Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council forges a prosperous future with Adobe Acrobat Sign
As one of the birth places of the Industrial Revolution for its iron, coal, and limestone industries in the 19th century, the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley has a long history of supporting the UK’s innovation and economic growth. Today the service sector dominates the economy. With more than 300,000 residents, the borough is home to one of the UK’s largest shopping centres and visitor attractions including local museums and 12th century priory ruins. Tourists also enjoy the Dudley Castle and Zoo, which includes an impressive collection of endangered species and the world’s largest collection of modernist Tecton buildings.
Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Dudley MBC) is the borough’s local authority for an area comprising of four towns and 38 square miles located to the South of Wolverhampton and west of Birmingham. Dudley MBC oversees hundreds of services for residents and businesses that help make the borough a desirable place to live, work, and visit.
To deliver faster, more efficient services, the organisation’s Digital and Customer Services team is expanding its implementation of Adobe Acrobat Sign. The Adobe electronic signature solution includes automated document routing to help key departments across Dudley MBC, including those responsible for social housing and related services, save over £43,000 and 2,500 hours annually.
Shorter vacancy turnarounds
Dudley MBC oversees more than 21,000 council residential properties. As in other parts of the UK, demand for council housing exceeds supply, so expediting the signing of new leases is a priority. By minimizing vacancy periods between tenants, the council makes the best use of resources and furthers its mission to provide safe and affordable housing.
In the past, signing hard copies of property packages, which can include tenancy agreements and direct debit mandate forms, would often take a week and sometimes up to three weeks depending on the availability of people signing the documents, postal service timing, and office opening schedules. The COVID-19 pandemic further complicated timelines. By introducing Acrobat Sign, Dudley MBC now completes new property packages within days.
“With the time savings we are bringing in more funds,” says Ken Tour, IT business partner, Dudley MBC. “When properties are signed for within a day or two, we avoid losing a week's worth of rental income or more.”
Tenants and staff signing contracts appreciate the convenience of being able to e-sign agreements on a mobile device via Acrobat Sign. According to Cheryl Scriven, estate & tenancy management team manager, Dudley MBC, “A lot of people have a smartphone. Everybody reacts to a ping alert. We're finding some people respond almost instantly when they receive a property agreement, accelerating the process so new tenants can move in more quickly.”
Cheryl Scriven adds, “Sometimes people leave a tenancy and for one reason or another do not sign a notice to terminate. We can speak to them by phone and conveniently send them the notice to sign there and then. This saves them building up a debt and means we can get the property back into use more quickly.”
In addition, Acrobat Sign helps Dudley MBC comply with financial regulations around unnecessarily keeping or distributing sensitive information. For example, using the platform’s automated workflows direct debit mandate forms that are attached to some tenancy agreements can be routed directly to the appropriate finance staff only, protecting tenant banking data and ensuring data retention rules within Acrobat Sign have been set allowing Dudley MBC to be GDPR compliant.
Dudley Castle.
Increasing productivity wins recognition
Acrobat Sign has also been introduced to Dudley MBC’s Housing Maintenance team, which employs some 290 drivers at any point in time. The drivers must have medical declaration documentation on file certifying their fitness to drive. In the past, due to the enormity of effort required, this was only renewed once per year.
According to Greg Jewkes, deputy environmental & waste manager for housing maintenance, Dudley MBC, housing operatives often needed to leave a job site for 90 minutes to travel to headquarters, complete the application, then travel back. This amounted to 435 hours of downtime, or nearly 12 full weeks, for documentation the department wants to renew for each worker twice a year to comply with best practices.
“With Acrobat Sign, our total processing time is down from six months to four weeks,” says Greg Jewkes. “The improvement in productivity is immense on all levels, from minimizing disruptions for our operatives to helping our office staff manage the process without having to physically handle a lot of paperwork. The e- signature solution helps reinforce a more positive and professional experience for employees, boosting their job satisfaction.”
The Send in Bulk feature of Acrobat Sign makes it easy for Dudley MBC office staff to send the required forms to all 290 drivers, while only clicking the send button once. Administrative staff can now audit the process online and easily set up automatic reminders for signatories when requests for e-signature are not completed by a certain date. Inappropriate or incomplete responses are avoided thanks to guardrails built into the workflow and the form templates.
With its new Acrobat Sign processes now taking place twice yearly in a seamless fashion, the department has processed nearly 1,500 driver declarations so far. As well, Dudley MBC won Van Excellence accreditation by Logistics UK, also known as the country’s Freight Transport Association, two years in a row.
Forging ahead
Housing Maintenance is also looking to use Acrobat Sign to streamline and improve the Contractual Invoices and Valuations signing process to improve control and accountability in this area.
Dudley MBC’s Digital and Customer Services team appreciates how easy it is to deploy the application to new people using the available sync between Acrobat Sign and Microsoft Active Directory. “It’s a simple Active Directory tick and instantly a member of staff gets access,” remarks Ken Tour.
In the near future, Ken Tour is looking to integrate Acrobat Sign with Microsoft 365, as well as Microsoft Power Automate capabilities to further streamline workflows. For example, workers will be able to send documents for e-signature using Acrobat Sign without leaving the Microsoft Word document they might use to update a form. Office staff will be able to receive e-signature completion notifications from within Microsoft Teams.
Other Dudley MBC departments interested in or already starting to use the platform include regeneration and enterprises, adult and community learning, and procurement. “The word’s getting out across the organisation about the data quality and workflow advantages of Adobe Acrobat Sign,” says Ken Tour. “Our Business Service areas are engaging with us to further exploit and implement the product after they’ve been made aware that Acrobat Sign can be easily used in their services.”