Clear Skies Ahead: MetService Streamlines Workflows With Docusign

The Meteorological Service of New Zealand, MetService, is responsible for weather forecasting not just at a national level, but also for a variety of diverse businesses and organisations.

With over 160 years of experience in observing and recording New Zealand’s dynamic weather and issuing critical weather alerts, MetService has been an instrumental partner to the likes of major airlines, transport authorities, and energy companies.

In this piece, we sat down with Joanne Turpie, Business Analyst at MetService, to learn about the early stages of the company’s journey with Docusign and the instantaneous value it delivered.

Unifying teams to deliver immediate impact

With a background in technical systems, Joanne has established herself as a digital enabler within the business, often taking complex systems and simplifying them to increase productivity and reduce operating costs. This echoes true for how she approached evolving MetService’s e-signature process for the better.

Prior to engaging with Docusign, MetService employed four separate e-signature tools across the Sales, Finance, HR and Procurement departments—and nobody knew who was using which tool. This was causing bottlenecks for documents and putting strain on each department.

“People were using different tools throughout the business. So there was no common tool in use and that was a problem in itself.” Joanne said. “We also didn’t need four tools with four sets of costs.”

Not only was having disparate e-signature tools creating unnecessary operating costs, it also led to a productivity drain as team members were disconnected due to a lack of document interoperability between departments.

When it came down to picking just one, Docusign eSignature emerged as the tool of choice for MetService.

Reflecting on the decision, Joanne said, “What I really wanted to do was talk to someone about the product, its capabilities, and pricing. All I could get was an online chat for the other product. With Docusign, I got to speak to a real person.” 

Augmenting existing workflows to drive productivity

On top of creating commonality within the organisation, a key benefit to having Docusign eSignature as MetService's single source of truth for documents was the templates feature. 

With templates, people didn’t need to reinvent their individual workflows to bring cohesion among departments. Rather, Docusign provides this as a layer on top, allowing people to draft a document how they want and then apply a template to automatically apply DocuSIgn fields to the document prior to distribution. 

“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 the Sales team who often need to send out letters of variation, the templates feature meant that they didn’t have to recreate each envelope from scratch. Moreover, for procurement, new supplier agreements can be easily personalised to suit each supplier. 

Similarly, the HR team is using templates to automatically convert onboarding documents such as IRD forms into Docusign fields, making completing documents seamless for new joiners.

Having a seamless digital solution also meant that MetService staff no longer needed to scan, print, and post documents, saving significant time and money.

For example, in the Finance department, the team handles the delegation of financial authority, which involves a hierarchy of approval by stakeholders, including the Divisional Manager, CFO and the CEO—all needed to approve the new manager’s expenditure limits for their cost centres. This process requires the signature of all relevant stakeholders, and with paper-based documents, it was a time-consuming process.

With the simplicity and intuitiveness of Docusign eSignature, one person in the Finance department reduced the usual turnaround time on a contract from an elapsed time of one month down to two days. “She couldn’t believe it,and to save that amount of time for a senior Finance person is a big deal, given they don’t have a lot of extra capacity,” Joanne said.

“Using the CC functionality, it allowed the final pdf copies to be downloaded and easily filed which makes record keeping a breeze,” Joanne added.

Frictionless security and confidentiality

The benefits don’t stop at productivity and cost savings either. Docusign’s single sign-on (SSO) capability, via Azure Active Directory, has helped to streamline user access, ensure confidentiality is upheld across authorised users, and uplift MetService’s overall document integrity. 

“When we were looking to consolidate our e-signature tools, having SSO was important. Those products without it were immediately ruled out,” said Joanne. “The SSO installation was an incredibly fast process and took under one hour with our SSO Docusign consultant. All we had to do was set up the SSO group and we were up and running. It blew me away.” It showed that having the right people at the right time leads to a fast turnaround.

The onboarding experience with Docusign was just that—simple. “Having a really good onboarding consultant just made everything easier. New concepts were shown and discussed with the benefit of understanding them and then for us to embrace.The whole interaction with Docusign has been very positive,” Joanne concluded.