Forrester Study: Digitally transform your contract workflow

The Forrester State of Systems of Agreement Study 2020, was commissioned by DocuSign to explore how businesses act on and manage their agreements and contract workflow–whether those are agreements or contracts between business units, clients, employees or a mix of stakeholders. 

Organisations are examining their agreements to determine how they can become more efficient by contract automation and connecting contract workflow and agreement processes. In this post, we look at the problems experienced by businesses when acting on agreements and how organisations are solving them. 

Automation of signatures is often a first critical step for companies that are digitally transforming their agreement process but transformation also requires integration of the processes before and after the signature.

What challenges do organisations face when acting on their agreements?

The survey was conducted with 954 global technology purchasing decision makers, and many reported experiencing challenges when acting on agreements and contracts.

  • 56% said that they had to route agreements manually
  • 54% said that they had to enter data from agreements into systems of record manually 
  • 51% reported that they experienced errors or had to rework agreements due to data being entered incorrectly.
  • 45% reported that they had difficulty maintaining security and confidentiality

It’s clear from the results that manual processes are reducing efficiency, and digitisation provides an opportunity to address the challenges experienced. 

What benefits are organisations seeing when they implement digital processes that help them act on agreements?

Adopting a common platform for agreement processes can help to integrate contract workflows and agreement processes. Companies that have begun to embrace digitisation of their agreement processes have seen several benefits:

  • 55% say they deliver better customer experiences
  • 48% report lower error rates or error reduction
  • 38% report that less manual data entry is required
  • 34% report better employee experiences
  • 32% report easier information transfer

One of the technology buyer respondents said:

“Automation reduces the quantity of human errors, makes employees happier because they don’t have to busy themselves with repetitive processes and can focus more on innovation. Some people think automation will cost them a job, but really it just takes the bad part of their job away, so they are free to create new processes.” 

How are organisations automating and digitising their agreement and contract workflow?

Many survey respondents said they were planning to improve the digital capabilities of their systems of agreement in the next 12 months. 60% said they were either currently implementing or planning to implement or upgrade their systems and processes. Driving standardisation supports digital transformation. Being able to harmonise processes across a large number of users and multiple stakeholders can help organisations address their challenges at scale, helping to address security, privacy, compliance and training. Using a Contract Lifecycle Management Solution can help to address the pain points.

Contract Lifecycle Management

DocuSign CLM allows organisations to streamline processes in the agreement lifecycle by transforming manual processes into an automated workflow–this includes acting on agreement terms after signing. DocuSign CLM can automatically update records in other systems or trigger actions in other systems. You can use the system to drag and drop to connect various actions to create an end-to-end workflow.  DocuSign Payments allows customers to pay easily from almost anywhere on most devices. It has pre-built integrations with leading payment gateways so payments can be part of your workflows. 

See how organisations use The DocuSign Agreement Cloud™ to act on agreements

Tally, a company that operates green co-working spaces in cities worldwide, is leveraging Artificial Intelligence in order to analyse and visualise what’s in their agreements. Discover how in this video. 

Understand and visualise how DocuSign solutions are used throughout the agreement process by understanding how Tally prepare, sign, act on and manage their agreements. 

Download the Forrester State of Systems of Agreement Study 2020 to discover the full survey results.

Related content: 

DocuSign Agreement Cloud

 

 

 

 

Author
Mangesh Bhandarkar
GVP, Product Management
Published