Baker Communications builds business, accelerates onboarding with Adobe Acrobat Sign

As a performance improvement organization, Texas-based Baker Communications knows a lot about the best ways to work. Globally recognized companies and government agencies, including Amazon, SAP, and Ingersoll Rand, depend on Baker for personalized training and coaching to help sales teams deliver the best possible customer experiences with greater confidence and speed.

“We look at how an organization can enhance its revenue, sales structure, and leadership to focus more on customers,” explains Isidro Iturralde, strategic account manager at Baker. “Our focus is on guiding clients toward strategies that optimize customer experiences.”

With 30 full-time employees and a network of 200-300 consultants worldwide, this mid-market company has big ambitions for growth over the next few years — and it’s focusing its performance improvement expertise on itself.

To build business while helping clients do the same, Baker is undergoing a digital transformation. The company’s approach involves migrating to the cloud, developing business continuity, and expanding telework.

Baker knew that digitizing how it processes and signs sales and consultant onboarding documents would make the entire sales and staffing process easier and more effective. With paper-based processes, Baker couldn’t track a contract’s status after it sent an initial email to a client. Delays in securing signed contracts increase sales cycles, as well as impact billing and revenue. Contract delays also risk the possibility of missing a customer’s budget cycle and losing the business altogether.

As an important first step in its digital transformation, Baker wanted a proven e-signature platform. After reviewing other options, the company decided that Adobe Acrobat Sign was ideal, offering the best mix of price and performance.

Rapid, real-world results

Standardizing on Acrobat Sign provided Baker with immediate benefits. Before Acrobat Sign, sending out a contract and getting it signed and returned could take up to three weeks. A broken printer or fax machine, or a client’s need to escalate a contract internally might cause further delays — which could slow the start of work and impact revenue.

Baker had no insight into a contract’s path through a company, and no way to measure contract turnaround time — save frequent follow-ups that took sales team members away from sales calls. By reducing obstacles, Acrobat Sign trims the time to secure completed contracts from several weeks to two days.

“Delaying a decision to implement a sales methodology or a sales training program can negatively impact our clients,” says Iturralde. “Our ability to take action fast creates value for our clients and us.”

Industry leaders notice the value. Selling Power, Elearning!, and Training Industry magazines have all named Baker as one the top sales training companies, year after year. Independent analyst companies are also pointing to Baker as a leader when it comes to its data-driven approach to training and transforming sales teams.

Using Acrobat Sign to process agreements with its extensive network of consultants mobilizes Baker to start work faster. Consultants, contractors, and coaches can immediately respond to new projects once they sign contracts and other consultant agreements, such as quarterly letters, and healthcare and benefits packages.

“As a mid-market business, we must be ready when opportunities come in,” says Iturralde. “Onboarding our consultants without worrying whether agreements will get delayed is crucial. Acrobat Sign optimizes how we work, lowers our costs, and accelerates service delivery.”

The company uses Acrobat Sign to process between 200 and 300 documents per month, including contracts and addendums, work orders, policy manuals, facilitator guides, statements of work, and bonus plans. The most common sales-related documents include sales agreements, NDAs, and master services agreements. Up to 80-90 percent of total documents processed through Acrobat Sign are sales contracts.

Baker’s sales team takes advantage of audit trail in Acrobat Sign to track when documents are opened and signed — they can send automated reminders, even daily, to move the process along.

“Getting documents signed quickly keeps deal momentum going, which is the lifeblood of our business,” says Iturralde. “Acrobat Sign transforms our processes and makes our work faster and more accurate.”

Easy integration, automated workflow

Acrobat Sign also improves Baker’s business operations because it integrates seamlessly with its Salesforce customer relationship management platform. “The integration between Adobe Acrobat Sign and Salesforce is fantastic because we don’t feel like we’re moving between environments,” says Iturralde. “Even our team members who aren’t the most tech-savvy have adapted, because there’s no frustrating multi-step process. We’re just working with a contact in Salesforce like we normally would.”

The tight integration with Salesforce contributes to a 75 percent improvement in document management, which includes saving the sales team 50 hours monthly on post-sales paperwork. The sales team can upload templates for contracts from Salesforce, then use Acrobat Sign to convert contracts to PDF before sending for e-signature. The integration between Acrobat Sign and Salesforce automates this process: Once a contract has been signed, it’s uploaded back into the specific opportunity within Salesforce, alleviating the need to manually re-upload each document.

Automation helps Baker sustain its momentum by moving daily operations — as well as its sales teams’ time and energy — away from document management and toward a full-throttled focus on clients.

“Everything we do at Baker Communications is driven by our customers’ experiences. Adobe Acrobat Sign transforms digital document experiences for our customers and keeps our business moving forward. The automated, end-to-end signing and approval workflows mobilizes us to start work faster and be more effective,” says Iturralde. “As we grow, we’ll develop more digital processes to support our momentum, with Adobe Acrobat Sign continuing as an instrumental part of that effort.”

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