Payworks modernizes agreement management for payroll onboarding with Docusign IAM

Every company and worker understands the importance of payroll. For more than 25 years, Payworks opens in a new tab has helped Canadian businesses manage payroll and employee operations with confidence, building trust with every pay run.

Payworks prides itself on being there for customers, starting from the first stages of onboarding. But as the company grew, delivering great experiences at scale became harder. Sales representatives spent too much time managing documents instead of engaging customers. New customers had to deal with long, repetitive forms, often entering the same information across multiple documents before they could get started with Payworks services.

The challenge wasn’t just inefficiency. It was friction at the exact moment when Payworks needed to build trust and momentum with new customers.

The company set out to change that. The team focused on simplifying the experience and using technology more intentionally to support both employees and customers.

“Technology should remove friction, not add to it,” said Maureen Kinnear, Chief Technology Officer at Payworks. “Our goal is to make it easier for customers and employees to get what they need, when they need it.”

Connecting Salesforce and Intelligent Agreement Management

Payworks started its transformation by partnering with Neuraflash opens in a new tab to implement Salesforce as its CRM. Neuraflash recommended Docusign Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) to fully activate the CRM and connect customer data, workflows, and agreements.

By adopting Docusign IAM as a unified, AI-powered platform and integrating it directly into Salesforce, Payworks reimagined its onboarding and agreement processes from the ground up. Instead of juggling disconnected tools and manual steps, the team now manages the entire agreement lifecycle in one place, from data collection to signature to system of record.

From fragmented workflows to a single, connected system

Sales representatives once spent a lot of their time assembling and emailing intake forms, contracts, and supporting documents in a variety of formats. Every time they pulled data or entered it back into the previous CRM system, there was a chance for inconsistency or error.

With Docusign IAM for Sales, Payworks built a new workflow directly inside Salesforce. Sales representatives no longer switch apps. They trigger onboarding with a single button, which drives adoption and ensures a consistent, guided process every time.

From there, Docusign Workflow Builder orchestrates the process end-to-end. The platform pulls existing customer data from Salesforce and uses it to pre-populate Docusign Web Forms, so customers only provide what is missing. Agreements route automatically based on deal type, with the appropriate  terms, language, and recipients applied every time. Processes that used to require constant follow-up now happen in the background.

Automated reminders keep agreements progressing without manual follow-up. Real-time visibility allows sales teams to see exactly where each agreement stands. And every completed document writes back into Salesforce, creating a consistent, reliable system of record. This shift improves efficiency and introduces a new level of consistency and control.

“We had a fragmented, manual process that relied heavily on email and required a lot of back-and-forth from our sales team,” said Willie Malcolm, Vice President of Operations at Payworks.

By eliminating manual work and streamlining the process, Payworks decreases the time needed to close deals by 41% and frees up more time for sales representatives. They can spend more time building relationships and answering customer questions. Payworks estimates that the time saved adds up to nearly five full-time employees worth of labor, or more than half a million dollars annually, which means that sales teams can handle a growing customer base without expanding headcount.

Simplifying onboarding for every customer

The impact is just as clear for customers. Using Docusign IAM, Payworks pre-populates key information into Docusign web forms, so customers no longer repeat what they have already shared. They can complete forms on their own time, from any device, and move directly into signing with Docusign eSignature. Each step feels intentional, intuitive and easy to complete.

By removing unnecessary complexity, agreements no longer stall due to confusion or missing information. Payworks helps customers move forward with confidence.

“The goal was to make it easier for our customers to move forward and easier for our sales team to support them,” says Malcolm. “With Docusign IAM, we make it easier for customers to complete and sign agreements faster.”

Payworks reduced total average time-to-sign by 25%. Previously, about 55% of agreements were completed within 24 hours, but others could take as long as 5 to 21 days as customers put off paperwork. Now 87% of agreements are finalized in one day, nearly eliminating the long tail of delayed agreements.

Faster agreement execution means customers start using Payworks sooner. And for Payworks, that translates directly into faster time to revenue and a stronger first impression.

Building a smarter, more scalable future

Payworks continues to build on this momentum with the Docusign IAM platform. The team is exploring Docusign Automated Document Generation to instantly create agreements from intake data, along with Identity Verification to streamline onboarding and help strengthen compliance. These capabilities extend the same principles that drove the initial transformation, reducing friction while increasing speed and accuracy.

At the same time, Payworks is leaning into AI as a driver of future innovation. 

“We’re actively investing in AI to create opportunities for additional productivity and automate more complex processes,” said Kinnear. “But it’s just as important to balance that with security, governance, and maintaining the trust our customers place in us.”

By bringing agreements, data, and automation into a single intelligent platform, Payworks has done more than modernize a workflow. “With Docusign IAM, we turned a fragmented, manual process into a seamless, automated experience that works for both our teams and our customers,” says Kinnear.