Contract management

Accuracy is Everything - Streamlining the Contract Signing Process at Bibby

Last updated:

June 2023

Reading time:

minutes

In the financial services industry, accuracy is everything. Without the right paper trail, the right proof, and accurate records of who agreed to what and when, projects get bogged down. Services grind to a halt. But technological solutions that increase this accuracy and speed up workflows can deliver significant financial results… as Bibby Leasing found.

The Client

Bibby Leasing is a member of Bibby Financial Services, the UK’s leading independent invoice finance specialist. Bibby’s brand is built on trust - trust built by funding over 7,000 businesses in more than 300 industry sectors. Trust built by 30 years of expertise.

To maintain this trust and their reputation, introducing any new system has to make life easier for those 7,000 businesses. So, it was crucial to Bibby Leasing - and the reputation of Bibby as a whole - that their new e-signature function too worked as advertised.

The Challenge

Bibby companies are key market players and leaders in their field. But leading a competitive industry needs constant refinement. Processes need to be advanced, innovated and enhanced to speed up workflows and reduce decision times.

That’s why Bibby Financial Services didn’t just need to change the way that they handled contracts. They needed to take it to the next level.

One enhancement they needed to make to stay ahead of the competition was an accurate, reliable e-signature solution, as Operations Manager Carl Daufer explains:

"We already had contracts in a digital format. We knew we needed to offer clients the facility to sign official documents digitally."

The financial services market demands responsive products and services so that clients always receive a prompt response. And a natural way of speeding up that response time was with the addition of digital contract signing.

Transition had already developed the company’s web-based portal - Bibby Tracker - and have supported it since 2014. Bibby Tracker has streamlined the company’s underwriting process with detailed analysis of proposals by pulling information from Equifax credit, asset, proposal and exposure data. Adding an e-signature functionality would bring the whole contract process into a full digital circle and simplify workflows without harming accuracy.

Syncing up new and existing technology always requires smooth and efficient cooperation. That cooperation existed between Bibby and Transition, but we’d need to bring a third party into the mix.

The Solution

Bibby would need to make use of Adobe technology. Because user and customer trust is key to the way they work, they’d need a recognised, accepted, industry-standard solution. Adobe Sign is that solution.

Bibby Leasing was chosen as a pilot scheme for rolling this technology out across the whole company, and Transition was an obvious choice to work closely alongside Carl and his team to integrate and test the e-signature system. Carl supervised the same process for the Bibby Tracker as the project manager and business analyst in the development and has a track record of delivering complex projects successfully.

Because we’d collaborated with Carl before developing and implementing the Bibby Tracker, we were able to make use of our insight and understanding of Bibby’s business to get straight to work addressing the key issues Carl raised:

“We had to make the process faster, more efficient, and more accurate. The new system had to be easy onboarding for the broker and intermediary alike,” Carl continues, “as well as having to provide a genuine benefit to the client.”

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The value of a reliable partner

Transition's experience is rooted in building complex, industry-specific systems for finance quotation and underwriting processes. And because our team had worked with Carl and his team before, we could form a close-knit unit organically:

“We chose Transition to carry out the work. They developed Bibby Tracker and this ensures the new facility would integrate well into our existing systems.”

Transition’s speed and flexibility guaranteed timely implementation of the new application. Our transparency allowed Bibby to have an overview of the project’s costs and timescales well in advance.

‍“This meant that we could agree on the final price and deadlines early in the development process,” Carl recalls.

The Outcome

Using our experience and working closely with the Bibby Leasing team, we were able to fully integrate Adobe Sign and test it with Carl’s workflows and clients. After a pilot scheme with Bibby Leasing in 2016, the e-signature solution has been successfully implemented across the whole Bibby Financial Services group.

And results have been impressive, both in terms of money made AND time saved, as Carl concludes:

“The outcomes have created positive changes in the company, both financially and from the business operations side.”

Accurate paperwork, efficient workflows, and entirely digital contract processing allows Bibby Financial Services to get documents signed quickly and correctly, meet client needs for flexibility, and improve their own efficiency.