How to Automate Vendor Document Management

As organizations grow, they need the right systems in place to scale procurement processes while continuing to be efficient. Today’s supply chain is more global than ever: an organization’s suppliers and employees could be distributed virtually anywhere. Without a clear, automated workflow in place, vendor documents can get lost or misplaced, especially if multiple “central” repositories exist. 

Organizations work with existing and new vendors every year, gathering tons of documents from vendors such as NDAs, SOWs and MSAs. But oftentimes, procurement teams must manually collect, track and manage all of those documents in a timely manner and store them for future use as well as for compliance and audit purposes. It takes time away from procurement professionals to focus on high value-add activities such as strategic sourcing, cost reduction and maintain business continuity. 

Using Agreement Actions to store vendor contracts

Agreement Actions is a new Docusign eSignature feature with which admins can easily configure rules to automate common post-signature actions. This includes the ability to automatically archive completed documents to a cloud storage provider (e.g. SharePoint, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive), export data to Google Sheets and start workflows in Docusign CLM. 

With Agreement Actions, procurement teams can streamline processes like vendor onboarding, while also ensuring documents get placed in the right folder at the right time. Admins can easily create rules and conditions based on eSignature document fields, template type and other metadata to drive automatic post-signature actions: 

• Archive documents: Archive completed supplier documents into the right folders, every time, saving time and reducing manual error. Teams can avoid wasting time looking for documents in multiple locations or setting reminders to manually move documents into the right folder or location. For example, if the name of the template is “NDA” and the vendor type is “indirect”, then the signed contract will be automatically archived to the specified folder for indirect vendors.

• Export data: Exporting into a spreadsheet makes it easier to analyze and report out on a high volume of vendor documents. For example, data on risk waivers can be automatically exported to a specific Google Sheet to track the number of vendors that received exceptions. 

• Trigger workflows: Trigger downstream approvals and workflows in Docusign CLM so that the approval process kicks off immediately after a supplier signs a document. Teams don’t have to worry about chasing down key stakeholders for sign-off on documents. Sit back and relax as the approval process kicks off automatically to ensure all documents are signed and completed by the right parties/people.

Learn more about Docusign Agreement Actions and how Docusign works for procurement teams of all sizes.