User management needs work.
Updated November 05, 2013

User management needs work.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Enterprise Edition

Modules Used

  • Product is not modularized, but sets of functionality

Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Sign

Pros

  • EchoSign handles the ability to manage signatures and the overall signing process very well.
  • EchoSign handles the ability to add smart tags to all types of documents for easy generation and usage
  • EchoSign document management is both searchable and easy to use
  • Integrates well with multiple systems, including Salesforce.com

Cons

  • User management needs work; for adding users it is fine however to edit users or remove them, it is lacking. Cannot send mass emails to users or get any kind of user history such when/who created/de-activated.
  • We don't currently measure anything specific around use of this tool, we are awesome like that, however I do know reps and legal spend far less time getting signatures than in the past.
  • We have a tangible audit trail for each one of our documents signed using EchoSign.
They have improved this in the latter half of 2012 adding more online help which they didn't have previously. With regards to the support by a person, sometimes answers seem delayed but again this has improved in the latter half of 2012.

2013 Update:
Support has improved over the last year as has the downtime however there still is some downtime; more than there should be if they have full data center redundancy, which they should but I don't know if they do. I still don't have access to what appears to be a support portal however that is likely due to my support level.
EchoSign is extremely easy to use through the entire signature cycle, from sending to signing to administration with a very guided approach.

The only way this could be more usable is if it auto-detected the fields but you can get there for the end users by using smart tags in just one extra admin step.
DocuSign was the other tool reviewed but at the time, EchoSign was much easier to use and administer.
While there are other vendors, such as DocuSign, and while I do have issues with the user management overall we have been happy with both the user and admin experiences.

One caveat I have is sometimes it behaves like a small company and doesn't think of the impacts on it's customers of changes it makes, but improving in this area. The other is that since Adobe purchased them, while product improvements have been improved in some aspects, they made changes that push you towards having to get a full Adobe license, which is sometimes irksome. You can still use the product fine but there are some changes that used to be noted in help but now the updated help direct towards Adobe license.

This can all be gotten around but as someone who used this tool prior to their Adobe acquisition, it is bad form.

Using Adobe Sign

75 - Sales team sending out sales contracts, Legal and administrators who support our executives.
1 - While we have 1 person it is far from a full time job. It is a Business Analyst position but could be done by any admin role. Could also be maintained by a superuser operations role.
  • It shortens the contract/legal document signature cycle time.
  • Allows for tracking where the document is in the signature process as well as sending reminders to all parties.
  • Adds a robust audit history to each document.
  • We used it for a very signature heavy internal project approvals that had to be linked to certain signatures on the doc and be signed in any order . While not innovative, it was good to see EchosSign was up to the job and we have templates for later use.
  • I am hoping we will use for vendor contracts, employment contracts and our corporate credit card, among others.
This would be a 9 or 10 except towards the end of 2012, there were several outages, one that was significant. EchoSign has taken steps to rectify this but they really should have handled both the outage and the subsequent communication better.

Evaluating Adobe Sign and Competitors

We were not using another software package and were just faxing contracts back and forth
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
EchoSign was far and away much easier to use than DocuSign at the time.
If re-doing the vendor evaluation for an esignature solution, we would conduct more in-depth comparisons and add other vendors to the mix. While I know we would have made the same choice in going with EchoSign, it would have still given use more detailed data for future reference.

Adobe Sign Implementation

We opted not to use the Salesforce.com integration however that was our internal business decision and it was the wrong one but that was our issue, not the vendor.

Whether you implement using just the web interface or both the web interface and the Salesforce.com integration, they are both easily done.
  • Implemented in-house
Yes - We only used the web based version and not the Salesforce.com integration however still opted to use with just Legal team first then moved on to implement with Sales team Over time we added partner, executive assistants and marketing.
Change management was a minor issue with the implementation - We implemented with Legal team first then we rolled out to Sales and I think we did a good job with change management.
  • Using the role based signatures.

Adobe Sign Training

  • Self-taught
Yes but still need training for end users especially if you have not set up smart tags and users have to drag signature blocks and other data into the legal documents.

Configuring Adobe Sign

The product for the most part is very easy to administer and maintain both in the web console and in Salesforce.com. However, there are still gaps in user management overall and file attachment management in salesforce.com.
I have now implemented EchoSign twice, once using web only with no integration with any system and the second time integrated with Salesforce.com. While the first, non-integrated implementation was much easier, the business value associated with the integration to CRM system to much more. The automated file attachment of the signed contract is just one small example of how this integration saves the sales time clicks and time.
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
No - we have not done any custom code
We have not done any customization to the UI or anything else as there as not been a need for it with the simpler and easier requirements of the first implementation and now with the second implementation using the agreement templates and built-in data mappings as part of integration setup, no additional customization has been necessary.

The one item we are considering is on the salesforce.com side.

Adobe Sign Support

ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
No escalation required
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
Not kept informed
Difficult to get immediate help
No - They don't currently offer premium support
Yes - The bugs I have logged were classified as product enhancements, which to be fair were more product limitations. EchoSign support offered to escalate up to product management and told me to log an idea.
I was in the midst of trying to do multiple more complicated documents, I had to log multiple support cases. One of the cases I logged was asking how to setup a document with very specific and somewhat complicated requirements and how to do that in EchoSign.

While he ultimately referred me to their training module for their smart tags, which was appropriate, he did respond very quickly to my questions with detailed information, including samples, regarding how to solve my issue when he could have just sent me to training or documentation.

Adobe Sign Reliability

I would have rated this a 9 or greater had they not had had such critical outages.

They have taken steps to resolve this so I may come in and revise this.
For the most part, speed and throughput are excellent.

Integrating Adobe Sign

  • Eventually we will integrate with Salesforce.com.
Yes, this is a standard integration.

Relationship with Adobe

As with many pre-sale processes, the vendor is very easy to work with and responsive. In some cases, you get info regarding how the tool works and/or product features that are either exaggerated or misunderstood, even misrepresented, by the sales rep. That was not the case here. Our sales rep was very knowledgeable and all the product feature were as described.
While we had good experiences for quite a while post-sale, changes in our customer managers as well as subsequent acquisition by Adobe Systems. Things went downhill fast post-acquisition.
Lower per license rate for the contract term.
Be willing and able to walk away to get a better price.

2013 Update:
They are losing customers due to their previous outages so they are slightly more willing to work on price.

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