DocuSign vs. Workiva

This product is well suited in the use case that I provided before: when it comes to onboarding employees and providing a clear channel for decision making for human resources, this is an excellent tool to accomplish that. I would say the weak points is when you have back and forth communication with users that it might seem a little redundant to have that back and forth communication in that scenario.

Incentivized

Wdesk is best suited for companies with demanding SEC filings and documents, with multiple revisions due to auditor/counsel review, and where financial reporting is extremely manual. Wdesk really helps take out the potential errors out of extremely manual processes, and helps automate regular financial reporting by allowing companies to link financial information and build customized flows of their information into financial statements and other documents (such as presentations or other internal reporting).

Incentivized

• Ease of sending the same document out to multiple recipients, at multiple locations, for multiple signatures
• Quick turnaround - once the recipient signs the document, we receive notification and the document back immediately
• Can resend, alter, change, and/or add to the email and/or document that is sent out very easily
• The recipient can save the document after signing, so they too have their own electronic copy for their records

Incentivized

• The biggest strength of the program for our team is that multiple users can work in the document at the same time. Multiple users can be in the program updating financial statements, footnotes, MD&A - all without stepping on each other's toes.
• Rolling forward the documents from one period to the next is pretty simple. Links to source documents are maintained and new ones can be added without much hassle.
• Edits and changes can be made right up until the last minute before filing. There is no waiting period or pencils-down period unless we enforce one ourselves - the Financial Reporting team is in control of the timing of our filings.

Incentivized

• Tracking, particularly when collecting signatures through connected applications, such as an ATS, is not always clean or easily traceable.
• Formatting documents to handle electronic signature types (signatures, initials, etc.) is not always easy, and highly dependent on the partner's technology.
• It is not convenient to have to use DocuSign as a stand alone product if the signatures are required for 3rd party applications. It definitely excels on its own, but the scope of that usage, at least for us, is slim.

Incentivized

• The automation could be better. A lot of mass updates are done manually.
• Sometimes the system has connection issues and certain functions are down.
• The customer service could be more proactive to provide regular training and sharing updates on the software.
• Customer service could be better to help process the mass updates in a timely fashion.

Incentivized

I can't imagine doing business without DocuSign now. I would never want to go back to the way we used to do things. The "new way" is "the way" is "the right way." We can honestly be proud of a "one right way" process and not have to suffer through "5 ways for 5 days."

Incentivized

Generally user-friendly once you have command of the basics, but also has a lot of nuances that can make it difficult to train others on. DocuSign University is a helpful tool, but understandably a lot of content to get through to become a well-versed user. A lot of different functionalities but only a few I use on a weekly basis.

Incentivized

Overall it's a good-to-go product because of its features. It's easy to set up, meets requirements, has quality support, etc. So far, it has been working quite well for me, and I wish to continue using it for as long as it meets my requirements.

Incentivized

It does not go down. I have had zero issues with DocuSign, approaching 4 years.

Incentivized

Everything loads quickly. Reports are generated in a reasonable time. No noticeable difference in integrated software processing speeds.

Incentivized

I'd give them a 10, but there has been 1 or 2 small cases that seemed to fall to the wayside, but I was able to call them up and get them resolved. We were having a bad implementation night (after midnight) and we needed assistance from Docusign. They were able to get an engineer to help us in the early morning hours

Incentivized

Workiva's technical support is impeccable and undoubtedly one of the best. The times we needed them, they were super quick and willing to help. It works 24 hours a day, and there will always be someone to help with doubts or technical problems regarding the tool.

Incentivized

Docusign is super easy to use, and apart from a few administration details, there was really nothing to train on. Post implementation, there were issues with configuration of auto-filled documents with the integrating 3rd party. That training required some time, because the DocuSign expert took the time to walk me through the 3rd party's configuration (how often does that happen?) so I could see how DocuSign should be best used to overcome weaknesses in the 3rd party platform. 10/10 expert care.

Incentivized

Until you get the hang of it, I recommend doing several internal tests before sending a document to a client. As I mentioned earlier, you have to go through a bit of trial and error at first to verify that the workflow works as expected.

There has never been anything that we could really compare to Docusign. We have tried sending documents in a PDF version, but that was not nearly as efficient. DocuSign saves your signature in the system and uses that as it goes through your documents.

Incentivized

We moved from a third party filer to doing it in house. Have seen demos of products like Active Disclosure, which has come a long way from the beta version I saw and but we are not too far gone with Wdesk for us to evaluate other products. When we first signed up with Webfilings, (former name of Workiva), there were no viable products in the market. I had seen an Oracle product and a beta version of Active Disclosure. It was not hard to see the ease and intuitive-screens, to guide one through the filing process. The excel-like spreadsheets were an added bonus.

Incentivized

In my years of using DocuSign, I have never had an outage. I haven't even encountered a bug.

Incentivized

• Less paper use, faster signature times, less time standing at the printer/scanner to send documents to yourself
• Security over your signature! Security over your company's signature and authorization to approve projects, cash flow etc
• Love audit trails and the seamless tracking of the status of the document

Incentivized

• We spend less than we used to with a traditional printer.
• We have been able to do turn-on-a-dime equity offerings with last minute changes and still file on time.
• Inviting external legal into the platform has helped with communication but we actually suspect they spend MORE time (and billing) on our documents than they used to just simply because it's so easy to get at them anytime they want.

Incentivized