Waystone is a market leader in specialist asset management services, working with clients to build, support and protect investment structures and strategies around the world. With over 20 years’ experience and a comprehensive range of specialist services, Waystone provides its clients with the guidance and tools to enable them to focus on managing their investment goals with confidence.
While its global headquarters are in Dublin, Ireland, Waystone has 16 regional offices around the world, and employs almost 2,000 staff in a range of sales, advisory and support roles. In order to enhance its global operations, the business identified a need to digitally transform its processes. Using DocuSign eSignature for Salesforce, it has centralised all documentation for greater business visibility, simplified the contract lifecycle from preparation through to signature, while freeing employees to focus more time on client interactions and strategic activities.
Global aspirations in need of a DocuSign solution
Before being in Ireland, Waystone headquarters were located on the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean Sea, which created contract delivery issues. With ambitions to be a global business, the company realised it could not survive long-term using traditional legacy systems and looked for a digital solution that could meet its aspiring requirements.
Prior to working with DocuSign, contracts were created manually, which was not only time consuming but also open to repeated data errors. Once drafted, contracts were printed and sent primarily via courier to clients for their wet signature and return.
Waystone is a Tier One service provider within its industry, and it identified DocuSign eSignature as a similar Tier One service provider in its field as potential digital solutions to support its ambitions. Waystone has Salesforce as its core CRM, so chose DocuSign eSignature for Salesforce as it offered the best solution to move data quickly and securely across the organisation.
The flexibility of the DocuSign system to scale and grow with a customer’s needs gave Waystone the confidence to start small and prove the efficiency benefits of the platform to the business before looking to expand.
Rory O’Sullivan, Head of Innovation at Waystone explains, “I know from experience that no finance committee will readily invest millions in an untested five-year plan. Starting small with DocuSign allowed us to prove it worked and when the legal team wanted more of the same, we saw its use roll organically across the business.”
Delivering digital transformation with DocuSign eSignature
Waystone was in a fortunate position as it had already established a good working practice with DocuSign eSignature prior to COVID-19. However, the pandemic accelerated its use, allowing the business to quickly adapt to new ways of digital working regardless of location.
The ease of integration with established tools such as Salesforce and Sage Intacct has made deploying DocuSign within teams a streamlined experience. As a result, productivity, data accuracy, and efficiency have been improved across the business without having to rely too heavily on training employees to work with new tools.
Waystone has seen tangible benefits switching to DocuSign eSignature, with the transition to digital agreements dramatically reducing the need for paper-based contracts and negating the need for expensive courier services. Equally, centralised storage has greatly improved the tracking and auditing of contracts, delivering greater oversight on agreement progression and finalisation rates across the business.
“We use DocuSign forms quite religiously,” states Geraldine Lynch, Chief Digital Officer at Waystone. “It can be agile and change with the way our industry is evolving. Our clients are all going through their own digital transformations, so eSignature is now just something clients expect.”
Initial concerns around whether its client base would approve of the new digital processes were quickly proven to be unfounded. Clients welcomed the new digital approach, with many already being familiar with the technology.
“One of the key drivers for our success is our reputation in the market and the confidence clients have with us,” states O’Sullivan. “Our partnering with DocuSign gives them that confidence that not only their data but also our processes are secure.”
Furthermore, Waystone clients are routinely seeing productivity benefits from the use of digital eSignature. The ability to review and sign contracts on mobile devices has been particularly welcomed, allowing its global client base to manage the signing of agreements more seamlessly, regardless of location or time.
Using DocuSign to shape smarter customer experiences
Waystone is a forward-thinking and responsive business, and the integration of smarter products and services are central to the continued acceleration of its digital initiatives both internally and for customers.
On the client side, it is already investigating the creation of a digital portal so that clients have greater access to documentation. As O’Sullivan explains: “Clients don’t want to use email anymore; they want to connect directly through a portal. The benefit for the business is that we get even more document data into our CRM. This in turn means when we go to billing, or renegotiation, we know the information can be trusted.”
On the platform side, Waystone has just started its digital journey with DocuSign as they plan to continue leveraging more advanced functionality to drive more joined-up workflows across the organisation. The business is looking to enhance collaboration, data storage, and the futureproofing of financial and legal documents using DocuSign CLM. As O’Sullivan explains, “The future is about using DocuSign to help us improve the intake process, to connect the dots and make that synchronisation across the organisation work.”