DocuSign is revolutionizing the way businesses handle deals through innovative AI technology, … [+]
At a time when the AI revolution is spreading to most aspects of business, one area that has remained surprisingly untouched is business agreements and contracts. That’s about to change, as DocuSign, the company that brought e-signatures into the mainstream, is now using AI to revolutionize the way businesses create, manage and derive value from their deals.
The hidden problem with modern agreements
While we’ve digitized countless business processes, deals have largely remained stuck in the past. Yes, we edit them in Word and email them, but as DocuSign CEO Allan Thygesen explains, “Everything about agreements remains as fragile, delayed and unpredictable as it ever was.”
The problem goes deeper than just inefficient processing. As Thygesen points out, “Once you negotiate the deal, the weird thing is that you spend all this time on it, and then you put it in a deep, dark place and there’s no visibility into what’s actually in the deal .” This lack of visibility means companies often miss crucial deadlines, renewal opportunities and chances to improve their deals.
How AI is transforming deal management
DocuSign’s approach to solving this problem was perfectly timed. “I joined DocuSign just as there was a step change in what we could do with AI, right around the time GPT 3.5 was launched,” shares Thygesen. This technological breakthrough has enabled DocuSign to transform unstructured deal data into actionable intelligence.
The company’s AI platform can now extract key data from deals, make it searchable and compare it to actual results from different business systems. But it doesn’t stop there. AI can also help create agreements, adapt templates and even perform initial legal reviews of incoming contracts.
Real-world applications that are changing business
The impact of this technology is already being felt in various business functions. Thygesen highlights three key areas where their AI-powered platform is making a significant difference:
In sales, the platform enables businesses to track renewal dates, notice periods and renegotiation opportunities. This prevents missed opportunities and empowers sales teams with essential information that was previously buried in deals.
For procurement teams, which are typically resource-constrained, AI helps manage vendor relationships more effectively. “Procurement teams are usually quite small,” notes Thygesen. “Having tools that can make them more productive is very important.”
In HR and recruitment, where there are many employment contracts that need to be managed and updated, the platform can streamline high-volume processes while ensuring compliance. It enables rapid customization of deals and packages while maintaining regulatory compliance.
The future of AI-powered deals
Looking ahead, DocuSign envisions a future where AI can handle all deal processes autonomously, especially for simpler documents. “I think it will be technically possible to do this with higher accuracy for simple deals in a fairly short way,” predicts Thygesen. It suggests that standardized documents like NDAs could be among the first to see full automation.
However, Thygesen maintains a balanced perspective on the role of AI: “For a number of reasons, including risk compliance, regulatory and others, I think it will be some time before anything but the most sophisticated deals are released. irrelevant. I think there will always be a human in the end, at least.”
The bigger picture
DocuSign’s ultimate vision is ambitious yet practical. “If we are successful, we will develop the first system of record for deals,” says Thygesen. This would replace the current distributed approach where deals get lost in email threads or buried on various digital drives.
The transformation is already underway. With 1.6 million monthly paying businesses, DocuSign is well positioned to lead this revolution. The evidence of progress is striking: Thygesen reveals that “their costs to process a deal have dropped by two orders of magnitude in the last 15 months” thanks to continued technological advancement.
A new chapter in business efficiency
As businesses continue to look for ways to improve efficiency and reduce costs, DocuSign’s AI-powered approach to deal management represents a significant step forward. By turning static documents into dynamic, intelligent assets, they’re not just solving a technology problem—they’re addressing a fundamental business challenge that affects organizations of all sizes.
The future of business deals is being rewritten. But as with all significant technological advances, the key to success will lie in finding the right balance between automation and human supervision, between efficiency and control, and between innovation and reliability.
