Signing hundreds of paper documents is the daily routine of large businesses and one of the biggest resource wasters. However, the growing digitalisation of life and business has already made document signing a convenient process both within the organisation and while working with partners or customers. Telia, one of the leading organisations in its sector, can confirm this from their own experience.
Telia Lietuva needs no introduction, it is the largest telecommunications company in Lithuania, which, according to the data of Communications Regulatory Authority, accounts for around 40% of the country’s electronic communications market based on income.
Naturally, serving more than 40,000 businesses in Lithuania, the company signs large quantities of documents daily, both internally and with customers and partners. Although paperwork for organisations of such size is often a burden in the age of electronic processes, Telia has found a way to deal with this challenge still common to others.
The need dictated by the customers
According to Telia representatives, digital customers service and electronic document signing is a common business practice in the world. The company has been strengthening it in Lithuania for a while now in order to optimise not only internal processes but also to offer customers a more convenient way to access services.
Typically, companies have a major headache because of the processes when documents need to be chased and the originals often get lost by post. “Such a process has never been very effective in terms of time. The chain “send by email – sign – scan – send scanned copy – send out the original – sign the original – send by post to the client” wastes time of managers working with the customers. At this point, it is crucial to understand that after you stop wasting time for actions that can simply be done faster, there’s more time remaining for effective communication with the clients”, Daniel Karpovic, Head of B2B Product and Commercial Development at Telia, said.
According to the company, in order to improve the efficiency of the processes, it is important to consider the clients’ opinions, expectations and feedback. “We’ve been repeatedly asked by our customers when they would be able to sign documents with us using e-signature, after all, Telia is one of mobile signature distributors. It was rather a confirmation that digitalisation of processes is becoming the main goal not only for us but also for our customers”, D. Karpovic said.
Mission: improvements to user experience
“Having assessed all aspects, it was clear that as life is moving to digital space and mobile devices, we have to ensure such customer service process that meets today’s needs — fast, secure, with just a few clicks. This is where we started searching for the most suitable solution”, D. Karpovic explained.
As for most businesses, when choosing a solution, reliability and transparency were one of the most essential things, however, other aspects were equally important.
“We know how long it can sometimes take to implement new solutions, thus, we’ve set the criteria that the chosen solution must be available right away. This way we will be able to allocate our IT resources to other projects and focus on our core activities. Of course, we were also looking for
the right functionality as working with the clients we pay a lot of attention to user experience. Thus, the solution, that we knew would also be used by our customers, had to be convenient, simple and intuitive. We were as well expecting a branded experience possibility”, D. Karpovic said.
According to the company, Dokobit best met the expectations and requirements, so it wasn’t a hard decision. The whole process — from the idea to choice of a partner — took only a few months and since then Telia has been enjoying electronic document signing for over a year now, counting the benefits.
Successful experience resulted in service expansion
Initially, the company started using Dokobit e-document signing portal in the sales and service processes of business customers, mainly to sign service contracts. It needs to be mentioned that Telia was the first telecommunications company in Lithuania that offered their customers to sign contracts electronically.
Shortly, the e-signing portal was tested by the company’s product managers, as well as HR, IT and procurement departments: to sign contracts with suppliers, IT service orders and work delivery certificates.
Telia estimates that after starting to use Dokobit, signing time of external documents has decreased from a few days to a few hours. „Numbers say it all. Faster contract signing allows our clients to start using bought services almost right away, meanwhile, we are able to spend saved time on more effective communication and other tasks. Beside all the hassle of scanning, packing and sending out documents, we are now also sure that contracts don’t get lost, everything is kept and documented in one place”, D. Karpovic said.
As the company states, in almost a year, the number of documents signed via Dokobit has almost doubled. In addition, successful experience and positive feedback from the customers has encouraged to add e-signing solution to Telia’s product list.
This post is also available in: Lithuanian