‘What I actually ask the partners to do is to talk about where can they bring value to the customer, and that value could be determined through redefining how something’s done, efficiency of how they work with people, and that could be realized in either efficiency or incremental value that they haven’t been able to reach or unlock,’ Docusign partner executive Bronwyn Hastings tells CRN.
Bronwyn Hastings’ latest chapter in the channel is serving as Docusign’s group vice president of partner development and alliances, overseeing adoption of the vendor’s new partner program and a strategy to lean in with partners.
The San Francisco-based agreement management software vendor revealed Hastings’ new role in March, and she’s hit the ground running with a new partner program meant to bring resellers, systems integrators and other business models along to help customers cut down on an estimated $2 trillion a year lost to poor agreement management, Hastings told CRN in an interview.
Docusign’s recently unveiled Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform is a way into that market, she said.
“We’ve come from an eSignature world, where partners have had a very specific role,” Hastings said. “Then we’ve had contract life-cycle management, CLM, which is a smaller world. And now you bring in IAM. It goes from a legal environment, if I could put it that way, to having the opportunity around sales, HR, procurement and so much more expansion.”
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Docusign Partner Program
Steve Harber, executive chairman of Cimplifi, a Pittsburgh-based Docusign partner that offers managed services as part of its portfolio, told CRN in an interview that the vendor’s new IAM platform should open up more opportunities with enterprise clients already using CLM+.
“That’s always been one of the strengths of Docusign—there are a number of products out there that can be successful for one use case or in one department, but our strategy with Docusign is to go in, get the first use case and then expand to the other groups within the organization,” he said.
The vendor’s investment in AI will take its products to the next level, he said.
“There could be instances where a client could need to analyze hundreds of thousands of contracts to meet a regulatory requirement,” he said. “By using AI, we can save them a tremendous amount of cost.”
When asked by CRN if growing concerns around a recession due to global tariffs makes Docusign an effective efficiency play for channel partners, Hastings said her advice to partners is to focus on value over efficiency.
“Being able to reimagine how some of these processes are done, you can also make sure that you’re setting yourself up for future value and opportunity versus hardening technical debt and what you’re doing,” she said. “I always like to have that forward-thinking approach rather than going on the operational side only.”
Before joining Docusign in March, Hastings worked at UiPath for about a year as senior vice president of global partners and ecosystems. Her resume includes about three years with Google as corporate vice president of global ISV partnerships and channels—leaving in 2023—plus about a year with Citrix as senior vice president of worldwide channel sales and ecosystem.
She left Citrix in 2021, according to her LinkedIn account. Hastings also worked at SAP for more than eight years, leaving in 2019 as senior vice president of business development. And she spent about 14 years at Oracle, leaving in 2011 as a senior vice president overseeing acquired companies’ channel strategies.
Here’s more of what Hastings had to say about Docusign’s channel partner program.
What do Docusign partners need to know about the opportunity with IAM?
It’s a first-of-a-kind intelligent agreement management platform.
It is built on a powerful AI engine … purpose-built for agreements. And that makes it a really strong fabric for the way that we can reimagine the aspects of the agreement flow from create to commit all the way through to manage.
Poor agreement management costs businesses nearly $2 trillion globally. If you think about that statement, where they regularly lose that economic value on a year-to-year basis, that’s a very expansive market—and an opportunity ahead for us and for the partners in our world.
We’ve come from an eSignature world, where partners have had a very specific role.
Then we’ve had contract life-cycle management, CLM, which is a smaller world. And now you bring in IAM.
It goes from a legal environment, if I could put it that way, to having the opportunity around sales, HR, procurement and so much more expansion.
Docusign has around 1.7 million customers … 1 billion users and about 95 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. So put that as your baseline, and then bring all of this opportunity on top of that.
Take that now into this expansion of where we can get to all these other places we haven’t been serving, and it sets the table stakes for what’s the opportunity for the partners.
This is not a wait-and-see moment, it’s a step-in-and-lead moment. And that’s what we’re doing—we’re stepping in and leading with IAM and the opportunity across create, commit and manage.
How is Docusign changing its partner program?
We’re evolving the partner program to better support two things. One, the partners along the customer’s life cycle.
So our program before has had all of these things intertwined, and we’re now saying, ‘We want to recognize when you’re building, when you’re selling and when you’re servicing customers.’
And maybe your needs are going to be somewhat different on those cycles. The second thing is as the product portfolio has expanded, we’re really looking at specialization.
What do you need to know to be truly proficient in the AI-driven world of the IAM? We’re trying to make sure that the partners are proficient in each of those areas, with that specialization view expanding on the product sets.
This opportunity is accelerating now. IAM is one of our fastest-growing product areas.
It does require specialization, and it doesn’t matter whether someone’s coming from an eSignature world or a CLM world, they can expand from where they are into this opportunity.
Eighty-seven percent of the customers say that they want partners that are specialized in the area that they’re looking for.
How do we make sure that that happens? That’s the reason for the change right now and why we are moving into build, sell and service [as partner tracks]. And then how we’re bringing specialization underneath that.
The first stage of it is about giving early access to road maps, making sure that we’re doing things like ‘partner power hours’ so partners can call in and get answers easily and efficiently.
We’re reimagining our Partner Advisory Boards so that we keep very close to the partners as we go through the stage to make sure we have got the voice of the partner at the center.
We are doing webinars when there are major releases so that they get to understand what’s in it, what’s iin it for them and how to serve the customer at that stage.
We’re really doubling down right now on specialization and making sure that we give them early access, easy access and build their competency so that they can serve the customers where the customers are at.
We’re giving them a 12-month period to work with us to get all of their specializations up. We want it to be an enabler, not something that’s a detractor.
We want to make sure that they can get to the stages they need to get to during this year.
We’ve seen companies like Monjur and MSPTerms come out with MSP-focused contract management—how does Docusign view niche vendors like those?
A lot of the companies that deal with contract life-cycle management actually do it on specific topics. What we’ve got now is the opportunity to do it all the way through the life cycle.
We’re looking at this as how do we create that life-cycle create, commit, manage across that. And we can cover it all.
So we’re one of the only ones that can cover it all. So when we talk to partners now, that’s the opportunity we’re showing them. And the opportunity for them to actually get into more of the market that exists as well.
Rather than being specific answers to specific industries or specific questions in CLM, it allows you to expand into many more areas of a company and actually be that central point of connective systems of intelligence across the contract life cycle.
How is Docusign transforming for the AI era?
The AI is almost purpose-built in this instance for agreements, and then how that seamlessly integrates into agreements and unlocks the data of agreements and how that actually can serve across a much broader portfolio.
When you have that AI-centered, purpose-driven approach, you’ve got the ability to answer so many of the customers’ biggest questions around this but also unlock what they’ve already got.
AI has changed so much of how everything works. And this gives us the opportunity to bring AI to life in a real, tangible way through the data that they can unlock in the agreement.
You can imagine redefining the way that that data is used around this as well to support some of the opportunities that customers are looking at … $2 trillion in global economic value lost each year because of the lack of management of some of this.
Just harnessing some of that and really giving back to the customers and the efficiency and the way that they actually imagine or reimagine the way they could do this as well.
Is Docusign looking to lean in with distributors as well?
We actually have a multichannel approach. We do have distributors, we do have resellers, we do have service providers, we do have ISVs. And we also work with marketplaces.
So just to go across the full-stretch spectrum of multichannel—distributors are a part of the strategy and it remains part of how we actually serve in a number of places as well.
It’s a little early for me to make a comment on [whether Docusign wants to expand distributor relationships].
Distribution is a foundation for how we’re serving resell. If you think about the number of customers and the segments we cover—from enterprise all the way down to SMB—there’s definitely a role that is key for all of these channels.
And certainly part of that channel evaluation is how do we leverage the capabilities that are there and ensure that it’s supporting the customers in the best way.
Any advice to partners on how they should talk to cost-conscious customers worried about the effect of global tariffs on their businesses?
I actually start with value rather than efficiency. I always go to value because value could be determined by efficiency.
What I actually ask the partners to do is to talk about where can they bring value to the customer, and that value could be determined through redefining how something’s done, efficiency of how they work with people, and that could be realized in either efficiency or incremental value that they haven’t been able to reach or unlock.
I actually tend to turn it around into finding where value is the driver, and that value can turn up in multiple ways. And we can show you how to help support it in those different ways.
You can get efficiency, but you want to really also get reimagined value.
Being able to reimagine how some of these processes are done, you can also make sure that you’re setting yourself up for future value and opportunity versus hardening technical debt and what you’re doing.
I always like to have that forward-thinking approach rather than going on the operational side only. That’s just my personal way of looking at this.
How will you continue to iterate on the partner program?
It’s not a one and done. It is a process, and we will be continuing that journey over the year.
It’s a journey of listening to the partner voice and making sure that we’re getting them ready.
They’re on the journey with us.
For Docusign partners still getting to know you, what should they know about your work history?
I often share that I’ve had the opportunity in different companies to do a lot of acquisitions as well. And that has given me the opportunity to see how things are run in a partner community.
And bring all of that learning between my background in applications, hyperscalers and process and platforms—what I’m leaning into here is to have a look at that and say, ‘What is right for Docusign and its partnerships, and how do I bring that learning to the fore?’
It’s an exciting time to put all of that together into good work.
