Case Study: American Lung Association of New England

Accelerating Procurement Processes with Electronic Signatures

Company Overview

Founded in 1904 to fight tuberculosis, the American Lung Association is the oldest voluntary health organization in the United States. Their mission is to prevent lung disease and promote lung health. As a chapter of the American Lung Association, the American Lung Association of New England (ALANE) covers six states in the northeast. Recently, and in keeping with the association’s mission, they launched a green “own your air” campaign.

Workflow Challenge

ALANE processes approximately 100-150 purchase orders each week. Their paper-based system was a bottle-necked system that resulted in lengthy approval cycles – sometimes up to 2-3 weeks — which often caused late vendor payments and penalties. To remedy the situation, they implemented an online approval system. However, the system was cumbersome to use and did not match their existing procurement processes – there were no alerts, it was not particularly user friendly, and remote users could not access the system.

EchoSign Solution

“I was searching online for an easy to use online approval system and came across EchoSign”, said Cathie Arnold, Vice President, Finance & Operations, American Lung Association New England. “As a proponent of clean, healthy air, it just made sense for us to leverage an electronic signature solution to manage our procurement process. EchoSign has become part of our daily approval cycle in finance.” ALANE implemented EchoSign with one online training session of 8-10 people. Those attendees then trained others in their departments, and now there are over 50 EchoSign users ranging from administrative assistants to VP level users.

Results

EchoSign fits seamlessly with the ALANE procurement process.  Purchase orders are approved and processed directly from the user’s email, and sent to a vendor in minutes. In addition, approvers can sign orders remotely so the process runs smoothly even when approvers are offsite -- “Our CEO travels all over New England and now he approves purchase orders from his hotel room.”  ALANE is subject to regular audits, and contracts signed with EchoSign’s electronic signatures are accepted and easily reviewed during the audit process.  “Even our auditors are moving to a paperless system and they were intrigued when we showed them EchoSign.”  Since EchoSign has been successfully used in finance, ALANE is planning to use EchoSign in HR to streamline the employee on-boarding process.

We all love EchoSign, especially our Accounts Payable department. We’re always looking for additional ways to use EchoSign and we are excited to introduce EchoSign to other regional chapters of the American Lung Association.

— Cathie Arnold, Vice President, Finance & Operations, American Lung Association New England