Bamford Contract Services Experience Time-savings of Six Hours A Week When Switching to Digital Forms

Challenge

Paper-based contracts caused delays in completing business agreements; need for manual data transfer to RDB ProNet.

Solution

Secured Signing’s RDB integration for digitally capturing signatures and automatically adding data to RDB database.

Results

Time-savings of six hours; agreements finalised immediately and high-quality, error-free data automatically pulled through to RDB.

Background

Founded in 1989, Bamford Contract Services knew if they wanted to thrive, they needed to keep pace with changes in recruitment. The business landscape looked very different to what it did decades ago: new technologies, regulations, and market trends.

But as Bamford Contract Services moved into the digital age, it realised a reliance on paper-based contracts posed a business risk.

This way of collecting and managing documents was fraught with problems, explained Steve Berry, Bamford Contract Services founder and Managing Director.

The firm would prepare agreements for new clients, the businesses that trusted Bamford to find qualified candidates.

Berry said forms were sent by email:

“The biggest problem was getting signatures at all…(they) were not coming back.”

Then it was up to the team of recruiters to get the documents signed and returned.

“Chasing was done manually.”

Sometimes, said Berry, the signed agreements were not always returned in a timely manner.

“Whilst terms are always agreed verbally and the details fully documented before any work is commenced, the business was nevertheless put at unnecessary risk due to not having signed terms in place on day one so possibly hindering any potential formal debt collection proceedings in the future.”

The process involved manual data entry, with recruiters taking the information from the forms and adding to the RDB database.

When the company took a close look at the situation, they knew something had to change.

Bamford Contract Services had, over 30 years, built a reputation as one of the most ethical and reliable firms in the local recruitment industry. Now the company wanted to do more to protect their sustainability and client relationships. They wanted to use technology to advance their business.

That’s when they started exploring digital signatures.

Solution

Bamford Contract Services tried Secured Signing’s RDB plugin. The deep integration means the team accesses Secured Signing from within RDB.

Now the Bamford Contract Services teams sends agreements to clients digitally, said Berry.

“Making the form available to be signed almost instantly, on mobiles in particular, without needing printing (or) scanning meant there was a much higher return rate.”

Recruiters no longer need to do any manual follow-ups. The progress of documents is automatically tracked. Recruiters receive notifications when documents are complete and alerts when forms have not been signed.

When clients complete the forms, the data is automatically added to the RDB CRM. This eliminates human error, ensuring that the right data is captured every time.

“High-quality data (was) captured with no administration by users,” said Berry.

Secured Signing uses Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to secure documents. PKI is the most secure digital signing technology, the only method that offers true protection against forgeries. These types of digital signatures are legally binding in countries across the world. All Bamford Contract Service’s documents are encrypted and stored online.

Bamford Contract Services has the assurance that it has valid business agreements in place.

With these kinds of results, Bamford Contact soon started using Secured Signing for other business processes, like Form Direct which allowed online form signing for candidate application forms.

“Secured Signing is now used a lot more than the original purpose it was bought for. The HTML forms that were custom designed have been well adopted and feedback from the staff and users is very positive.”

Results

Almost immediately, Bamford Contract Services was saving up to six hours per week, said Berry.

It’s now much easier to collect and manage agreements.

“(There was) much quicker return of documents.”

Secured Signing helped Bamford Contract Services achieve a “massive time and cost” savings in administration.

“This probably saves them 4 to 6 hours per week.”

But, for Berry, the positives extend beyond time-savings.

“There was a huge improvement in the collection of accurate bank details, reducing payroll queries as a result.”

Recruiters are freed up to focus on the most important business priorities, like building relationships.

“Life is so much easier for all their consultants now. Each of their applicant forms used to take 20 minutes to process. Now it is almost instantaneous.”

Compliance isn’t a burden, it’s built-in to the Secured Signing system, said Berry.

“In the midst of a client audit recently, Bamfords were able to demonstrate a highly professional, and quick, process to gather compliance information. This helped greatly to achieve a pass for the audit.”

Gal Thompson, Secured Signing’s CEO, said recruitment firms had been among the first to see the business benefit of digital signatures.

“More recruitment companies like Bamford Contract Services use digital signatures to simplify the contracts process. Through Secured Signing’s RDB integration, recruitment teams no longer need to spend time chasing signatures or manually entering data. We’ve been excited to see how our clients are cutting down on admin, turning more of their focus to important business areas.”