Fighting AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria

Every year, governments, private philanthropic foundations, and committed individuals worldwide band together to fight diseases through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The Global Fund mobilizes approximately $4 billion a year to deliver life-saving medicine and preventative care to communities hardest hit by these epidemics.

While some nonprofit organizations focus on developing and implementing their own programs, the Global Fund offers a simple but fundamentally new philosophy: local communities already know how to best solve the problem. All they need is the resources to fund the fight.

“Locals understand the unique needs of their culture better than anyone, so it makes sense that they should lead programs to save lives in their communities,” says Andrew Tatam, Business Partner Manager, IT Corporate Services at the Global Fund. “Our job is to empower local organizations by mobilizing resources from donors.”

The impacts of the Global Fund’s donations have been far reaching. For instance, funded programs have successfully provided AIDS antiretroviral therapy to 7.3 million people, supported testing and treatment of 12.3 million people for tuberculosis, and enabled distribution of 450 million insecticide-treated nets to protect families against malaria.

Empowering communities, saving lives

With lives on the line, the Global Fund has long prioritized results over processes. CIO Paul Tuxford recognized that rather than continuing with outdated strategies, the organization needed to move away from slow, paper-based workflows to digital processes better suited to supporting a global program. The organization, led by the IT team, enacted a Paperless Office initiative to leverage digital technologies such as electronic signature solutions to cut back on paper consumption, time loss, and costs associated with paper workflows.

“Adobe Sign met all of our needs for mobility, scalability, and auditability,” says Tatam. “With Adobe Sign, we can send PDF forms for signature anywhere in the world and get a response in minutes. By eliminating delays, we get resources to programs where and when they need them.”

The Global Fund keeps extensive paperwork for all donations and for funding allocations, often with multiple reviews and signatures for each document. Previously, the organization managed signatures with what it called “black books”, which were physical folders containing documents that needed signatures, from internal procurement approvals to planning agreements for grants. Assistants would run the black books between managers and executives for review and signature. Every time the black books changed hands, the assistant also needed to notify a registrar, who would write down the location of each black book to provide rudimentary tracking.

Not only was this process time consuming, it was also complicated by the mobile workforce. Up to 20% of the workforce is on the road at any time. “These programs need to get funding as quickly as possible, and we don’t want a grant document sitting on a desk for weeks because someone is traveling,” says Tatam. “Our teams got on board quickly when they realized how much faster we can process grants with Adobe Sign.”

Having identified the benefits of Adobe Sign, the e-signature solution within Adobe Document Cloud, the Global Fund realized that it could gain even greater efficiencies by integrating Adobe Sign with other systems. Administrators no longer need to spend their time delivering black books or manually tracking locations, resulting in greater accuracy, speed, and productivity. By integrating Adobe Sign with the organization’s Salesforce CRM implementation, the Global Fund can streamline grant approvals and management through a single interface.

The signing experience is also improved for stakeholders as they can quickly review and sign documents from anywhere in the world. All signers need is a device with Internet access and they can sign with just a few clicks. As a result, grant agreements that once took weeks to turn around now get returned in days. One of the longest turnaround times was typically dealing with grant documents to West Africa, which would easily take four to six weeks. With Adobe Sign integrated with Salesforce, documents are turned around up to 75% faster, in less than 10 days.

While the Salesforce and Adobe Sign integration improves efficiency and speed, another great advantage is the overall organizational improvements. When working with paper, documents could be copied, forwarded, and misfiled. Through the paperless workflow, the Global Fund can track document status through Adobe Sign and automatically store one authoritative copy of the document in the Salesforce record. This improves accuracy and allows staff to retrieve documents with greater speed, helping the Global Fund achieve smooth audits.

Hiring the best in its global fight

The HR team uses Adobe Sign to assist its recruiting workflow and attract top talent. Every year, the Global Fund recruits about 80 to 100 employees who are interviewed by panels of 3 to 4 people. Each panel member contributes comments to an evaluation that must be signed by up to 6 people.

“By integrating Adobe Sign into the HR recruitment workflow, we reduced the time to sign panel evaluations from five days to less than a day,” says Tatam. Assistants no longer need to run documents throughout the building, and the automated tracking in Adobe Sign provides a far more accurate audit trail. “We’ve heard nothing but positive feedback from managers because they can fill positions faster and gain the talent that they need to tackle critical grant issues faster.”

Adobe Sign also streamlines procurement through integrations with Oracle E-Business Suite Financial Management. Managers use templates created for Adobe Sign to easily create, edit, and send extended software license agreements or requests for proposal. Signatures that once took three to five days are now returned in less than a day. With more efficient processes and workflows, managers can obtain the resources their teams need to communicate with donors, analyze results, and fund programs faster.

“Although we’re still at the beginning of our digital transformation with Adobe Sign, we’re already seeing signification efficiencies and cost savings across divisions, bringing us closer to industry best practices,” says Tatam. “By helping us create seamless processes by integrating with other key systems, Adobe is the cornerstone of our paperless digital office.”

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