Mike Borozdin, manager of developer programs, will help you get started with the DocuSign API! Register for the upcoming Developer Workshop Webinars, to jumpstart your electronic signature integration:

• Thu, September 9 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm (PT)
• Thu, September 23 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm (PT)

Already familiar with DocuSign’s API? Register for the advanced webinar to learn to use DocuSign’s API from the Salesforce Platform:

• Wed, September 15: 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm (PT)

Before a webinar, you can register for the DocuSign free development account for access to the DocuSign Connect API 3.0 Developer Guide, Web Service Description file (WSDL) and samples in Java, .NET, Ruby and PHP.  You can set up samples on your servers, develop code and test drive our Web Service API.

Our Developers Center also provides a myriad of resources, including our DocuSign Forum, documentation, live samples and other tools. We also have code walkthroughs available on this blog as well:

• Create And Send Electronic Signature Envelope
• Anchor Tabs
• Retrieving Documents From DocuSign
• Embedded Signing
• The RequestStatus Methods

Simplified DocuSign API

With our Summer ‘10 Release, developing new applications or integrations to work with the DocuSign Platform has become even easier. A simplified HTTP header can now be implemented as an option to the SOAP header. Register for a webinar to learn more!

Yamaha Corporation of America distributes and sells musical instruments via its nationwide network of 7,000 retail stores. For years, Yamaha’s contract process included courier costs, human errors and missing pages. Yamaha’s systems specialist, Mike Machado shares: “We depended on a lengthy signature process… Sometimes the forms weren’t signed in the right places and folks would strike things out. We often received incomplete agreements.”

So what’s an enterprise company to do when it comes time to update its master agreement with 7,000 retail stores?

Could it ask its sales reps to stuff over 5,000 envelopes and spend nearly $15,000 in courier charges? Of course, this course of action doesn’t account for time spent waiting for the documents to be returned as well as time spent following up and following up on the follow up.

Instead, Yamaha’s Machado spent three months researching various Web-based products that would preserve “the look and feel of a paper-based experience,” while cutting costs and expediting the process.

Yamaha chose DocuSign for its user-friendly interface and low cost. The DocuSign electronic signature service and workflow solution was implemented in a 30-day deployment across three of Yamaha’s sales divisions.

Before Yamaha signed the electronic signature line with DocuSign, Yamaha’s in-house legal counsel spent 30-days extensively researching the processes involved with e-signature capture, data storage as well as the electronic signatures themselves to ensure that electronic signatures captured via DocuSign would be legally binding.

Now, Yamaha’s dealers log on to a secure site and review a contract. The program automatically generates an e-signature that can be modified with different fonts or including a middle initial. Each electronic signature that is generated is also unique to each signer. Yellow “Sign Here” tabs instruct dealers where to eSign by clicking to place their signatures. Because only properly signed contracts can be routed further, this process ensures no more missing signatures or initials. For record keeping, completed documents can be downloaded and saved as a PDF.

Because Yamaha was both a DocuSign and Salesforce customer, they were able to use DocuSign Connect for Salesforce. This gave Yamaha the ability to track the status of the documents in Salesforce so they know when each document was delivered, opened and signed.

With Salesforce integration, they can also collect the data from the electronic contracts and automatically update Salesforce when contracts are completed.

So where did the $10,000 monthly savings come from? Yamaha did not have to send multiple contracts via courier. DocuSign’s software-as-a-service, or SaaS, electronic signature technology meant that no additional IT infrastructure investment was necessary to implement this solution.

So how long does it take to complete a formerly month-long, labor intensive contract signing process that includes approximately half-dozen approvals? “[It] can now be completed in minutes” according to Machado.

With visibility into where a contract is in the process, Yamaha’s sales representatives can address bottlenecks, so they can move deals forward.

So what are the primary benefits of electronic signature technology?

…turn-around time, cost savings and an improved regulatory posture – all of which benefit from economies of scale.” – Bill Nagel, Forrester Research

To learn more about how DocuSign electronic signature can benefit your company, take a look at the DocuSign web site and try DocuSign Lite for free. DocuSign will also be at Salesforce Dreamforce, November 17-20, 2009, in San Francisco – connect with us there!

Benefits of Electronic Signature include:

· Shorter sales cycles: Instead of waiting days or weeks for a contract in order to start work, your client or customer can give you the green light to get started within minutes, not days.

· Slash operating costs: Electronic Signature senders and signers don’t have paper, ink, postage or long distance fax charges…nor do they have the costs associated with manual data entry.

· Copies for all parties: Signers and senders alike have access to the digital documents once they’ve been executed. Signers can download the completed document(s) to store them locally, on their own machines or print them out and file. Certificates of completion will also include time stamp and other information associated with the electronic contract execution process.

· Create an Archive: DocuSign provides users with an interface that enables them to manage their documents. This visibility and control means that senders can see which signers have signed, which still need to sign, if signers have even opened the document, etc.

· Increase Security: DocuSign’s authentication and security processes enables signers to create their own unique signatures, protecting their identities and data.

DocuSign Professional, Professional Advance, and DocuSign Corporate also includes some of the premium features mentioned by Ms. Gregory, depending on which service you use:

· Customized branding

· Online reporting

· PDF encryption

· Auto-filing/archiving

· Reminder options

· Support of various document types

As well as features not mentioned by Ms. Gregory:

· Integration with Salesforce, for DocuSign Connect for Salesforce users

· Integration with all the major Real Estate forms for Realtors and other Real Estate agents

· Multiple Signer and Sequential Signer options

· Microsoft Outlook integration

· “Sign Here” tabs to ensure collection of all needed signatures

DocuSign automates the contract execution process so you literally don’t have to run around town collecting signatures, overnighting documents, finding a fax machine that works or otherwise tear your hair out because all you need is an internet connection, a browser, and DocuSign and you’re in business. Literally.

Ken learned a number of things on the tour… not the least of which is that Marc Benioff, salesforce.com’s CEO at approximately 6′7”, is a giant of a man with a giant idea. His idea is to do for business computing what LinkedIn has done for professional networking. LinkedIn has taken professional networking from in person, phone and email direct connections up to the Cloud. People can learn from each other and share their expertise, connect with each other and discover opportunities within their networks. The paradigm shift powered by salesforce.com with its force.com Cloud Computing platform expands a sales management tool via a Cloud Computing business process platform that eliminates companies’ need for data centers and IT staffs to run them. Force.com is far more than CRM, it’s truly a Business Computing Platform in the sky… 
 
Flashback to 2004: What was the Timing of Convergence between Social Networks and systems in the Enterprise?   

 
The big question was: “Were social networks a time sink, or were they helping employees be productive?”   Flash forward to 2009 and it’s now clear that Mashups provide an example of social networks having a place in the enterprise. For example, combining Customer Service Portals on Force.com and Facebook has resulted in a mashup that allows its users to track relevant conversations, adds to the corporate knowledge base and then shares that information with the relevant community. The ability to sift social networks for highly actionable enterprise content and leverage the wisdom of the crowds for the enterprise is now seen in actual implementation…the convergence between social networking and enterprise computing is real. 
 
Back in the day, customers used to call if they had questions. With the advent of the Internet and as search engines such as Google indexed the web, customers googled for the answers they sought. Now, customers turn to social networks to ask ‘similar others’ for help and get answers their questions and deal with problems. The social network works out the problems and as conversations hit a critical mass, the convergence of IT and knowledge base enables customer service operations to be aware of these conversations. Cloud Computing Mashups have enabled businesses to glean real world actionable knowledge and leverage the wisdom of the crowds.  
 Social networking came out of the dot com bust. These next 12 to 18 months we’ll see people searching for better ways of doing and not just doing. This means many innovative ideas and lots of innovation. As the economic grip tightens, people are thinking of new ways to do old things better, using technology. One of the big questions on everyone’s lips is how to find better, faster and cheaper ways of doing things we do everyday? Force.com is a tool that can be used to answer that question.  

Launched at Dreamforce 08, the annual salesforce.com user conference each November in San Francisco, DocuSign’s fully integrated Salesforce solution, available on the force.com AppExchange, is called DocuSign Connect for Salesforce: QuickStart.  These regional Cloudforce city tours gave DocuSign an opportunity to engage business communities that may not have had the opportunity to come to Dreamforce… and the reception was fantastic.  DocuSign is the leader in electronic signature and contract execution services and combined with the power of Salesforce offer significant value to companies that use both solutions.  With DocuSign, the electronic signature we collect confirms the data in contracts, HR documents, or anything people sign. The value of DocuSign is in the electronic signature and contract execution process, or the collection and management of data. If we can wrap our heads around the fact that we no longer need paper, we realize that we can collect and correct data throughout the process, shortening the round-trip of the data, driving shorter cycles, gaining greater visibility and achieving all the efficiencies of not producing, printing, shipping, receiving managing and storing of paper!  

How does taking paper out of the process affect YOU?  

DocuSign Connect for Salesforce is where No Paper meets No Software. For Enterprises, we take paper out of the sales and HR process, which means that an organization (your organization) no longer needs to produce, ship and store documents. Before DocuSign, data would be locked up in physical documents and once agreement was reached, would need to be rekeyed and entered into a database. With DocuSign’s Enterprise Class electronic signature and electronic contract execution process all transactions occur online with robust workflow processes and automatic real time updates… that means that the data captured in the electronic contract execution process is already online, secure, easy to find and easy to use!  
 
Because of Cloud Computing, we’ve seen a Facebook and Salesforce mashup create value resulting in customer delight. The mashup with Salesforce and DocuSign Connect for Salesforce provides:  
 

• End-to-end cloud-based contract execution built directly into the Salesforce workspace
• Real-time contract status updates – know where your deals are at any given moment
• Full DocuSign document sending capabilities embedded into Salesforce – so your salespeople can stay in a single workspace
• Direct data mapping which eliminates the need to re-key information driving massive efficiencies and speeding up your pipeline

 
The clear message from the Cloudforce Tour is that new and innovative ways of doing business in a fast paced world with a compressed economy are emerging every day. DocuSign Connect for Salesforce is a world class Mashup that speeds up the sales process, provides real time visibility into your pipeline of business and drives a wide array of efficiencies that organizations realize from day one.  Over and over again attendees who saw DocuSign in action at Cloudforce said “I gotta have that!” 
Ken’s favorite quote from the event was from a large Enterprise customer who said “Wow, with what we’re already doing in Salesforce your solution really will help my teams ‘Close it in the Cloud!’… with (DocuSign Connect for Salesforce) we can get rid of all of our filing cabinets and really build a paperless Enterprise!”