One signature difference
What can one signature change? A lot.
I am currently working on a project where we are building a platform for investment advisors. It will allow them to invest money on behalf of their clients in digital asset class investments. It’s a great opportunity to build a new kind of business opportunity while taking an innovative technology approach. As they say, the sky's the limit.
One thing I am responsible for is architecting all the systems required to support this new venture. You can imagine the need for collaboration, document sharing, instant communication is just a small part of what every company needs. Also, the number of applications available to choose from is staggering.
The challenges very quickly become apparent. How do you manage all your users? How do you control the cost? And how do you integrate all the apps to create a cohesive environment where information is secure, accessible and discoverable?
One of the guiding principles for me is the 'less is more' approach. For instance, when we started, we had to execute on many legal agreements. The obvious choice was to use DocuSign, the behemoth of eSignatures. You can sign up and start sending documents for signatures in a few minutes. Easy.
And then we had to prepare for the due diligence process. Auditors, investors, banks - they all require access to documents and you want to be able to control and audit this process. You need to know who saw what, when and where. We choose Box for that. From document creation, desktop/device synchronization to full control and reporting - it’s all in 'one Box' ...
Except, one thing was missing. In order for a document to get signed, you have to move it from one system to another. The seamless process has been disrupted. Could Box and DocuSign be integrated? Yes. It could be done. But you need licenses for both products. You need to train people. And you need to manage it.
Then in February 2021, Box bought an eSignature company SignRequest. Suddenly, it provided - with no extra cost - the same functionality as DocuSign. We discontinued our use of DocuSign and moved the signature functionality to Box.
Was it because DocuSign is not a good product? Absolutely not! But in our context, it no longer makes sense to use it. Even so, DocuSign is a mature product and it will take Box some time to catch up to build features which you get used to. Box’s eSignature functionality is good enough.
Is Box competing with DocuSign? I don't think so. But Box created a headache for DocuSign. A feature which was unique in the industry suddenly became a commodity.
DocuSign is the leader in this space. It is integrated in so many applications that are useful for very large customers. That's a strength and weakness at the same time. Any migration is expensive and affects many systems within the organization. But nothing prevents Box from mimicking the DocuSign API functionality and helping the customers to move from one system to another. Box is not going to lose customers to DocuSign, but DocuSign will lose customers to Box.
But the worst part for DocuSign is still coming. Our signature will eventually be tied to our identity and transactions will be attached to the blockchain. The underlying infrastructure for this will become available on AWS (Amazon cloud). DocuSign will become irrelevant.
In the meantime, I have a new product to build. That's my recurrent pattern. (Exciting times ahead!)