The client is a regional healthcare system delivering nationally recognized inpatient and outpatient care through its hospital and network of physician practices, urgent care centers, and imaging centers. Onboarding ran on paper, with no way to track forms as they moved from Human Resources to the Information Technology Department, and new staff members often waited up to 12 days before gaining full access to the hospital’s IT network and applications. i3solutions designed and delivered a paperless Workflow Automation System built on Microsoft SharePoint: electronic forms signed with legally binding IntelliSafe digital signatures, automatic routing to every required touch point, real-time visibility of each request’s status, and automated reminders for pending or overdue actions. The workflow automation behind it, and the systems integration that carries a new hire’s paperwork from Human Resources through to IT provisioning, changed the timeline: instead of taking up to an average of 12 days, new employees’ information is almost immediately uploaded and all necessary system access is fully accessible in a matter of days.
Transforming Onboarding with Workflow Automation
Case Study
Transforming Onboarding with
Workflow Automation
The Customer
And Their Challenge
The client, a regional healthcare system, delivers nationally recognized inpatient and outpatient care through its hospital and network of physician practices, urgent care centers, and imaging centers. Their manual, paper-based system for onboarding new hires proved slow, error-prone, and provided no way to track paperwork as it moved from Human Resources to the Information Technology Department. As a result, new staff members often waited up to 12 days before gaining full access to the hospital’s IT network and applications.
Recognizing that technology could address these inefficiencies, the hospital’s administrators sought an automated solution to streamline the onboarding process, reduce errors, and eliminate misplaced documents. They wanted a system that would replace paper forms with digital ones, provide legally binding electronic signatures, allow staff to track approvals and requests in real time, and decrease the time needed to provision new hires with network resources. By implementing such a solution, the hospital hoped to expedite and standardize the entire hiring process, allowing newly onboarded professionals to engage fully in their roles as quickly as possible.
The Solution
Paperless Workflow Automation System
Seeking to overcome the challenges of a paper-based onboarding process, hospital managers teamed up with i3solutions to reimagine their hiring procedures. After an in-depth strategic consultation, i3solutions designed and delivered a Workflow Automation System that eliminates time-consuming manual tasks and accelerates new hires’ access to critical IT resources. This streamlined, fully digital solution has dramatically enhanced the hospital’s overall onboarding experience.
At the core of the new workflow technology is an electronic form approved via electronic signatures, replacing outdated pen-and-paper methods. IntelliSafe provides a digital signature application that guarantees both the authenticity and originality of any file. Their IntelliSafe Vault addresses the hospital’s critical need for conducting completely electronic transactions and approvals, giving staff the ability to create, sign, and securely store legally binding, authoritative documents in a paperless environment. This seamless integration of digital signatures into the hospital’s processes ensures greater accuracy and reduces the likelihood of lost or incomplete paperwork.
Developed on Microsoft SharePoint, the Workflow Automation System further enhances efficiency by automatically routing digital forms to every required touch point, enabling electronic approval in a matter of seconds. Additionally, the system tracks requests throughout the entire process, giving administrators real-time visibility of each document’s status. Automated reminders are generated for those with pending tasks or overdue actions, ensuring that all parties are consistently informed and eliminating bottlenecks that previously caused lengthy delays.
By transforming a traditionally tedious, manual process into a fully automated one, the hospital empowers its employees to focus on their core responsibilities while speeding the time to productivity for new hires. This innovative system, has elevated the hospital’s onboarding approach to meet the high standards of care and efficiency that the hospital is known for, reinforcing the institution’s commitment to excellence in every aspect of patient care and healthcare administration.
Technologies
Used in the Solution
SharePoint serves as the core platform for automating workflows and routing digital forms, ensuring tasks are completed quickly and efficiently. By providing real-time visibility into each stage of the onboarding process, SharePoint enables administrators to track submissions, approvals, and reminders from a single, user-friendly interface.
IntelliSafe provides secure digital signatures that verify the authenticity and integrity of all electronic documents within the onboarding process. This enabled the hospital to confidently replace manual signatures with a legally binding, paperless system, reducing errors and expediting approvals.
Measurable Benefits
and Business Impact
Significantly Reduced
Onboarding Time
By replacing manual processes with digital workflows, the hospital cut the average onboarding cycle from nearly two weeks to just a few days. New hires can now receive full system access much faster, enabling them to start patient care and other responsibilities without delay.
Decreased Administrative
Overhead and Costs
Digital signatures and electronic tracking ensure each form is complete, valid, and secure, significantly reducing errors that often occurred with manual data entry. In turn, the hospital maintains higher standards of compliance and can easily audit approvals to meet regulatory requirements.
Enhanced Visibility and Efficiency Across
Departments
Thanks to SharePoint’s built-in tracking and reminders, employees and administrators have real-time insight into each form’s status. This transparency prevents bottlenecks, keeps everyone accountable, and expedites the entire onboarding process—leading to smoother collaboration between Human Resources, IT, and other departments.
Improved Decision-Making and
Accountability
The automation of form submissions and approvals dramatically lowered the need for paper, printing, and physical document handling. With real-time notifications and electronic signatures, the hospital reduced the resources spent on manual tasks and eliminated a substantial portion of its paper-related expenses.
Customer Says
The i3solutions team [was] able to transform our reactive processes into a more robust, proactive system – improving the process and saving us valuable time and resources. Instead of taking up to an average of 12 days, new employees’ information is almost immediately uploaded and all necessary system access is fully accessible in a matter of days. This enables new employees to be fully oriented and working on the first day of their employment, thereby improving productivity and increasing operational efficiencies.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long did a new hire wait for full system access before the automation?
New staff members often waited up to 12 days before gaining full access to the hospital’s IT network and applications. The onboarding process was manual and paper-based, and it gave nobody a way to track paperwork as it moved from Human Resources to the Information Technology Department.
How long does it take now?
Instead of taking up to an average of 12 days, new employees’ information is almost immediately uploaded and all necessary system access is fully accessible in a matter of days. That lets new employees be fully oriented and working on the first day of their employment.
What does the Workflow Automation System connect?
It is built on Microsoft SharePoint and routes digital forms automatically to every required touch point in the approval chain, from Human Resources through to the Information Technology Department that provisions network access. IntelliSafe and its IntelliSafe Vault provide the digital signatures, so staff create, sign, and securely store legally binding documents in a paperless environment, and SharePoint tracks each request and generates reminders for pending or overdue tasks.
Why does an onboarding delay matter this much in a hospital?
New hires cannot start patient care or other responsibilities until they have access to the IT network and applications those duties require. At the hospital that wait ran up to 12 days on the paper process; with digital workflows the hospital cut the average onboarding cycle from nearly two weeks to just a few days.
If your new hires wait days or weeks for system access while HR and IT trade tickets and paper forms, the delay usually sits in the handoffs rather than in any one department. A short conversation with the i3solutions team that built this onboarding workflow walks your current process, from signed offer through account provisioning, against what a fully digital and tracked version looks like at your size. You leave with a specific list of the handoffs worth automating first, what electronic signatures and approval routing involve, and the order the work would go in. That is also what you need if you are building the case internally. Start the conversation
New hires waiting on access are usually waiting on a handoff between departments that nobody owns end to end. A senior workflow architect will map how your onboarding actually moves between teams and where the waiting can be designed out of it.
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