The Yarra Ranges Council saves time and money while leading the charge in digital transformation

The Yarra Ranges in Victoria is a premier tourist destination, containing some of Victoria’s most breathtaking natural scenery and a thriving wine and microbrewing industry. Some of the country’s most celebrated vineyards including Domain Chandon, De Bortoli, and Yering Station are all found within the 2500 square kilometre diverse agricultural and urban landscape.

When it comes to providing services to such a large and diverse region, the Yarra Ranges Council prides itself on adopting progressive technology to seamlessly connect with its community. But how exactly can technology help the council transform to deliver better experiences for staff and constituents, save costs, and reduce its environmental impact?

That’s the question that Hyma Vulpala, Head of Digital, Data, and Smart Cities at Yarra Ranges Council was brought on board to answer in the council’s push towards digital.

We spoke with Hyma and the People and Culture and Procurement teams at the council to understand how technology has enabled them to work smarter and better service the community.

People and Culture

The People and Culture team at The Yarra Ranges Council look after over 850 full-time, part-time, casual, and contractor staff. Before implementing Docusign, paperwork would need to be printed, posted, chased, signed and stored. This process involved considerable financial and environmental costs and was at odds with the council’s mission to be one of the most progressive councils.

Switching from paper-based workflows to Docusign has meant that the team is now able to digitally prepare offer letters quickly, using customisable templates. Follow-up paperwork is also automated, meaning that candidates are sent new starter information immediately. Before Docusign this process used to take weeks, now it takes days.

“We have a small team and one of our biggest pain-points [before Docusign] was keeping on top of for each new employee. Since we’ve begun using Docusign we have been able to reduce the busywork and focus our attention elsewhere,” said Ish Kohli, HR Officer. “It means we can now focus on expanding our impact.”

Procurement

The Procurement team at the council prepares and manages more than 350 contracts a year and can sometimes be as long as 2,500 pages. Before Docusign, each one of those contracts needed to be prepared, printed, and couriered to all parties for signing. Any amendments would need to be made manually and then resent to all parties so the process could start again. This process could take weeks and cost a small fortune, both financially and to the environment.

“We were working on a contract that had a hard deadline. The parties that needed to sign were overseas and if we were using the old paper-based system, we just wouldn’t have been able to get that done and the total contract value would have been lost. The risk of not having a digital solution like Docusign in place is just too great.” explained Danielle Watts, Executive Officer, Strategic Procurement at Yarra Ranges Council.

Using Docusign the Procurement team can now easily prepare, act, and manage contracts. They’re also now able to be centrally accessed and Docusign acts as a ‘single source of truth’ so the team is able to know, with confidence that agreements are up-to-date and all parties are working to the same document.

A fruitful partnership

Docusign has been implemented across 11 of the 55 departments at the council and the team has already seen some remarkable results. Hyma’s initiative has saved the council approximately $171,000 per annum by eliminating paper-based workflows.

Located in such a pristine agricultural region, the Yarra Ranges Council is also passionate about protecting and preserving the planet and it has goals around reducing its environmental footprint. Using Docusign, the council has been able to conserve more than 75,000 litres of water, avert an average of 2,200 kilograms of carbon emissions and can easily track its ongoing impact with the Docusign Admin Dashboard.

For Hyma and her teammate Sri, some of the greatest results has been in the feedback they’ve received from senior stakeholders across the council.

“The feedback from staff and senior management has been amazing, especially how Docusign has saved so much time with approvals and workflows,” Sri, Digital Program Lead at Yarra Ranges Council.

If you’d like to discuss how Docusign can help your organisation on its digital transformation journey contact our sales team.