How to get all your stakeholders signing on the electronic line

By Adam Maloney, Head of Customer Strategy and Solutions Engineering APAC.

So you’ve recently invested in DocuSign, and you’re looking forward to transforming the way your system of agreement are being prepared, signed, acted upon and managed. Exciting times.

To help you hit the ground running, here are some tips to ensure that your internal and external stakeholders embrace your new way of becoming more a more agree-able business.

The good news? These tips apply for most digital transformation projects.

Appoint a sponsor

Find someone (or more than one person) to champion change – ideally someone within the upper levels of your business. Even if you have plenty of people across the business ready and willing to adopt new technology, unless there’s support from the top, it can be hard to get off the ground. Your sponsors can spread the message that the new way is “the standard way” – without this, people will continue to do things the old way.

Take time to train people

Don’t underestimate the importance of education. You need to train your teams in the new technology – not just the nuts and bolts of how it works, but also why you’ve invested in it. If you show them the potential of the platform, they will want to reach this potential. Education will help employees answer that invaluable question, “What’s in it for me?”. Once they know the answer, they’re more likely to use it.

DocuSign University is a great resource here. You could build an intranet page promoting DocuSign and including some success metrics for your teams to strive for, with links to our free courses on how to send or sign or build a template.

Set realistic targets for success

It might be that you want to send 25% of your contracts via DocuSign in the first month. Or that you want to use 10 fewer reams of paper and slash ink consumption. Or perhaps you want to measure the improvement to your Net Promoter Score (like one DocuSign customer did; they went from an NPS of -6 to 30 following their DocuSign implementation).

By setting a target, you’ve got something to aim towards and you’ve got a realistic measure of how successful the new tool is. Then, you can publish your successes and leverage internal advocacy to generate even more momentum for the platform.

Integrate with existing systems

To drive adoption of new technology, it helps to make the experience as seamless as possible for users. This often means integrating the new with the old. For example, if your business uses Salesforce, then you could easily integrate DocuSign into the Salesforce platform so you’re not actually increasing the effort involved in using the new tool. Wherever possible, employees should be able to stay in their core business system.

Reassure your customers

The vast majority of your customers are digitally adept and will think nothing of signing on the electronic line. In fact, they’ll love the convenience. Yet some may have questions about the legality or security of signing electronically, particularly if they are new to the technology or if they operate in a heavily regulated industry.

You can assure them that the Australian Electronic Transactions Act 1999 applies to most documents used in business today. You can also leverage DocuSign’s support team, who can go out and talk to your customers to show them how the technology is compliant with their needs.

Put your hand up

Don’t hold back on asking for help. DocuSign (and any other tech provider worth their salt) has a dedicated resource available to help customers drive adoption, called the Customer Success team.

For example, DocuSign recently worked with a large telecommunications company to identify a project that would really champion the platform. We identified that the turnaround time on procurement documentation – a 60-day process that involved the CEO – could be whittled down to just 8 days. The CEO loved it and become a champion of the DocuSign platform.

Remember, with any new technology, you can’t just make it available and expect people to start using it. You need a plan for adoption and a strategy to get it off the ground. DocuSign will help to ensure that the benefits of the platform are realised within your business.

If you would like to get in touch with the DocuSign Customer Success team, contact your Account Manager today.