DocuSign Passes 2.5 Million Electronic Signings

DocuSign just surpassed the 2.5 million signing events mark! This metric measures the number of times our customers use our system to attach a “signature event” to a document via our web service, and as such is a measure of velocity of use of the system. It is not intended to directly relate to documents or pages, but generally the pace by which our users are working across all document sizes and workflows. This metric has been growing faster and faster. As this begins to take off, it has me wondering about the number 2.5 million. What does it represent?

The following are a few “not completely right or wrong” measures of what 2.5 million represents:

1.  A LONG WAY! – It is the distance traveled by the STS-54 space shuttle mission during its 5 day, 23 hour mission in 1993.

2.  $7.23 million in labor costs saved by our customers - If we assume the average office worker makes $23 per hour, and takes 10 minutes to print, attach sign here tabs, stuff the envelope, and take it to the drop box, and another 10 minutes to open the envelope, enter receipt information into a system, and scan it back into digital format for a total of 20 minutes. Assume now that using DocuSign, this process can be done in 5 minutes (even faster with DocuSign Pro signing workflow templates). If there were two signings per document, the total savings to our customers has been $7.32 million in labor costs.

3. $6 million in cost avoidance by our customers - If you assume that 10% of all transactions have signing errors of some kind.  10% of 2.5 million is 250,000 signing errors we’ve saved because using DocuSign a user cannot ‘forget’ to sign on a page, sign incorrectly, or forget to return a page in the envelope. 250,000 signing errors could result in 250,000 transactions that would have to be completely re-done. If you were using overnight express at $12 each way, we helped our customers avoid $6 million of errors.

4. Elimination of greenhouse gas by our customers – If we assume an average of two signing events per document, and each document represented a round trip airplane flight for overnight delivery to different destination, our customers in the aggregate have contributed to the avoidance the amount of CO2 generated by all the cars in a city the size of Seattle for a year. This is computed using a rough formula which indicates a round-trip flight from London to Miami generates 2,415kg of CO2 per person onboard, which is more than the average car generates in a year (A person driving a car an average of 16,000km/yr produces 2,255kg). As an aside, the world’s 16,000 commercial airliners produce 600 million tons of CO2 each year, almost as much as generated from the African continent.

5. A whole forest saved by our customers – If each signature event happens on every 4th page this would equate to 10 million pages. 10 million pages weighs (using 4.5gms per page), roughly 49 tons(2,000lbs). Using recycling numbers because we avoid paper all together, DocuSign ‘s customers have avoided the use of 843 trees, 18,850 gallons of oil, 149 cubic yards of landfill space, 198,416 kilowatts of energy, and 347,228 gallons of water. The trees NOT cut down as a result of using DocuSign can absorb 42,510 pounds of CO2 each year for us (a healthy tree can absorb 50 lbs of CO2 per year).

6. An aggregate of 17,216 years of waiting – Assuming it takes an average of 5 days to complete a transaction using “express mail,” and an average of 60 minutes using DocuSign, we’ve saved our customers a total of 148.7 million hours of waiting. That is 17,216 years! It is 2007. In 17,216 years it will be the year 19223…

So there you have it. 2.5 million is huge number. I am proud of the impact DocuSign has had on our customers’ businesses, and I am proud of them for having such a positive impact on our environment.

I am certain there are other measures of what 2.5 million means, so if you have some interesting tidbits, please let us know. Next time we’ll revisit and talk about what 25 million means…