Why Consolidation Could Be Your Secret Weapon – A Lesson From MetService

In the fast-paced realm of weather forecasting, the Meteorological Service of New Zealand, known as MetService, plays a pivotal role in providing accurate information not just for the nation but also for various businesses and organisations. With a rich history spanning over 160 years, MetService has been a trusted partner for major airlines, transport authorities, and energy companies.

We had the opportunity to sit down with Joanne Turpie, a seasoned Business Analyst at MetService, to delve into the early stages of their transformative journey with Docusign. Discover how this collaboration streamlined workflows and brought instant value to the organisation.

Harmonising teams to boost productivity

Consolidating your tech stack can be a daunting task, particularly in a large organisation that has multiple departments who are used to using a specific tool in their everyday workflows.

Joanne Turpie, with her background in technical systems, has been the driving force behind this consolidation at MetService. Specialising in simplifying complex systems to boost productivity and reduce operating costs, Joanne sought to reduce MetService’s amount of e-signature tools in use from four down to just one.

"People were using different tools throughout the business. There was no common tool—that was a problem," Joanne explained. The lack of a unified tool resulted in bottlenecks among departments as the differing tools were creating a disconnect. After careful consideration, Docusign eSignature emerged as the clear choice for MetService.

Docusign shortly after became MetService's single source of truth for documents, bringing cohesion and efficiency to the company as a whole. 

"Having a really good onboarding consultant just made everything easier. The whole interaction with Docusign has been really positive,” said Joanne.

Achieving more with less effort

The templates feature emerged as a key benefit, allowing teams to maintain their existing workflows while adding a layer of automation. "They’re not changing their main process at all, and I’m getting feedback from people saying that it’s just so easy,” said Joanne.

For example, the Sales team found relief in sending out letters of variation without recreating each envelope from scratch, while Procurement can now easily personalise new supplier agreements.

“It’s really useful to have set templates in Docusign so that staff can find them easily and not have to upload or edit prior to use,” added Joanne.

For the HR team, onboarding documents are now seamlessly converted into Docusign fields, such as IRD documents,  simplifying the signing process for new joiners and saving the team a significant amount of time. 

“Signing documents is intuitive and no drama! I like no drama,” one senior manager said. 

Simplifying security and privileged access 

Beyond productivity gains, Docusign's single sign-on (SSO) capability, via Azure Active Directory, played a crucial role in streamlining appropriate user access, upholding document integrity and confidentiality. 

Joanne highlighted the significance of SSO, saying, "When we were looking to consolidate our e-signature tools, having SSO was important. The SSO installation was an incredibly fast installation and took under one hour with our SSO Docusign consultant. It blew me away."