Unisinos to gain agility with digital transformation project

With the impact of the pandemic, Unisinos started, in May 2020, seeking companies with digital signature platforms. The focal point was the Technological Park (Tecnosinos), a business incubator that demands a high volume of lease contracts and amendments, among other purposes. “As the search progresses, we notice that this was a crucial and necessary institutional step towards including digital transformation in the university”, Luciana Barros, Administrative Analyst of the Procuratorship—the department that supports and approves the University’s main contracts—, stated.

Choosing a supplier of digital formalization services, requires that key criteria be taken into account with the purpose of providing the best experience possible to the users, and that adaptation to the digital environment be quick. Unisinos selected four companies and the criteria assessed were: information security, credibility, cost, and integration with other systems. Two companies were approved in this first stage. The Unisinos Procuratorship analyzed the legal validity and integration with the Espaider System, while the Information Technology Management (ASAV) analyzed other criteria, such as data protection, digital storage, vulnerabilities, and data retrieval. “After some pondering, QualiSign was selected as the most appropriate for our structure”, Mirian Almeida Ribeiro, ASAV’s System Analyst, concluded.

The Electronic Signature project is still ongoing. The university is standardizing documents, contracts, and amendments to speed up flows and facilitate processes. In the case of Public Procurations, electronic signing is not possible as it requires notarization. Therefore, this type of document will continue to be manually signed. In any event, the high demand for documents, more than 90%, has already been converted into digital.

From 35 to 10 Days!

Considering the average time to formalize physical documents, which was approximately 35 days, and comparing with the processing of digital documents via the QualiSign Portal, which takes an average of 10 days, the gain of agility was increased by 72%. “There is no doubt that higher speed is the best benefit of digital signature, making the process effective. It is possible to further improve this time. With adjustments to the process and by integrating the systems, this will be possible!”, Mirian commented.

Cost Reduction and Productivity Gains

Paper use reduction brings other tangible benefits. Thousands of sheets of paper are no longer being used. It is estimated that 45 thousand A4 sheets are saved per year. The reduction in printing costs, added to posting by mail, have generated savings of as much as 80% of expenses. “This doesn’t include costs incurred with storage and human resources allocated in paper administration and management”, Mirian added.

“Due to the hours saved by the collaborators who controlled the formalization process and the savings of the time managers spent signing the old piles of documents, we can say that productivity was increased by 70%, as time is no longer wasted with printing, digitizing, posting, and managing physical documents,” Luciana said.

Gain of efficiency in managing documents

Productivity gain also ensures improvement in managing and controlling documents. It is simple to imagine that in lieu of paper piles we have a unified control, which provides information on the document, its status, and if someone has not signed yet. If these responses to a single document in the physical world requires significant effort, let alone the effort used for all documents.

“In the digital world, information is centralized and immediate. The progress of the process can be monitored at any time. There are no losses. We all know how much of a hassle it was when a contract disappeared in the middle of the way. In the physical world, we were forced to start the process over! We’ve had an enormous gain in managing documents, controlling what was signed and those that are still in progress, and in the flexibility of digital filing,” Luciana reinforced.

Green Planet

Digital transformation is an important step in contributing to sustainability. At Unisinos, saving 45000 A4 sheets per year corresponds to saving 4.5 trees, 1125 KW of electric power, and 11,250 litters of water used in manufacturing paper. In addition to all these green savings, one must also bear in mind CO2 emission. Paper savings prevents the emission of 0.332 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year.

Intangible

It is not possible to measure everything, but valuable perception also counts. A lot. Before, it was necessary to take all papers home or pile them up on the office desk. What if travelling was necessary? Even when taking all papers, would they be returned in time? Our current response capacity is huge and this provides convenience and peace of mind that processes will not stop just because we are away from the office. After the experience of safely signing documents in the digital world, people already start to see papers as something from the past and can start to question why there are still papers to be signed.

Expanding

The University still has the project ongoing. Electronic signatures have already been integrated to the contract management system, with ten sectors already participating in the processing of the documents using Unisinos’ stamp. Seven other sectors use the QualiSign Portal exclusively to forward and sign digital reports.

“We’ll subsequently implement the process of electronically signing documents without a stamp in other sectors of the university, in addition to also expanding the use of digital reports for other sectors,” Luciana concluded.