Digital Signatures Enhance SharePoint Deployment for CPI

When a company's business processes aren't optimal, often times employees never realize it. When it happens at an inspection firm and engineering certification provider like CPI, it's hard for employees not to know. It didn't take Carsten Peyk long to see CPI's workflow wasn't performing optimally. Carsten Peyk, IT Manager at CPI, was intimately familiar with the capabilities the organization's Microsoft SharePoint document management solution enabled in terms of electronic document management and collaboration. However, significant amounts of paper were still making their way back into the workflow whenever a signature approval was required, inhibiting the organization's ability to leverage the full benefits of an electronic workflow. So as the organization's IT Manager, and an engineer to boot, Carsten decided to redesign the workflow. 

Carsten began with a review of the organization's workflow, allowing him to pinpoint the specific points that paper was once again becoming an issue. With the essence of CPI's business revolving around the inspection of engineering work and other quality-related technical activities (e.g., qualification of welders), the organization's engineers regularly travel to customer locations in order to perform inspections and produce reports that require signature authorizations. Despite having Microsoft SharePoint in place to manage their documentation, Carsten's analysis revealed that the lack of an integrated electronic signing capability forced CPI's employees to reintroduce paper into the workflow in order to manually sign the reports they created. This reality was preventing the organization from reaping the benefits of a completely electronic workflow - expedited business and reduced costs.

Carsten established that the organization's employees signed an average of two documents a day and the costs per document came to about $6. Further review determined that each signer costs the organization roughly $3,000 (500 signatures per signer multiplied by $6 per document) a year in printing, routing, scanning, archiving and replacing the odd lost document.

"The reintroduction of paper into our workflow was a major hindrance in our ability to enjoy the full benefits of our investment in Microsoft SharePoint," said Carsten. "I quickly understood that something as simple as integrating a signing solution with our pre-existing document management system would immediately rectify the issues, saving us time and money, and increasing the services we could provide to our customers."

Once Carsten had decided to integrate a signing solution, he compiled a list of the specifications the organization required of an electronic signature solution. The most essential aspect of any electronic signing solution CPI deployed was the need for it to seamlessly integrate with their existing Microsoft SharePoint document management solution. Additionally, because CPI provides their customers with the reports that the engineers file, the electronic signature solution had to be easily verifiable, and not require recipients to download proprietary software or utilize plug-ins in order to verify signatures.

Carsten was aware of the general business benefits of standards-based digital signature technology and used that as a starting point for his research into potential business solutions. Once Carsten found CoSign, a standards-based digital signature solution with Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)  underpinnings specifically designed for integration with Microsoft SharePoint, he knew he was on to something. Due to CoSign's out-of-the-box integration with SharePoint and the reality that CPI's customers could easily verify the content integrity and signatures that CPI's engineers placed on their reports, Carsten decided it was the ideal solution for the organization's workflow issues.

With Carsten's decision to deploy CoSign for SharePoint, CPI was immediately able to eliminate the expenses associated with 30 employees signing paper-based documents ($3,000 in paper-related costs annually per signer) saving approximately $90,000 in their first year alone. In less than two months of using CoSign for SharePoint, CPI had already returned its investment.

With the CoSign with SharePoint digital signature solution, CPI's engineers can digitally sign and file the reports they create for customers onsite, via a laptop and a wireless Internet connection. The engineers prepare the report in Microsoft Word format, convert it to PDF, digitally sign the report with CoSign, and upload the file to SharePoint. The report is simultaneously published on CPI’s Customer Portal, allowing customers to easily download and review their documentation.

"CoSign with SharePoint has changed the way we've done business," said Hans Christansen, CEO of CPI. "It has saved us money and significantly improved our customer service."

Utilizing CoSign has also enabled CPI to maintain a fully automated workflow, realizing the full capability of their Microsoft SharePoint document management. Carsten may be an engineer, but by using CoSign digital signatures he would have been able to design a workflow that maximizes CPI's paperless investment in Microsoft SharePoint even without understanding the physics behind Nuclear Reaction Spectrometry.

By implementing CoSign, Carsten was able to re-optimize CPI's workflow and maximize the organization's investment in Microsoft SharePoint without once having to wear a hard hat or use a graphing calculator. And although he didn't need to wear one, there were a couple of times during the deployment Carsten donned the hard hat just to be clear that some major improvements were going on.

[1] The PKI technology in a digital signature is used to establish that the signatory is indeed responsible for the signature in the message and that the signer approves the content of the document. PKI technology is well established, with over 30 years of industry use, and is accepted as the only standard method capable of guaranteeing an electronic document has not been altered. Any changes made to the document after it is signed invalidate the digital signature, thereby protecting against forgery, ensuring non-repudiation, and securing the documentation.

C&P Inspection A/S (CPI) is an inspection and quality assurance company. The main activities of the company revolves around non-destructive testing, certification of welders and welding procedure and technical quality assurance. For further information please visit the CPI website at http://www.cpi.nu.

ARX (Algorithmic Research) is a global provider of cost-efficient digital signature solutions for industries such as life sciences, healthcare, government, engineering, and energy. ARX engineers and scientists have more than 20 years of experience in security and standard digital signature applications. ARX helps businesses secure, streamline, and scale their processes and transactions with the proper controls required by legislation, regulation, and industry best practices. Learn more about us.