Exclusive: Docusign's Rebecca Denman on revolutionising the SaaS landscape

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, Docusign is once again setting the pace with the launch of its Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform.

Over 1.5 million customers and more than a billion people in over 180 countries use Docusign solutions to accelerate the process of doing business and simplify people’s lives. 

Rebecca Denman, Vice President of Product Management at Docusign, shared insights into this significant development during a recent interview with TechDay, highlighting the company's journey from its e-signature roots to becoming a leader in comprehensive agreement management.

Denman, who has been with Docusign for nearly a decade, recalls the early days of the company when e-signatures were still a novel concept.

"I remember the days when we used to still count how many customers had signed an agreement that day," she said. This was a time when the concept of digital agreements was still gaining traction, but as Denman noted, the company has come a long way since then.

"It's been really fun to see the evolution of Docusign and how we're taking what we did with e-signature and bringing it to a much broader part of the agreement journey."

The journey from e-signature to contract lifecycle management (CLM) was a natural progression for Docusign.

"When you think about it, e-signature is really only one part of that overall agreement process. There are many other steps in that journey that are actually waiting to be improved, and we're really eager to go there," Denman explained.

This eagerness is exactly what's led to the development of CLM solutions that help customers automate complex, multi-department, multi-step contract experiences.

However, Docusign's ambitions do not stop there.

With the introduction of Intelligent Agreement Management, the company is poised to disrupt the agreement space once again.

"IAM is about bringing intelligence and structure to agreements to drive valuable insights that will improve all aspects of agreement management," Denman explained.

The new platform is designed to meet customers where they are, enabling them to automate more of their agreement processes while unlocking additional insights contained within these critical documents.

The creation of IAM represents what Docusign believes to be a new SaaS category, one that addresses the inefficiencies caused by outdated agreement systems and processes.

Denman explained the concept of the "agreement trap," a situation where businesses are slowed down by disconnected, static agreements that are crucial but underutilised.

"IAM is about bringing that information to life," she said, emphasising the platform's ability to extract and structure data from agreements, ultimately boosting productivity and transforming business operations.

At the core of IAM are three innovative products: Maestro, App Center, and Navigator.

Maestro is a workflow automation tool that allows customers to build and deploy customised agreement processes without needing to write code. "It doesn't require a lot of overhead or professional services help," Denman said, highlighting the tool's simplicity and flexibility.

App Center, on the other hand, offers a suite of applications that further enhance and customise the agreement process. This feature allows businesses to integrate Docusign with their existing systems, ensuring full connectivity across all their processes.

"You can now further customise that with solutions that are specific to you, your industry, or your department," Denman explains.

The third pillar, Navigator, is a smart repository built specifically for agreements. It centralises all agreements, whether executed through Docusign or third-party platforms, and is designed to unlock the data within them using Docusign AI.

"Navigator is focused on leveraging Docusign AI to extract those key pieces of information, bringing those upfront and making them available for driving future insights and processes."

Looking to the future, Denman sees IAM as the beginning of a new frontier for Docusign, one that will continue to evolve as the company focuses on delivering structure, insights, and efficiencies across the entire agreement process.

"We're at this really exciting stage of bringing the value of agreements, the data that's in those agreements, to our customers," she said.