DocuSign continues to build out digital transaction management platform

Over the past few years, DocuSign, one of the famous “unicorns” (private companies valued at more than $1 billion), has migrated from its genesis in electronic signature to a full-on supplier of end-to-end digital transactions. This effort has led the company to many partnerships, acquisitions and standardization efforts, as it attempts to become a one-stop shop for companies wishing to accelerate their businesses with 100 percent digital workflows, processes and agreements. The payoff has been a vast trove of new customers.

In the past 30 days, DocuSign added another few bricks to that edifice with several announcements at Oracle OpenWorld, an update on its Global Trust Network, and a recognition at API World for the quality of its API.

The Oracle announcements included deep integrations across the gamut of Oracle Cloud offerings, including CPQ Cloud, Sales Cloud, Documents Cloud, Enterprise Contracts, Documaker, PeopleSoft and WebCenter Content. The DocuSign integration removes one more impediment for Oracle customers trying to make their businesses fully digital.

Meanwhile, DocuSign reported that growth in its developer programs continues to surge, citing 300 percent growth of API transaction volume from new customers year on year. The company has driven this growth through serious investment in its API; a deeper focus on building a developer community; specialized products for vertical industries such as real estate, financial services, insurance, healthcare, life sciences and public sector; geographic expansion in Europe, Latin America, Asia and elsewhere; and partnerships with the likes of Apple, Cisco, Dell, Deutsche Telekom, FedEx, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NTT, Salesforce, Samsung, SAP, Telstra and Visa. In addition, as befits a mission-critical utility, DocuSign continues to invest in the key areas of security, hybrid cloud deployment and high availability.

So, it should not be too big a surprise that all this investment has led to a degree of recognition, including the company’s landing on the Forbes Cloud 100 list of the best private cloud companies, and the DocuSign API’s being awarded Best Enterprise API at API World last week. The API was cited for ease of use, extensibility, flexibility, openness and speed of deployment, all critical success factors in a high-speed, all-digital environment.

The DocuSign Global Trust Network now includes more than 250,000 companies and 100 million users in 188 countries. For comparison, when I first spoke to DocuSign in October of 2011, they had just 10 million users.

The DocuSign story has been one of phenomenal growth. The company was early to understand how eliminating the pen and ink signature from the transaction process was just the first step in moving businesses entirely out of the analog world and into one of fully digital transactions. Converting paper signatures to electrons was a step along the way, but the path to fully digital business processes has involved a tremendous amount of investment, development, numerous partnerships, and the patience to hammer out standards with players across the industry to get customers ready for a safe, secure, fully digital world.

It’s pretty clear from the pace of developments at DocuSign that there’s plenty more to come on this front, as the company continues to unfold its grand plan.