Case study: Ecovis – Digital collaboration between law firm and client

Ecovis is a consultancy firm with over 100 offices across Germany, supporting medium-sized businesses in a variety of sectors. To safeguard and promote the long-term economic success of its clients, Ecovis brings together the national and international specialist and sector-specific expertise of all its tax advisers, auditors, solicitors and management consultants. Digitalisation is a clear priority in this regard. Ecovis is continuously working to efficiently digitise service and practice processes in order to expand and improve paperless collaboration with clients.

As a first step, Ecovis introduced the DATEV DMS document management system. The firm group then sought a solution that would allow the relevant documents to be signed in an eIDAS-compliant manner without any media discontinuity, and subsequently integrated and stored seamlessly within digital processes.

Ecovis found what it was looking for in DIGISign. In May 2019, the firm group began piloting the solution in a number of offices, thereby optimally integrating the tool into their processes. The rollout for Ecovis Germany then began in autumn 2019. Feedback from clients and firm staff has already been extremely positive, so the use of the system will be expanded further.

“In the past, the secretariat would prepare documents, print them out in duplicate and hand them over to the tax adviser in a signature folder. The tax adviser would then sign both copies together with the client. The client kept one original, whilst the second was scanned by the secretariat, stored digitally and also kept physically in a folder. A process that took time and manpower,” says Thomas Schnellhammer, head of the Ecovis office in Passau, describing the signing process prior to the introduction of electronic signatures with DIGISign.

DIGISign enables clients and firm staff to sign documents electronically – meaning they no longer need to be printed, scanned and filed. The PDF document to be signed is marked in DATEV DMS, signed using a signature pad and automatically archived in an audit-proof manner for the client. In this video, you can find out exactly how the advanced electronic signature with DIGISign works and what the benefits are for which firms.

“There is no longer any need to print out documents for analogue signatures, file them on paper, or subsequently scan the signed documents for the digital client file. The client receives the signed document directly in electronic form without any change in medium. I can definitely recommend DIGISign,” summarises Thomas Schnellhammer.