Burglandbouw is a large Dutch construction company in Dodewaard, Nijmegen. It offers a wide range of construction projects. The organisation is specialised in inner-city building, utility construction, commercial real estate, housing, healthcare and educational institutions. The core business of the construction company is the preparation and direction of the various construction projects in which sustainability plays an important role. Every year, approxamately 40 projects are run across the country in which the 60 employees stand for decisiveness, commitment and reliability. Document signing is always a struggle, so they chose to sign from any location with the digital signature of ValidSign.
In 2015, the organization realized that it was working with a number of cumbersome signing processes. Several processes could be optimized by a digital signature. From a legal point of view, the possibility of actually regulating the digital signature within Burgland agriculture did not yet exist. Vincent van der Dussen, Controller at Burglandbouw: “We have been working with the document management system DigiOffice for a few years, It one of the solutions of the IDB group. When they told us about ValidSign, we immediately got excited.” Burglandbouw has been using ValidSign since January 2019 and process acceleration was the primary reason for aring the digital signature.
Process acceleration and comfort
A construction project involves many contractual commitments. Several parties work closely together to bring a project to a successful conclusion. Both customers and their own employees are often not in the same place, wherefore a document previously had to be drawn up, printed out, signed, scanned and sent by mail or mail to the next signer. This process repeated itself until the contract was final. The signing process could take several weeks. Van der Dussen: “With the digital signature, contracts are often closed the same day since even a signer on location immediately receives a signing request on his phone or iPad and signs from 200 km away.” Fewer actions are needed to get documents signed. Therefore employees not only consume less paper but have more time left and can focus on other activities as well.
Integration with document management system
ValidSign’s digital signature solution was chosen at the time to ensure the usability of the solution and the existing integration with the DigiOffice document management system. Due to the integration, documents are sent out from DigiOffice, and archived afterwards without having to leave DigiOffice. “This is a nicely streamlined process that offers stability and always works properly”, says van der Dussen.
Insightful
For larger construction companies, guarding contracts and the associated signatures is timeconsuming. At the moment ValidSign is used intensively. The entire purchasing department uses the solution to sign purchase contracts and project agreements. “It is fantastic that documents as purchase conditions or safety rules can be added to the transaction without having to be signed,” says van der Dussen. In order not to lose sight of the signing requests, ValidSign provides a dashboard within the signing platform with an overview of all transactions. The ValidSign dashboard gives an overview of the number of documents sent and (not yet) signed. “When a signing is delayed, one of our employees sends a reminder to the signers,” says van der Dussen.
Future with ValidSign
Digital signing cannot be ignored for the future within Burglandbouw. The Purchasing Department indicates that ValidSign is a user-friendly solution that they started to use independently immediately after implementation. According to van der Dussen, the digital signature could also be used for other processes. The signing of for instance employment contracts is still done on paper, which can be very time consuming. “I am convinced that we will use ValidSign for more and more processes until the entire organization is finally digitized,” says van der Dussen .