Manningham City Council’s procurement team lead the digital way with Secured Signing

The example of Manningham’s procurement team has fostered a low risk digital transformation across the organization

Secured Signing gives Manningham’s procurement team complete process visibility and the capability to execute contract documents in minutes while providing an example for the rest of the organization to follow in adopting digital signatures to drive digital transformation.

The sustained transition to digital signatures across Manningham City Council demonstrates the power of cloud services to drive business process improvement without taking on additional risk. “We initially took on Secured Signing to reduce the time it took us to turnaround contracts and other procurement documents.” said Tim Lawson, Manager Procurement and Contracts for Manningham City Council. “As we asked people in other work teams to sign their procurement documents online, it drove a conversation about how useful eSignatures are and how they can make every process simpler and quicker.”

Continuing to work with paper contracts, conflict of interest declarations and evaluation reports was identified by Manningham City Council as a waste of effort and a barrier to being more agile and responsive. Even just the process of printing and collating the paper documents for significant tenders took many hours of work without even considering the time taken to move these through the building and remind people to sign and return them. Signed paper documents needed to be manually scanned into the corporate records system. A process constrained to paper provided zero process visibility. It wasn’t possible to see who had signed, who hadn’t and where the bottleneck might be in a signature workflow that included multiple people.

Collating documents on screen, sending them for signing online, seeing documents returned within minutes rather than days and a simple dashboard providing complete visibility of process, has completely transformed the procurement process. “It has become such an important part of the way we work now, we wouldn’t know what to do without Secured Signing.” observed Mr Lawson. “I don’t know why all Councils aren’t using Secured Signing.”

The success of using digital signatures to create secure, electronic originals within the procurement process did not go unnoticed by the rest of the organization. Other work teams across Council identified ways in which eSignatures could improves their process, reduce effort and save money. Requisitions for non-procurement payments like the return of bonds are now an online form that is approved with Secured Signing. Councilor expense reimbursements are more timely as a result of not having to walk a paper forms through multiple signatories across the building. The automation capabilities of Secured signing were leveraged to have all staff sign to acknowledge a recently refreshed IT acceptable use policy with more than 700 individuals invited to sign with just a few clicks. Not that the procurement team are standing still. They are looking at other ways to use Secure Signing online forms.

“The journey at Manningham City Council reflects one of the core advantages of SaaS systems.” observed Mike Eyal, Managing Director of Secured Signing. “Unlike traditional on premise systems where you made a large upfront investment and had to push to change behavior to drive adoption, hosted systems can start with small successes and seamlessly add capacity to respond to increased demand.”

About Manningham City Council

Manningham Council provides more than 100 services to residents, ratepayers, businesses and community groups across a City comprising 114 square kilometers and nearly 120,000 residents. Council’s service delivery is funded by an annual budget of over $100M and delivered by a staff of over 700 full time employees. Manningham is a City that values people, heritage and resources. A City with a strong economy and diverse social and natural environment that will enrich our vibrant community.

To learn more about Manningham City Council, visit www.manningham.vic.gov.au

About Secured Signing

Secured Signing provides a comprehensive and secure SaaS digital signature service that delivers a full range of form completion and eSigning capabilities combining advanced personalized X509 PKI Digital Signature technology with easy-to-use, simple-to-deploy, compliant solutions. Secured Signing enables its users to utilize smartphones, PCs, any tablet device and any browser, to capture their graphical signature, fill-in, sign, seal and verify documents anywhere, anytime. The solution streamlines business processes, cuts back on expenses, expedites delivery cycles, improves staff efficiency and enhances customer service in a green environment.

To learn more about Secured Signing, visit www.securedsigning.com.au

Press Contact:
David Schulz
Secured Signing
E-mail: david@securedsigning.com