Watertight waivers: Why you should automate the agreement moments that matter most

You only need to watch a season or two of any TV law drama to know that lawyers are quick to pounce on any errors or omissions from important documents like waivers, consent forms and terms of service. Such documents, which form a vital step in many customer journeys, exist to provide protections to all parties involved in the transaction. It’s critical to get them right.

If you feel like your messy, paper-based or (gasp!) handwritten systems for collecting consent or obtaining waivers leaves a little to be desired, then read on. We’re going to show you how automation and digitisation will not only deliver a great customer experience, but will also help you save time and mitigate risk.

To see how impactful the digitisation of documents like waivers can be, let’s use a fictional healthcare company as an example. Acme Health has clinics across the country, and deals with thousands of patients a day. Before any treatment can proceed, patients need to sign a detailed waiver form which includes various clauses that align with the latest compliance regulations and the specific treatments being delivered.

Instead of manually cobbling together the right clauses for the specific treatments, printing out these forms for patients to sign, and then filing them away in an over-stuffed filing cabinet, Acme Health has centralised, digitised and automated the process of creating, signing and managing these waivers. 

Upon arrival at a clinic, a patient’s waiver form is automatically generated based on the treatment being provided. The waiver pops up on an iPad. The patient must scroll through the entire document before a ‘sign’ button becomes active, after which they can electronically sign the document. If they need to fill out personal information like date of birth or next of kin information, in-built validation rules help ensure data accuracy. Once electronically signed, a timestamp is applied and the waiver is securely stored in the cloud, giving Acme Health the peace of mind that the waiver is complete, accurate and legally robust.

Behind the scenes, whenever the health department or any other regulatory body issues a new rule or requirement that impacts Acme Health’s waivers, they only have to update the digital template once to know that all future waivers will reflect the correct, up-to-date information. 

Automation of important agreements is easy

While the example above is fictional, it’s more than possible for any organisation to set up a similar system for its own waivers. Docusign Maestro, a key feature of Docusign Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM), automates the process of setting up and rolling out agreement workflows, including integration with third-party systems you already use. 

Using Docusign Maestro, you can easily build and deploy customised workflows that automate and accelerate the agreement process. A simple workflow builder helps you map out the key steps in the agreement process, using basic logic to create workflow “branches” that can adapt to different events. No coding skills are needed, which means that anyone in your team can set up or amend a key form without waiting for tech resources to become available. 

As well as freeing up your team’s time to focus on more impactful work, Docusign Maestro also makes it easy to centrally manage and update important clauses in your forms, which in turn helps mitigate risk. 

The forms you create using Docusign Maestro can be made available to your customers via Docusign Web Forms, an easy-to-use, interactive experience for form-filling and signing. You can set things up so key fields — like name, address details, and more — are pre-populated with validated information from your CRM. You can also apply conditional logic to dynamically adapt form fields, only showing the customer the fields they need to complete. It all helps to streamline the process for customers, saving time and removing any friction from the process.