DocuSign is synonymous with enabling secure digital signatures — a big improvement from government’s typical paper-based processes. However, the contracting community is also becoming aware of the company’s emerging contract lifecycle management tools.
“We recognized that our customers needed more than just the digital signature,” said Carrie-Anne Mosley, DocuSign area vice president of federal.
To that end, the company purchased SpringCM in 2018, whose technology enables smoother processes in support of federal contracting.
In a nutshell: Contract lifecycle management tools help GovCons interact more effectively with their federal clients and their subcontractors, vendors and partners.
“We allow organizations to have a clause library, a library of language that commonly comprises a document or a contract,” Mosley said. “Then the solution allows a functional person — not a technical person — to select legal language or contractual language to prepare a document. It does that automatically, based on business rules.”
Say a systems integrator wins a contract with a government agency. The SI needs to deliver subcontracting documents — typically, a messy and time-intensive effort. With contract lifecycle management, the GovCon can ensure those documents stay in compliance with ever-changing government clauses and requirements.
“We have a tool that will allow you to analyze all your contracts, to see which ones are in compliance and which are out of compliance. Then it automatically updates those contracts and subcontracts,” Mosley said. A recently-introduced artificial intelligence component adds a powerful analytic overlay to that process.
Strong demand for tools like this represents a significant market opportunity for DocuSign, Mosley said. For example, the company worked recently with a large aircraft manufacturer doing a lot of M&A activity.
“They wanted to review their contracts in advance of a divestiture, to see which contracts had transferability language and other relevant clauses,” she said.
Typically, that would be a major and largely manual undertaking. The company would employee contract administrators, paralegals and attorneys to comb through thousands of contracts, a time-intensive and costly proposition.
“Using our artificial intelligence tool, they looked across the portfolio of 16,000 contracts and saw that only 4,000 required human intervention,” Mosley said. “We were able to cut the amount of work by 75%, saving significant time and money for the organization.”
Large systems integrators may have tens of thousands of active contracts and subcontract agreements. Every time government passes new legislation or new regulations that impact the terms and conditions, that triggers a (typically manual) review process.
“This tool will automate that analysis,” Mosley said. “So we see a tremendous opportunity to reduce cost for our customers and accelerate their time to value. The challenge is partly prioritization: For every company, opportunities for improvement are a target-rich environment. Many companies are awash in IT-related projects, from upgrading existing ERP systems to cloud migrations, and this type of solution is delayed.”
In addition, DocuSign has to differentiate itself from smaller niche vendors operating in the space. Its deep technical expertise and high scalability help it to set its offerings apart from the pack.
“We point to the broad applicability of our solution, because it can be used for many different use cases, as well as the short time to deployment and added value,” Mosley said.
“We are also tightly integrated with Salesforce.com, SAP, ServiceNow and other solutions, which makes this a compelling offering for companies already using those tools,” she added. “Many of our government customers use those solutions within their environments, and we give them an opportunity to bring additional value from those investments.”
DocuSign has been designated an industry leader by Forrester and Gartner in the contract lifecycle management, and the company also boasts a high level of security certifications, including FedRAMP Moderate and IL-4 environments.
“The security certifications are very compelling, because the companies that support the government want to know for certain that the cloud technologies they are employing would pass the government’s security tests,” Mosley said. “Being FedRAMP Moderate and DOD IL4 authorized for electronic signatures, we meet all of those requirements for working with PII, PHI and other controlled unclassified information.”
Mosley has worked in and around the government space for over two decades. She said she takes a special satisfaction in supporting the federal mission.
“We’re helping companies that serve the government to fulfill their missions and to operate more effectively,” she said. “In doing so, we also make the government more transparent, accessible and easier to engage.”
As agencies digitize manual processes, it becomes easier for citizens to see the inner workings. The modernization effort, as embodied by digital signatures and contract lifecycle management tools, ultimately makes for a more responsive and user-friendly federal government overall.
“We are really honored to be the technology platform that supports many of those efforts,” Mosley said.