7 Ways Next-Generation Technologies Transform Your Agreement Process

The traditional ways teams create, commit to, and manage agreements are full of gaps. They involve too many technology systems, too many steps, and clunky manual handoffs as employees move documents and data from one tool to another. We’ve talked to organizations about their agreement processes and found that they are typically difficult, costly, and inefficient. We call this set of problems the Agreement Trap. Including lost revenue and value destruction, it costs organizations almost $2 trillion a year worldwide.

Intelligent agreement management with Docusign IAM is the next generation of agreement technology, built specifically to help teams escape the Agreement Trap. It removes the manual steps and disconnected systems of the traditional agreement workflow and replaces them with a seamless platform that helps increase efficiency. 

Here are seven ways Docusign IAM can help your teams customize agreement workflows and improve the end-to-end agreement process.

Start your agreements off with the right data

The initial step of creating agreements can be labor-intensive, especially because of the risks of errors and compliance that come along with data entry. Research shows that the biggest hurdles HR teams face in the agreement process are standardization, compliance, and excessive repetitive tasks. But Docusign Agreement Preparation helps ensure your agreement data is accurate from the start with simplified, no-code template creation that pulls data from connected workflows. It works with your existing systems like HubSpot or Salesforce to automatically pull real-time data so your agreements always have the latest information without the need for constant manual updates.

Agreement Preparation is purpose-built for agreements, so it not only understands metadata, workflow logic, and compliance needs that are unique to contracts, but it also uses AI to automate the monotonous parts of the creation process to make the entire agreement lifecycle more seamless, from creation to signature.

Collaborate in one place

Constant version changes and updates can be overwhelming to track, especially across disparate systems like emails and spreadsheets. Agreement Desk helps make collaboration as streamlined and easy as possible, helping you–and everyone involved in moving the agreement–have a user-friendly access point to see how a contract is progressing. 

This centralized hub provides instant visibility and tracks updates, even if they’re made in email. Activities are logged in a feed that includes key details so in-flight agreements can remain that way. And as agreements move across the finish line, use a reporting and performance dashboard to observe key metrics to optimize future agreements. 

Find agreements and language with AI

One of the most common problems resulting from outdated agreement workflows is the inability to find a contract or pinpoint specific language. Last year, research from Docusign and Deloitte on the end-to-end agreement process found that almost half of companies believe they spend too much time searching for agreements. Over 54% lack the tools to automate the tracking and analysis of their completed agreements. All that time spent searching is frustrating and costly.

But for those with advanced agreement systems, these problems are significantly decreased. This year’s report shows that 85% of professionals were able to achieve their strategic goals thanks to advanced agreement management, and those with capabilities like AI yielded the greatest results. 

Docusign Navigator is one of the ways these companies can use AI to gain instant benefits. Navigator is a powerful repository that uses AI to help you quickly answer agreement questions. It offers simple filters that can instantly sort your catalog by party, appreciation date, dollar value, and more. Navigator also includes a search bar that uses natural language processing tools to search at the conceptual level rather than just the keyword level. That can be particularly useful when searching for language about complex ideas like privacy or force majeure. Generative AI functionality can even create summaries of long or complex portions of agreement language.

Make better decisions with agreement reporting

Your agreements might look like pages of plain text, but Docusign IAM turns them into structured collections of data. By extracting key data points, your team can get a quick snapshot of any individual document or the agreement library as a whole. Those data points can be used to quickly and accurately answer critical business questions.

For example, if you’re looking to identify the customers who spend the most with your organization, reporting in Docusign IAM can answer that. It can also tell you which expiring agreements are set to auto-renew. Your team can use reporting functionality to track regular statistics about your agreements and use that robust data to make more informed decisions about the direction of the company.

Connect tools using integrations

Another resounding takeaway from Deloitte and Docusign research is that teams with more advanced enterprise Integration for agreement management exceed their financial goals 36% more often than low-maturity organizations. 

Instead of a string of attaching, uploading, reformatting, and reuploading, causing version control and data sharing issues,  Docusign agreements live on the same platform–from creation through negotiation, signature, execution, and renewal. Docusign IAM customers can access the Docusign App Center to connect all of the tools they currently use to create, commit to, and manage agreements.

Remove manual steps with workflow automation

Integrations minimize the work involved in moving agreement information from one tool to another. Automation takes that improvement to the next level by eliminating manual effort that advances agreements from one step in the workflow to the next. Removing all those manual handoffs saves time, reduces errors, and gives everyone better visibility into the agreement process.

Docusign Maestro is a no-code solution to those costly and painful steps. IAM customers can use Maestro to design a standard agreement workflow, including steps like identity verification and electronic signature, and set conditions for completion at each step. As soon as one step is finished, Maestro kicks off the next one. Individuals who need to be notified will automatically receive alerts. Any capabilities that need to be used at the next step (e.g., eSignature, ID Verification, Notary, etc.) will automatically connect to the process. Once the process is mapped out in Maestro, agreements will move from end to end as seamlessly as possible.

Simplify collaboration on agreements

When agreements involve additional parties and organizations, the workflow can easily become bogged down with problems resulting from poor visibility and version control. It’s easy to lose track of which version of an agreement is current, which party is reviewing that version, which suggested revisions have been accounted for, and who is responsible for taking action next.

Docusign IAM solves that problem with a single cloud-based version of a document that’s always current. The agreement is created in the cloud and remains in a secure, centralized hub called Workspaces. Then negotiation, signature, notary services (if necessary), and renewal can all take place on the same document in the same platform. At any point, anyone with the right permissions can get visibility into the status of an agreement and monitor its progress. They can have complete confidence that the agreement they’ve found is the most up-to-date version. As the agreement process moves along, IAM will track updates in real time, logging agreement actions and tracking what needs to happen next.

Get started with Docusign IAM

Docusign has long been a leader in agreements and solving customer pain points around agreement workflows. The platform services and features described in this list are designed to meet the agreement needs of organizations today and in the future.

Learn more about how Docusign IAM can benefit your team by connecting the end-to-end agreement process.

Ready to get started? Contact our sales team today.