MEAG has digitalised the drafting and signing of supplier contracts in the Digital Business Services (DBS) unit. The documents are now also archived digitally.
Contracts are no longer to be printed out and put in folders to await signing, but rather signed with legal effect using an electronic signature – also for mobile devices.
In view of the past processes and the 100% paper-based supplier agreements, this was a challenge. The DBS unit has chosen a new contract-management application with electronic signature capability from the company DocuSign to master it. The Group-wide document-management platform Open Text Content Server serves as the basis for the process. The fast and precise feedback from all DBS teams and the dedicated support of all the management staff enabled the process demands to be implemented in a digital application in just a few iterations.
“We have succeeded in mapping our existing processes into three standard use-cases and implementing them in a modern, agile and iterative procedure,” explains Claudio Peter Prutz, head of Digital Business Services & Organisational Development.
Colleagues now have a versatile tool with which they can compile even complex written agreements digitally, together with the Tax and Legal departments. We have connected the signature application to the back end through an interface, in order to be able to offer the digital signing process to mobile users in a qualified and certified way. This enables management staff to access draft contracts on their smartphone, using two-factor authentication, and to sign them with legal effect. The electronic signature is also one of many ways in which MEAG is reacting to the current restrictions of the Corona crisis so as not to lose productivity.
With the paper process now being entirely digitalised, contracts can be signed more quickly, less expensively and more flexibly. DBS will also implement the digitalisation in other parts of the company without delay, so that for instance the HR, Legal and Supervisory, and Real Estate departments can benefit from the easier and faster processing of contracts in digital form. In this way, DBS can offer leading-edge processes for fully digitalising key processes, which is of particular relevance in times of mobile working.