Associated Bank Delights Customers with DocuSign, Achieves

CASE STUDY, Associated Bank
Associated Bank Delights Customers with
DocuSign, Achieves Bottom Line Results
Better Close Rates, Lower Costs, and Increased Efficiency Are All
Achieved with DocuSign’s Digital Transaction Management (DTM)
Company’s Top Objectives
Associated Bank is systematically replacing a portion of its paper-based
processes with DocuSign Digital Transaction Management (DTM),
improving efficiency for employees and customers alike. By removing
many paper-based functions from the online account opening process,
Associated Bank has reduced the rate of customer abandonments.
Better close rates, lower costs, and increased efficiency are enabling
the bank to quickly recover its investment in DocuSign while providing
a better client experience for competitive advantage.
Challenge
Associated Bank provides retail and commercial banking, commercial
real estate lending, private client, and specialized financial services
from its headquarters in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The bank has $27
billion in assets, 239 branches, and approximately 4,300 employees.
Associated utilizes many documents that require wet ink signatures
from customers. Until recently all of the bank’s processes were
manual and paper-based, which led to substantial waiting time
for all involved as well as unnecessary costs, errors, and general
inefficiency.
Top Benefits Achieved
Unlocked data, sped up processes, and reduced abandonment rate
Increased efficiency and improved customer satisfaction
Gained sustainable competitive advantage
“These days, for example, we get a lot of customers using the
Internet to open new accounts from home,” explained Candice
Ollila, a business analyst for Associated Bank. “The process we
provided them was speedy up to the point where they had to print
out their signature cards, sign them, and deliver them in person
or put them in the mail to us. Well, you can bet that anyone who
chooses the online route for opening an account wants to see
automation throughout the process – instead of having to print,
mail, and wait. Sure enough we had a lot of abandonment from
people who started the process but didn’t follow through.”
The Resolution
In order to provide better customer service and gain the
competitive advantage that comes with it, Associated Bank
looked into eSignature, inviting several vendors to present and
demonstrate their solutions. “DocuSign’s Digital Transaction
Management platform really stood out,” reported Ollila. “We
were impressed by DocuSign’s professionalism, its reputation for
excellence as The Global Standard, and the ease of use and
functionality of the product.”
The bank began the deployment by integrating its account
opening software as a front end to DocuSign and its enterprise
document management system as a back end. Both integrations
went smoothly and without issues. Then, one by one, Associated
developed new and improved processes.
The first was the retail online process for opening joint ownership
accounts. The new DocuSign process equips secondary signers to
sign their signature cards and W-9 forms electronically, saving the
aggravation of printing, signing, and mailing the documents while
automating their incorporation into the content management
system. “DocuSign significantly improves the process when a
primary and a joint apply for a deposit account online – especially
when they aren’t in the same location,” said Justin Chapman,
digital solutions manager for Associated Bank. “As a result we
have gained major efficiencies in the time it takes to open a joint
account online and have made the application process paperless.”
Next, the bank used DocuSign DTM to streamline signature exchange
with its correspondent banks during their annual certification process.
DocuSign eliminated unnecessary steps; automated tracking,
auditing, and reporting; and generally made the process more
efficient, accurate, and repeatable.
The bank also streamlined its process for executing third
party contracts, providing a single point of facilitation, by
implementing DocuSign.
We adopted DocuSign to improve
our efficiency and increase customer
satisfaction, and I’m pleased to say
we’ve been very successful on both
counts.“
Candice Ollila,
Business Analyst
The Key Benefits
Most recently the bank used DocuSign DTM to automate its
internal process for signing off on the retirement of software
that the bank no longer needs. DocuSign ensures that all the
people involved in the process have fulfilled their obligations.
Now that this project has entered production, Associated Bank
is turning its attention to a succession of upcoming projects for
using DocuSign in important new ways.
“There is no question that with DocuSign we have saved costs,
reduced our abandonment rate, sped up our processes, increased
customer satisfaction, and improved tracking and measurement,”
said Ollila in conclusion. “Unfortunately we can’t quantify any of
these benefits because measuring and tabulating metrics was
just too hard in the past. But now, with DocuSign, it’s automatic.
DocuSign has unlocked our data. That’s a big benefit right there.”
Connect with us:
DocuSign, Inc. (DocuSign®), The Global Standard for Digital Transaction Management ® helps
organizations achieve their digital transformations for dramatic ROI, increased security and
compliance, and better experiences for customers, partners, suppliers and employees. DocuSign
automates manual, paper-based processes with the only open, independent, standards-based
DTM platform for managing all aspects of documented business transactions. DocuSign empowers
anyone to transact anything, anytime, anywhere, on any device securely.
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