February 23, 2022
by Lawrence Esquibel
The New Mexico Department of Information Technology (DoIT) began a DocuSign project in 2019. Representatives from several state agencies worked to move from the submission of physical documents to digital documents. The Educational Retirement Board joined the DoIT project for several reasons:
- The high number of documents we process annually.
- The high rejection rate of documents that were submitted incorrectly.
- The time required to process documents successfully due to the high rejection rate.
- Due to the evolving COVID -19 situation in early 2020, we began to plan for the possibility of providing services remotely.
- Implementing DocuSign’s e-signature for a handful of our most common retirement forms allowed us to keep our members and our staff safe while submitting these documents during the first two years of the pandemic.
Before ERB implemented DocuSign a Retirement Application could take up to two weeks to get from the member to the employer and then back to ERB. Nicole Jaramillo ERB’s Business Analyst and DocuSign Implementation Leader explains that this process has now been reduced to hours versus weeks.
Since the launch of DocuSign, the forms rejection rate has drastically decreased. DocuSign sign also makes the process of filling out and completing forms more efficient for both parties.
— Nicole Jaramillo, Business Analyst and DocuSign Implementation Leader.
E-Notary and what’s next for ERB
ERB is one of the state’s leaders in the adoption and advancement of the DocuSign project. It has allowed us to meet the needs of our members in a year witnessing a 40% increase in retirements.
In the 2021 legislative session, an e-notary bill was passed making e-notary services legal within NM. We are currently working to implement e-Notary for a handful of forms to increase our services to our members.
By implementing E-notary ERB will have the ability to launch additional forms that require a notary such as the refund application. This is a high volume form and with the application being received via DocuSign the processing time and reject rate will help the refunds department greatly. Added Nicole Jaramillo.
“DocuSign provides a flexible, fast and secure way for members and LAU’s to submit forms.
I look forward to the utilization of E-notary, and the addition of more NMERB forms to DocuSign that currently require a notary.“
— Jennifer Vigil, Retirement Specialist Supervisor