How DocuSign CLM Helps Celonis Scale Its Global Business

Businesses of all sizes are dealing with ever-growing complexity in their infrastructure—with competing tools and fragmented systems creating major performance issues. Celonis is changing that. Founded by three friends in Munich, Germany, Celonis got its start as a college project designed to help businesses remove inefficiencies from key processes. The result was the birth of a new technology called process mining, which uses AI to analyze data from a company’s network event logs to quickly pinpoint problems.

Celonis has been growing by triple digits every year, amassing an impressive client list that includes Dell, Uber, Pfizer and L’Oréal. “With our rapid growth, our contract volume has also increased dramatically,” said Nikol Gavranovic, contract manager. “We were looking for a solution that could create contracts in an automated and standardized manner so that we could work more efficiently internally.”

DocuSign enables the company to grow comfortably at scale while optimizing the entire contract lifecycle.

The path from e-signature to comprehensive contract management

Celonis’ partnership with DocuSign began in 2016 when the company implemented eSignature to empower a mobile sales force and provide a modern, seamless signing experience for applicants and employees on any device. As a result, time to signature improved by 70%—which means sales teams close deals faster, new hires get to work sooner; and HR can focus on people versus paper.

For the environmentally conscious company, CLM was “the next logical step.” Just as Celonis helps organizations across the globe make their processes less wasteful, the company is equally committed to running its own business in an efficient and sustainable way. “It’s very important for us to avoid paper as much as possible,” said Gavranovic. “With CLM, we no longer have to print, sign and scan contracts since they’re available centrally and digitally at any time.”

When it came to making the move to a more comprehensive contract management solution, four things drove Celonis’ decision to go with DocuSign CLM:

1. Employee familiarity with the platform.
2. Having a single platform that automates the entire agreement process.
3. Seamless integration with other key systems and processes.
4. Reliability and trust.

“Since our customers are located all over the world, it was very important for us to have a contract management platform that’s internationally accepted and trusted,” said Gavranovic. 

Greater freedom and efficiency for sales teams

Celonis first introduced CLM in January 2021 before rolling the solution out globally just two months later—a sprint made possible through the company’s close collaboration with implementation partner Spaulding Ridge.

For Gavranovic, one thing is clear: Enabling automation across the agreement process brings enormous benefits. Beyond accelerating the pace of doing business, using CLM to streamline the contract lifecycle reduces unnecessary risk while improving both the customer and employee experience.

"That’s in part because Celonis was able to define pre-approved clauses to reduce sales’ dependency on the legal team during negotiations," said Gavranovic. “CLM also makes reporting easier because we can better understand which conditions have been inserted where.”

But another important benefit for sales is the integration between CLM and Salesforce. Now, account executives can generate agreements using the tool they’re already working in—with relevant info automatically populated to reduce time and errors. Contracts can also be found in Salesforce at the account level, so they’re easily accessible. “Sales can focus on more strategic work now because there are no more contracting issues,” said Gavranovic.

A look into the future

According to Gavranovic, using CLM to automate sales workflows is just the beginning. “In the near future, we plan on using CLM in other areas of the business, such as procurement and HR.”  Gavranovic and her team are exploring opportunities to integrate CLM with other key business systems, including Workday, to simplify the hire-to-retire lifecycle and provide the digital recruiting and onboarding experience today’s talent expects.

“Above all, DocuSign helps us to become more efficient,” said Gavranovic.