DocuSign gets easier global management

Managing businesses across multiple geographies is one major problem for any company, especially if it is growing quickly. But managing the business across multiple revenue streams in multiple currencies and tax regimes can become an issue that swamps a business.

It is the reason that digital transaction management specialist, DocuSign has turned to Netsuite for its OneWorld financial management suite to provide real-time financial consolidation, global business operational efficiency and streamlined revenue recognition.

It now relies on OneWorld to manage its core business operations including financial consolidation, revenue recognition, multi-currency, multi-language and tax compliance across five subsidiaries in four countries.

DocuSign faced an increasing number of challenges including the need to recognise revenue from subscription licensing, as well as non-subscription revenue streams including support, professional services, training and user conferences. It also lacked a simple and transparent process for currency conversions, had no real-time visibility into its global business operations and suffered tedious manual financial consolidation.

It also had a need for a flexible solution that was easy to integrate with other cloud services.

NetSuite OneWorld is designed for the needs of global software companies, with built in support for real-time multi-subsidiary financial consolidation and reporting, multi-currency, multinational taxation rules and unified real-time views into the business performance of each and every subsidiary.

Users get streamlined billing and renewal processes, accurate financial reporting, and the ability to meet revenue recognition requirements and comply with the new Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) rules for multi-element sales, known as EITF 08-01 and EITF 09-03. 

With support for 190 currencies, 19 languages and automated tax compliance in more than 50 countries, NetSuite OneWorld enables DocuSign to run its critical revenue recognition functions.

Personnel spent approximately nine full days a month doing revenue allocations and amortisations in complex spreadsheets with more than 100,000 lines. With NetSuite OneWorld, DocuSign has dramatically improved the efficiency and accuracy of its revenue recognition, reducing workload while minimising the risk of error.

It can also manage multi-currency transactions in the Euro, Sterling, Brazilian Real and Australian and Canadian Dollars, increasing its visibility into multi-currency business, and provide a simple and transparent process for currency conversions.

Subsidiary financials can now be seen in a single view versus switching between screens and individual subsidiary log-ons, while critical business processes can be streamlined by integrating OneWorld with other cloud solutions including Concur’s time and expense management, Salesforce.com’s CRM and Adaptive Insights’ budgeting and forecasting.

The deployment of NetSuite OneWorld aligns with DocuSign’s corporate philosophy, to operate its business in the cloud whenever possible.

“NetSuite offers a more transparent view of conversion amounts. NetSuite is a robust and complete solution that we’ve integrated with our other SaaS applications to improve efficiency end-to-end,” said Matt Marquez, DocuSign Corporate Controller. “NetSuite has been a huge improvement, helping our finance team close the books faster while providing a great user experience for our employees.”