“Both our employees and customers are very enthusiastic about the digital signature. Every year, more than 12,000 documents are digitally signed with ValidSign within Accon avm”.
Accon avm is originally an agricultural cooperative. The accountancy firm was founded in 1917 by the parent company from Leeuwarden and quickly grew into a national, full-service consultancy and accountancy organization for SMEs. In 2017 Accon avm celebrated its 100th anniversary.
With approximately 1000 employees and more than 40 branches, Accon AVM is an accountancy firm of size. The organization has a large knowledge network in which location-independent working is central. This means that advisors are close anytime, anywhere. They like to come to the entrepreneur, digitally but certainly also on location.
Durability
Sustainability and innovation are of paramount importance and determine the success of Accon avm and its customers. Partly because of this, the organization chose ValidSign’s digital signature in 2016, as the first accounting firm. Documents no longer need to be printed and transported by post or courier. By greatly reducing printing, paper consumption fell by about 20% every year until 2020.
Easy and fast
ValidSign was broadly deployed within the organization immediately after its extradition to digitally accelerate various signing processes. Accon avm started digitally signing documents that need to be signed by the customer, because mainly these processes took a lot of time. Anita van Gelder, Director ict and facility at Accon avm says: “Several parties regularly have to sign, for example a partnership where there are several shareholders who are not all present at the same location at the same time. It could take weeks for documents such as declarations, agreements and financial statements to be signed. With validsign’s user-friendly solution, the document is completed within 15 minutes as a way of”.
High-quality services
In addition to making the organization more sustainable and accelerating various business processes, the digital signature also contributes to the high-quality services that the organization provides. “Customers regularly indicate that digital signing is so much easier than on paper. The customer no longer has to walk to the mailbox or wait for the other signatories to sign. She now receives all documents in a bundled email and the documents are available for inspection and download via the same link immediately after signing,” says van Gelder.
AFAS Connector
ValidSign is used for more than 90% of the processes where signing takes place. Every year, more than 12,000 documents are digitally signed with ValidSign within Accon avm. In order to make the signing process even more streamlined, Accon avm has been working with validsign’s AFAS connector since April 2021. The link allows users to submit documents for signing in AFAS. Any process that requires signing can be monitored from A to Z in the system. Van Gelder says: “By using ValidSign from AFAS CRM, we are taking the final step in our digitization process. The fact that I can select contacts in AFAS for each signature and signed documents are archived directly in the right place in AFAS is very useful”. Only one-sided signings are occasionally done the old-fashioned way. The organization strives to digitally sign these documents in the near future and to help persuade the last colleagues to sign digitally.