Spending Wisely Through a Downturn

During challenging economic conditions, instincts tell us to hold on to what we’ve got. And it’s always wise to be frugal. But instead of being spooked by a possible downturn, smart organizations are seizing an opportunity to reprioritize their spending toward modernization.

Difficult business climates have a way of driving organizations toward change. Sometimes it can be just the catalyst needed to reevaluate existing processes to find a better way of doing things. Whether it’s a pandemic or a recession—or any unexpected disruption—the trick is addressing challenging business conditions head-on to fortify your operations and better weather the next storm.

A recent, oft-cited example is how businesses recently pivoted to hybrid and remote operations. The world changed, so companies had to change. And we’re not going back. Modernization is a constant force. The key question is whether your business is driving that trend or reacting to it.

Smart spending

A recent survey of more than 1,400 IT decision makers makes it clear that, although organizations are planning decreases in overall spending and hiring, over half of respondents expect to increase IT spending by 21 percent on average.

Just as you shouldn’t indiscriminately cut spending during economic ebbs, you obviously shouldn’t increase spending without targeting your greatest areas of need. A great place to start is looking at how your organization handles its contracts and agreements. These documents touch every part of your company and define how and with whom you do business.

However, the processes for creating, signing, enforcing and managing these agreements are often outdated and inefficient. Fortunately, there are many ways to attack this problem. After evaluating your existing agreement processes to find out what’s working and what isn’t, you can choose to convert from paper to electronic signatures, streamline an existing digital process, or even implement an end-to-end contract management solution.

Benefits of transformation

No matter how far you want to take your modernization initiatives, each step taken and each dollar spent will set you up for success today and in the future. Transforming to digital-first operations helps you reinvent how you do business and prepare for unanticipated disruptions in a variety of ways, including:

• Collaborating with anyone, virtually anywhere, at any time: The past two years have solidified a shift to hybrid and remote workforces, where work, trade, commerce and agreements are untethered from physical locations. In addition to supporting a distributed workforce, it’s critical for business continuity during disruptions.

• Creating better experiences for employees and customers: Productivity and convenience are at the heart of digital experiences. When work gets done more efficiently and agreements are reached faster, it’s a better experience for everyone—making your business more attractive to employees and customers.

• Operating more efficiently and sustainably: Employees, customers and investors increasingly want to engage with businesses that reflect their environmental values. Digital, remote-friendly agreement workflows can reduce or eliminate waste and wasteful processes. That means it’s no longer an either-or proposition between sustainability and profitability.

How organizations are investing in process automation

Undertaking transformation projects to realize these types of benefits can be overwhelming at first, even when starting small. But fortune favors the brave, and the following customers from around the world were willing to lean in to find a better way to manage their agreements—pushing through challenging times with transformational technology investments.

M&T Bank is one of the United States’ oldest and largest financial institutions. Throughout the bank’s history, they’ve prioritized excellent customer experiences. So when the pandemic hit, they had to make changes to keep providing the fantastic customer service that is core to their success.

The bank quickly expanded its use of Docusign eSignature, replacing snail mail and face-to-face interactions—helping over 35,000 businesses attain more than $7 billion in critical funding. They also digitized their internal processes so employees could upload forms via their mobile devices, cutting turnaround times from months to hours.

Given the success of those initial e-signature initiatives, the bank has expanded into other areas of the business, implementing an end-to-end suite of solutions, including identity verification and remote online notarization. While they’ve realized up to seven-figure cost savings, that’s not the whole story. They believe their biggest success is a vastly improved customer and employee experience that brings greater speed, security and convenience to banking.

Learn how M&T are investing big to improve banking.

Metha Energia connects clean energy generation plants to over 75,000 final consumers in Brazil. Using a fully digital platform, they provide consumers with savings and access to clean and sustainable energy. And they’re rapidly expanding into five additional Brazilian states.

Despite offering a completely digital service registration, the sign-up process was anything but smooth, requiring several separate steps and leading to a considerable drop in customer conversions. The company needed a solution that was easily embedded and customizable—with minimal impact on their IT team.

Metha integrated Docusign Click via API into their existing system so users could give consent to the agreement terms seamlessly. Users can now complete the entire registration process during one session, removing friction and confusion from the experience. This transformation reduced the sign-up process by a day and boosted customer acquisition by 36 percent.

Improving business agility, brand reliability and customer satisfaction future-proofs Metha’s business model. But as a sustainable energy company, each successful transaction also helps everyone’s future by reducing environmental impact.

See how Metha Energia is improving customer acquisition while saving the planet’s resources.

KORE Technologies from Switzerland is a Connectivity-as-a-Service leader providing a one-stop-shop for simplified IoT deployments. They manage over 12 million connected devices—and thousands of contracts—for customers across the globe.

Creating and managing each of those contracts involved a lot of manual tasks and disconnected systems. First, they implemented e-signatures to close gaps in their quote-to-cash (QTC) process. But every step before and after the signature still relied on the old way of doing things. They needed a solution to connect the digital dots.

They integrated Docusign CLM with Salesforce CPQ to help them create one seamless workflow. KORE can now generate proposals and contracts with a single click. Sales users build quotes in CPQ, and the data instantly syncs with CLM templates for greater accuracy and efficiency. The entire automated contract process—creating, quoting and reviewing—has improved turnaround times by 95 percent.

KORE is also taking a closer look at its other processes and modernizing with CLM where it makes the most sense. They’ve launched a Paperless KORE initiative that replaces paper with streamlined digital workflows, saving time, money and the planet’s precious resources.

Read how KORE is modernizing QTC and order fulfillment.

Guzman y Gomez is an Australian-based casual eatery with a growing international presence in Singapore, Japan and the United States. Their rapid expansion—opening dozens of new restaurants—has meant a proliferation of lease agreements and thousands of employment contracts to manage. 

The company had already begun moving from paper to digital processes integrated with their existing tools. They chose Docusign eSignature and APIs for their simplicity, stability and effectiveness. Simple to implement and easy to use, it helped improve their onboarding, training and other HR processes.

As they moved their Singapore franchises toward these digital solutions, they focused on improving communications, reducing paper and minimizing manual administrative work. While working through the changes with some partners who weren’t yet comfortable with digital contracts, the lockdowns supercharged the implementation process—and the realization that outdated, manual tasks were no longer good enough.

Guzman y Gomez is now 90 percent paperless, and they’re getting agreements completed in under two hours—a 99 percent improvement. Employees and partners now have a transparent, personalized and trusted process that’s feeding more people and fueling even more growth.

Discover how Guzman y Gomez is scaling their business to keep pace with growth.

A better way

Challenging conditions led all of these organizations to invest in technology improvements. But they also invested in their people and our planet. Rather than patching holes with temporary fixes, they assessed their entire agreement process and systematically—and dramatically—improved their employee and customer experiences.

We all want convenience, and we want to work with those who share our values. These companies looked beyond today and are ready for whatever tomorrow may bring. They found a better way and you can too.