How Monash Residential Services revolutionised its residential agreements process

Monash Residential Services (MRS) stands at the forefront of providing exceptional residential experiences to students at Monash University. MRS provides safe and supportive on-campus accommodation for more than 3,000 students across its 14 residential communities.

The team works tirelessly to ensure every resident feels at home from day one. MRS saw the opportunity to improve the student and staff experience during the accommodation offer process.

We sat down with Will Lower, Manager of Strategic Initiatives, and Sam Thijssen, Manager of Business Systems and Compliance, to hear how the MRS team contributed to these improvements.

The quest for efficiency

Each year, the MRS team issues thousands of accommodation offers to students. Prior to engaging Docusign, manual work was required to prepare and process residency agreements. 

“There was time and manual effort involved in preparing and distributing offers of accommodation for each type of accommodation,“ said Will.

“Applicants were required to print their agreements, sign the documents by hand, and upload the documents to our Resident Portal.”

Not only was this process inefficient for applicants, but the process required applicants to have access to a printer.

“When we received uploaded documents, manual checks were then required to ensure that the signature was valid and the residency agreement was legible and accurate,” Will added.

This involved additional processing steps to ensure everything was correct.

“Those steps, multiplied by many thousands, was a really significant commitment for applicants,” said Will. That was until the team decided to engage Docusign for its eSignature solution.

“Docusign has completely changed that process for us,” Will added.

A seamless integration

The implementation of Docusign eSignature was straightforward and intuitive. So much so that the MRS team set up the tool independently.

Most importantly, Docusign seamlessly integrated with MRS’s accommodation management system, StarRez—including the front-end Resident Portal which is powered by the StarRez PortalX platform. 

“We wanted to mimic the current residency agreements we sent in mail merge,” said Sam, commenting on the importance of providing a familiar experience for applicants. 

Custom fields within Docusign, coupled with the StarRez integration, allowed MRS to replicate the existing residency agreement format previously managed through mail merges, and embed this directly into PortalX.

Maintaining a familiar experience was important to MRS. “We wanted to change the technology, but from a resident and even from a staff point of view, they should still be familiar with what a residency agreement would look like. Docusign allowed us to do that,” said Sam.

This meant that students could accept or decline accommodation offers directly within the familiar system’s interface, eliminating the need for students to navigate to an external site. “From the user’s point of view, it was very seamless. Docusign is a part of that process now,” said Sam.

On top of this, each time an applicant logs into the Resident Portal and signs a residency agreement, the applicant is already authenticated—saving the admissions team countless hours in manual verification.

Measuring Success: A quantitative leap in student services

Following the implementation of Docusign eSignature, the processing time for offer acceptance was reduced by 25%—in many cases, acceptances were finalised the same day they were issued.

This added immediate value to the applicant experience.

Speaking to this, Sam commented, “For our admissions team, during that period they are under heavy demand. So, any time saved is a bonus.”

The transition was well-received by both staff and students, which translated into an outstanding adoption rate. “The process has been seamless for the staff and applicants,” said Will.

Pioneering the future of student accommodation experiences

MRS strives to create an exceptional student experience— from the student’s initial interaction with on-campus accommodation, throughout their entire stay, and even as they transition to other accommodation options.

The offer and acceptance process is just the beginning of a student's residential journey, and MRS are already thinking of ways to build upon the eSignature tool’s benefits.

“The Docusign implementation has been so successful for our standard residency agreements that we’re looking to expand the benefits to further processes,” said Will.