The University of Texas, Austin increases profitability with eSignature and Payments

The University of Texas, Austin (UT Austin), operates like a city within a city. With a student body of over 51,000, 18 colleges and schools, and even a hospital, UT Austin has a lot of people, places and systems to manage.

In order to successfully maintain the school’s massive size and population, UT Austin has been undergoing a digital transformation, with Docusign serving as a key partner. However, instead of using a top-down approach for these changes, the university allowed units to self-identify need and opportunity to adopt Docusign to improve processes. As demand for Docusign Agreement Cloud products grew, UT Austin expanded to over 200 use cases across 17 departments (including Admissions, Academics, Human Resources, Research, and Career Services) with seven integrations. UT Austin integrated Docusign and Box to facilitate digital document storage and sharing. Users can use a single login for their Box, Docusign, and UT Austin accounts.

Sheilagh O’Hare was hired to help lead that charge. A business analyst and software service implementation facilitator at the university, O’Hare works closely with departments to implement Docusign. “We always tell people that converting your process to include electronic signatures is going to make you rethink the whole thing end to end,” says O’Hare. From the UT Tower to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and beyond, UT departments are leveraging Docusign products, including eSignature and Payments, to improve efficiency, increase profitability, and improve accountability.

Verifying payments for a popular event space

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is the Botanic Garden and Arboretum of Texas. The center, which is part of UT Austin, offers educational programs and public events on sustainability and plant conservation. The center is also a popular venue for events like weddings and birthdays.

In the past, the rental process was cumbersome and inefficient. Contracts were delivered to clients via PDF, which weren’t always filled out properly or even returned. “The Center would have to be careful with how we would handle credit card information,” recalls O’Hare. “There were these little sheets of paper that we would type in and then need to shred.”

Docusign eSignature and Docusign Payments have helped the Center double its volume of rental agreements processed annually by allowing employees to simply send an email to prospective clients that they electronically fill out and return through one online system. The reduction in manual labor has reduced the contracts team by two FTEs that are now dedicated to other priority roles. With this new process, the center can easily track payments and communications with clients so that no contract goes unsigned and no payment gets lost in the shuffle. The Center can now collect on catering fees, generating an incremental 10% in revenue per year for the team.

Ensuring safety and compliance for campers with Docusign

Throughout the year, UT Austin offers children and students a variety of camps to attend, from volleyball to physics. The Youth Protection Program manages the safety and compliance of those camps, ensuring paperwork like medical releases and background checks for counselors are all properly filed.

The program director approached the Docusign team for help in making the processing and filing of every camp’s paperwork less cumbersome. They introduced Docusign’s PowerForms to create customizable templates for each camp. The program simply creates a customized form and sends a link that signees can use to access, sign, and digitally return. This has created a much more efficient and sustainable process. “The amount of paperwork these camps accumulate is enormous: for just one camp, about 8,000 parents had to sign release forms that were six to eight pages long,” explains O’Hare. “That’s 48,000 pieces of paper we didn’t have to print for just one use case.”

Workflow integrations that make ongoing operations easier

Some departments at the university have integrated Docusign with other essential systems in their workflows. The Commons, for example, is part of the university’s North Austin research campus that has several event spaces available to rent. In order to make the rental process run more smoothly they connected Docusign with Smartsheets (a project management platform) as a way to ensure tracking and organization.

“I am happy to make support house calls from Pickle to Wildflower Center and anywhere in between,” says O’Hare, a Senior Business Analyst in Records and Information Management Services. “I love the opportunity to get all across campus, and I love my job. It’s rewarding to see all the benefits users experience once they see what electronic signatures can do for them.”