Community Energy: Fueling Sales with Electronic Signature from DocuSign for Salesforce

Since 2002, Community Energy, L.P. has helped business, non-profits and residential customers benefit from reduced electrical costs. Community Energy works with large groups to combine their buying power to lower electrical rates from existing power providers.

Community Energy's Business Challenge

Texas' deregulated energy industry means that customers can select their electricity provider. Given that rates can fluctuate rapidly over short periods of time, residents and business owners can hunt for competitive prices but may lose their chances at the best deal.

Community Energy must sign contracts with clients that allow the company to represent them as well as agreements between them and the chosen energy suppliers. Often, clients include large residential communities in which members pool their electricity usage to obtain a better rate. These types of deals require signatures from all residents.

Scott Chilton, President and Managing Partner of Community Energy states:

We've had cases where the sales rep talked to the customer about a rate. By the time the paperwork was done and the contract sent, the rate was no longer any good and they had to go back and redo the contract again based on new market information.

When selecting a power provider, the contract process of:

1. Preparing paperwork
2. Delivering the paperwork through standard mail
3. Waiting for clients' responses
4. Updating contracts to reflect changes in oil-and-gas rates as they changed throughout the process

Can sometimes lead to losing good deals for Community Energy's customers and slower-than-desired close rates for the company. Additionally, Community Energy suffered from additional administrative pains to rework contracts.

The Solution? DocuSign for Salesforce

How did Community Energy reverse this business problem? With the leading electronic signature service, DocuSign for Salesforce, Community Energy has better control of the contract signing process and significantly accelerated the process of getting contracts signed and sales finalized.

According to Scott Chilton, President and Managing Partner for Community Energy:

DocuSign's integration with Salesforce allows us to quickly generate documents and distribute them to the customer for execution and then get them moved on to the supplier to book the energy. It immediately goes from the customer's office to the supplier so there is a very little gap in time for the market to move. DocuSign helps the customer lock in a rate at a low price and ensures that it gets preserved even if the market is moving quickly.

The Results for Community Energy

• Seamless workflow with the integration of DocuSign's Corporate Edition Enterprise e-signature solution with Community Energy's CRM system, Salesforce. Contracts travel quickly from salesperson to customer to power supplier.
• Contract creation with DocuSign codes and customer data already stored in Salesforce cut down on data-entry errors.
• Ease of use for Community Energy's customers with clear delineation to what they need to sign on a specific document.
• On-demand access to contracts for customers bolsters document retention capabilities for Community Energy and lends legitimacy to the process for end-users.

DocuSign for Salesforce also helps Community Energy and its sales agents ensure that its customers lock in a rate at a low price and understand the legality of the agreement:

When you're relying on a lot of different sales agents, sometimes they don't effectively communicate to the customer that they have to sign this particular clause or it's not going to be accepted. DocuSign does a great job of making sure the customer understands that they are committing to an agreement and that agreement is legal and binding, and then providing them with a mechanism for signing and viewing that contract.

Electronic signature enables Community Energy to significantly reduce contract turnaround time and only DocuSign for Salesforce gives Community Energy the ability to route contracts to numerous signers simultaneously to expedite complex group-rate contracts.