocuSign 

About Astral 

Astral Consulting has been a leader in information management and the implementation of business change for over 15 years. We have implemented solutions that include policies and business rules, covering end-to-end business process and integrating structured and unstructured information. Our skills and experience combine to build compliance into process and enable end users to optimise both business and compliance success. Astral is an organisation highly regarded for its knowledge, advice and independence.