In 2007, Travelport acquired Worldspan, which offers worldwide electronic distribution of travel information, Internet products and connectivity, and e-commerce capabilities for travel agencies, travel service providers and corporations. Today, the Worldspan reservations system provides more than 20,800 travel agencies and other users worldwide travel data and booking capabilities for hundreds of the world’s leading travel service suppliers. Worldspan processes more than 50% of all online travel agency bookings.
Business Challenge
The need to solve an urgent business problem sometimes drives technology solutions. Such was the case when Worldspan regional sales manager Ron Mosher had to get more than 100 customers to sign documents ahead of a major rollout of Web-based services.
Mosher met his deadline by signing up for the DocuSign eSignature service, and within a few hours had the signatures he needed—a process that would have taken days or weeks using faxes or overnight mail.
Based on DocuSign’s success in his business unit, Mosher presented DocuSign to other groups within Worldspan. Almost immediately, Pat Hochstein, vice president—North American Sales, adopted DocuSign for Worldspan’s Enterprise sales group in North America. The team found that any document they could print could be sent just as easily to DocuSign for a customer’s signature. DocuSign Solution
Worldspan’s sales and contract management group is based on a Siebel CRM OnDemand system, “to ensure that we deliver as promised to our customers,” Hochstein said. The company anticipated considerable benefits if the DocuSign solution could be integrated into Worldspan’s Seibel system. Results
Worldspan’s sales and contract management group is based on a Siebel CRM OnDemand system, “to ensure that we deliver as promised to our customers,” Hochstein said. The company anticipated considerable benefits if the DocuSign solution could be integrated into Worldspan’s Seibel system.
Results
The DocuSign-Seibel integration turned out to be simple and straightforward. The DocuSign service and its gateway technology performed well from the start and proved highly reliable.
Worldspan’s use of the DocuSign electronic signature service has grown dramatically since Mosher’s initial blast. The Atlanta-based company now uses DocuSign to manage contracts with 2,700 customers who electronically sign tens of thousands of documents every year.
In its first year of operation, Worldspan estimates that the DocuSign service has saved the company more than $80,000 in hard costs. This rapid return on investment, combined with the ease-of-use and functionality of the solution, has been a positive experience for Worldspan. DocuSign lets the Worldspan sales team focus on meeting customer needs and closing deals in a prompt and timely manner— all of which add up to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Hochstein’s team had expected Worldspan customers to take some time to accept DocuSign electronic signatures, since most were accustomed to using faxes in their businesses. However, DocuSign proved easy to learn and use, and fit well with Worldspan’s own rollout of Web-based services.
By using DocuSign, Worldspan has:
• Significantly lowered the administrative costs associated with printing, faxing, filing and mailing contracts
• Transferred some administrative staff into more customer-centric roles
• Created full visibility into which contracts are out for signature and the current status of each document
• Eliminated a paper-based process that was highly labor intensive
• Improved customer satisfaction by eliminating the errors associated with signing paper contracts, including signing in the wrong locations.
“With DocuSign, we don’t have to worry about tracking down faxes or paper documents anymore,” Hochstein said. “Everything is automatically integrated into our CRM system. And, DocuSign maintains a permanent record with a full audit trail that validates every signature. We are very pleased with the performance, user experience and reliability of the DocuSign system.”
