Smoother Contract Workflows, Stronger Partnerships

Like many technology companies, Adobe relies on its relationships with resellers to help promote and sell its solutions to customers. Adobe Platinum Partners enjoy dedicated support and other benefits from Adobe to reward them for their high sales performance.

While achieving Platinum Partner status is a big accomplishment, the partner contracts that outline this new engagement are about 21 pages long and could take about 20 days to complete, along with a lot of back-and-forth sending between the various parties. The Adobe Partner Connection (APC) team traditionally had to issue a request within Salesforce’s enterprise content management system to start the process.

The Adobe legal team would then draft the contract, which would be funneled back through Salesforce to an APC representative, who use Microsoft Outlook to pass it along to the partner. The partner would then review, sign, send back, and wait for finalization and approval from the APC team.

“Completing Platinum Partnership contracts was often a slow and lengthy process for us and our partners,” says Indu Jarial, Senior Manager, APAC, Partner Strategy & Programs, APAC Consumer & Business at Adobe. “However, we knew that if we could digitalize the workflow, we could boost operational and cost efficiencies while improving the service experience for our partners.”

And that’s exactly what the team did. The APAC pilot program specifically sought to streamline the contract renewal process through an innovative workflow powered by the seamless integration between Adobe Sign, Salesforce CRM, and Microsoft Outlook.

Supporting fluid contract signing, management, and review

Sales staff were the focus of this pilot program because so many Platinum Partners have people out in the field trying to close deals and get contracts finalized. Turnaround times on contracts immediately dropped from 20 days to about 2 hours.

What’s more, the highly automated nature of this new process lowered the number of emails sent for each contract by 75% while simplifying management and auditing procedures. Remote sales personnel can even complete their ends of the contracts on mobile devices while out in the field.

While partners were the pilot program’s focus, the internal APC team also enjoyed significant efficiency gains and operational improvements. For example, APC staff can now fluidly manage contracts in motion through Microsoft Outlook using the Adobe Sign plug-in and Salesforce CRM integration.

“The visibility we get from Adobe Sign and Microsoft Outlook notifications keeps everyone on the same page,” says Jarial. “This helps our account managers, who no longer need to worry about pushing amendment agreements through the process and lets them focus on closing deals.”

Spreading innovative signing workflows worldwide

Considering the importance of maintaining exceptional relationships with partners and the immense success of the program, Adobe plans to expand the pilot to other regions. The integrated workflow has the potential to significantly streamline a range of accounting, auditing, contract and customer relationship management, human resources, and other core business procedures as well.

To learn more about how the new workflow is playing out in the APAC region, as well as what the integration between Adobe Sign, Microsoft Outlook, and Salesforce CRM can do for your organization, click here.