iCIMS improves contracting velocity for sales and legal teams with Docusign CLM and AI

iCIMS helps thousands of organisations worldwide power and scale their recruitment programs. The market leader has more than 2.7 million global users, delivering enterprise hiring solutions across every stage of the talent journey. Courtney Dutter, deputy general counsel and VP of legal and compliance, joined the company more than a decade ago as a one-woman legal department. Today, she leads a team of 18 that’s integral to iCIMS’ ongoing success.

“We view ourselves as partners and an extension of our sales team,” said Dutter. “So, it’s in our best interest to have the most efficient legal team possible.” But, with multiple acquisitions, consistent worldwide growth and a revamped go-to-market strategy, the legal team was overstretched. 

By bringing automated workflows and powerful analytics to its contracting process with Docusign CLM and AI, iCIMS was able to manage a 130% increase in complex enterprise contracts while ensuring costly oversights didn’t fall through the cracks.

Accelerating speed of delivery from the legal department

iCIMS’ path to CLM began with a common struggle: “We were at the mercy of email, which created version control issues and caused a lot of drag within our team,” said Dutter. With the legal team facing mounting pressure to do more with less, streamlining contract processes to improve velocity became a top priority. As iCIMS moved upmarket, the timing for CLM was perfect—and the payoff was huge. 

“We saw over a 5x increase in the number of custom agreements, yet we maintained the same turnaround time,” said Dutter. “That’s a total win because these types of contracts typically take a lot longer than our standard subscription agreements.”

Dutter attributes the efficiency boost to her team’s ability to “direct traffic” with CLM, orchestrating different workflows based on agreement types. For example, commonly used agreements like NDAs could be automatically routed to contract specialists so attorneys have the bandwidth to focus on more complex work.

On the professional services side of the business, where CLM is being used to generate statements of work, the legal team designed “stops on the train line” to ensure legal has eyes on the right agreements. “We were able to designate certain subsets of fields that our client partners and professional services leadership can edit,” said Dutter. “This way, SOWs get to the right people to review, but only the SOWs we need to see come to legal for review.” 

Empowering new levels of self-service with CLM + Salesforce

Putting more power in the hands of sales teams was essential to optimising iCIMS’ go-to-market process. That’s why during the company’s search for a CLM, one feature topped its must-have list: seamless integration with Salesforce. 

Working with Docusign implementation specialists from Advanced Technology Group (ATG), iCIMS added buttons on various Salesforce objects so sellers can generate quotes, order forms, NDAs, data processing agreements, contract addenda and waivers on their own without leaving Sales Cloud. The two-way data sync between Salesforce and Docusign saves time while reducing risk of human error.

Before adopting CLM, the majority of sales agreements required legal intervention. Now, Dutter’s team has peace of mind that agreements comply with company standard terms, without the need for further review. 

Since going live with CLM, the number of monthly requests to create one-off legal documents went from hundreds to zero. “Now, it’s just part of the workflow—and if we ever update a document, we can ensure everyone is using the right version,” said Dutter. 

Sales and legal teams aren’t the only ones benefiting from a more streamlined contract process. CLM helps iCIMS deliver the same simple, modern experience to millions of everyday users. “It’s made it easier for customers to do business with us,” said Dutter.

Growing with Docusign

To gain greater visibility and control over its universe of contracts, iCIMS turned to AI—starting in procurement.

”With hundreds of new vendor contracts being added through acquisition on top of the thousands of contracts the team was already dealing with, we needed a better mechanism for keeping track of renewals so we could identify duplicative vendors and reduce our overall spend,” said Dutter.

Using Docusign Insight, iCIMS quickly identifies which contracts have auto-renewal language to eliminate the risk of paying for unnecessary goods and services. For contracts not set to auto-renew, business units have visibility into which are expiring in the next 30/60/90 days so they can start the procurement process at the right time. 

On the customer side of the business, Insight helps the legal team adapt to changing regulations and fulfill ad hoc reporting requests faster than ever before. But the value goes beyond reducing time and manual labor. “Insight does the really monotonous work that no one wants to do,” said Dutter. “It allows my team to focus on strategic priorities”.

For iCIMS, having a technology partner that continues to innovate and evolve alongside the company is a valuable long-term asset. “Docusign is a company that continues to invest in its technology both from a roadmap perspective and an acquisition perspective,” said Dutter. “I don’t feel like we’re ever going to outgrow it.”