Docusign's next move: Own the contract, not just the signature

It's done a pretty good job of taking out the friction of physical signatures, and now Docusign is setting its sights wider by platforming contract management. The goal is the same, if considerably expanded: eliminate those hangups between applications and people, so administrative work gets done faster with less frustration. But with vendors everywhere looking to own customers on 'their' platform, just how does Docusign gain traction?

The company's Chief Product Officer Graham Sheldon described it as 'the right to win', and said it is precisely the success Docusign has enjoyed in accelerating document processing that underpins its claim. "People trust us, and trust is the biggest impediment to AI adoption. We have a deep understanding and 20 years' worth of signed agreements that are already the lifeblood of every business."

Going beyond electronic signatures, Docusign has introduced what it calls Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM).

Before getting into product (or platform) features, it's always good to start with the problem. "Yeah, absolutely," Sheldon agreed. "Docusign identified years back that there's a lot of value that's not been realised in managing or facilitating agreements. Handoffs take too long. Deals slow down, with people waiting weeks or months, causing rising apprehension, and it's often because of all the handoffs, the interaction between multiple parties and disparate systems."

Tackling deal inertia 

Those involved in contracts of almost any kind will readily identify with Sheldon's point. Any minor change may have to work its way through a labyrinthine process, and with the squeaky wheel continually looking for the oil, it's as easy to drop balls as it is to mix metaphors. The result is akin to what movie script producers call 'development hell'; it could also be called 'deal inertia'. It's not because people don't want to get things finalised, it's just a muddy, ill-defined process.

"There's lost time, there's increased risk every time the agreement changes hands," Sheldon added, and said the costs can be substantial particularly in aggregate. "We did this study with Deloitte that puts the wasted economic value in the billions. There's just a lot of value being left on the table."

It isn't confined to negotiating the agreement, either. "There's after you've signed, where you've recorded some obligations or a vendor has promised something, do they actually deliver? By the time you get a chance to go and revisit, it's too late to negotiate and ensure you're getting what is due."

From insight to action

For the detail, IAM is (of course) AI-powered, and sets out to manage full contract lifecycles from creation and negotiation to signing and post-signature analysis. How AI is applied includes assisting in drafting, with various tools and web forms moving the task along while enforcing compliance requirements. No surprises that the contracts feature e-signatures, to which is added biometric identity verification, and workflow routing.

Sheldon said IAM is built around recognising agreements as a core strategic asset, and giving it a common place to live which eliminates the to-and-fro that results in frustration and wasted time.

Platforming, he added, is where real value starts becoming possible, including through the inclusion of a Model Context  Protocol (MCP) server which, combined with DocuSign's Studio, allows creation of custom agents. "The platform has some crucial pieces, and probably the biggest is the trust people have in DocuSign, which is where our right to win starts; if you're going to do something with the data, you have to have trust, and that's probably the biggest impediment to impediment to to AI transformation in general."

The second pillar is the necessity for context, and that rests on good data. "The LLMs are powerful but are limited by context. DocuSign has 20 years' worth of signed agreements which are the lifeblood of every business, so we can access insights and become best-in-class at understanding the meaning behind the data locked in there through Iris."

Iris, explained Sheldon, is Docusign's foundational AI service built into the IAM platform that surfaces. Notably, he said the point isn't only surfacing information or prompting human action, but moving towards action itself. Taking care of tasks related to the agreements within the platform. "That's the next big pivot we're making, as a company and as an industry. We call it 'insight-to-action, going from identifying or surfacing an issue, to actually solving the problem."

Of course, this won't happen immediately, and it won't happen entirely autonomously, for obvious reasons. "Expect an evolution, perhaps like we've seen with self-driving cars. You can't just jump straight to autotaxis, there has to be an audit trail and accountability."

Rapid adoption is the litmus test

If it sounds great in theory - and let's be frank, it does - then it would appear that it delivers in practice. Sheldon said IAM has attracted tens of thousands of Docusign customers. "Something like 40,000 are already using it, which means it's the fastest growing product in our history, so I'm told, though I wasn't here for some of the other launches."

Part of that comes down to the open approach taken to AI integration, reflected in the MCP server, and which permits the use of any of the major LLM providers in conjunction with the built-in Iris. "That's some of the newest stuff in IAM, and MCP has already been adopted by more than 10,000 customers."

One of those customers is the Bank of Queensland, which Sheldon said has used IAM to accelerate loan processing from weeks down to between one and three days, achieving a reduction in processing cost approaching 80%. "But the human story is even better. When you want the dream house, you don't want to wait."

Sheldon again said the rapid adoption rests on Docusign's track record of trust. "I mean, 95% of the Fortune 500 is using Docusign. From there, it's a pretty easy thing to move from trusted verification to being reminded when a contract is up for renewal, to get insights on contract performance, to SLA adherence. It's a very natural step for a lot of folks."

Essentially, he said, IAM starts understanding what people are doing with agreements, then suggesting or even performing useful surrounding tasks. "A lot of folks go, 'Man, I just wish I had a digital twin of myself that could go review these things before I even get it.' That's the point; whenever there's a set of steps involved, IAM knows, and can start doing those steps, and then, your job becomes a little bit better."

Which prompted a quip about Microsoft's ill-fated and terminally unpopular Clippy: 'It looks like you're writing a letter' (perhaps Clippy was just a little ahead of its time). Sheldon laughed; "Some of my previous colleagues said they almost named their Copilot Clippy. Now that would have been divisive."