Accelerating digital transformation with Pierre Fabre and DocuSign

DocuSign partnered with Pierre Fabre, a French multinational pharmaceutical & dermo-cosmetics group, to help them accelerate digital transformation. Pierre Fabre operates mainly in the fields of oncology and dermatology, as well as dermo-cosmetics through international brands such as Eau Thermale Avène, Ducray, Klorane and A-Derma. More than 95% of Pierre Fabre products are manufactured in France, but they also have 10,000 employees worldwide and had a turnover of €2.4 billion in 2019.

Accelerating digital transformation

The Pierre Fabre Group began its digital transformation around 2015. The legal department of the Pierre Fabre group played an essential role in the adoption of an electronic signature solution as part of their transformation, and to date, it is the main department that uses the solution. Several reasons led the Pierre Fabre group to choose DocuSign, including the native DocuSign integration with SAP.  

The deployment of DocuSign within the Pierre Fabre group began in March 2019, and the role of DocuSign's Customer Success Architect teams was paramount. The team helped Pierre Fabre organise the project and outlined roles and responsibilities for each stage of the integration. Pierre Fabre and DocuSign worked together to define the critical use cases for electronic signatures and to communicate the solution to users throughout the group. The project required the definition of KPIs, a usage monitoring analysis and an adoption estimate according to the different businesses and companies of the Pierre Fabre group.

The legal team initiated the execution of the many contracts necessary for the health sector, which include research, partnerships, manufacturing, and distribution. The legal departments also deal with other contracts, such as delegations of power or confidentiality agreements. The project started with a pilot under the direction of Arnaud Lamy. The project team also included Philippe Paulhac, IS project manager at Pierre Fabre. He says: “The involvement of IS security was required because we had important recommendations to share. The same was true for IS architects to understand how to integrate the solution into our information system and streamline the signing process. Finally, the user support team helped us set up all the deployment procedures, help desks, and training courses”.

Increasing DocuSign Use Cases

Over a few months, the advantages and results of the digitisation of the initial agreement processes were shared among other users. Philippe Paulhac remembers, “in March 2020 and at the start of the restrictions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, the requests and number of uses exploded. Fortunately, we were already set up and organised at that time for the rapid processing of access requests via application forms, deployment procedures and training. This prevented us from being taken aback by the speed of acceleration”.

Deployment to other departments

By 2021, the legal, HR and IT departments were the main users of DocuSign eSignature. The Pierre Fabre group calculated benefits in terms of the speed of completion of many types of contracts. Previously signing contracts took an average of three weeks, with cases that could go up to six or seven weeks. Today, thanks to DocuSign, more than a third of envelopes are signed within a day, half in less than two days and three-quarters in less than five days.

For its other activities, such as R&D, regulatory affairs, Quality Assurance and operations, the Pierre Fabre group is in the process of deployment and ensuring each business area is reassured concerning regulation and compliance in line with the high requirements of health authorities.