Partners key to Docusign’s IAM offerings in Asia

With a new partner program launched in April, Docusign aims to have partners specialized in delivering IAM offerings to customers in Asia.

Docusign’s new AI-powered tools are designed to further accelerate contract workflows and drive stronger business outcomes across the Asia Pacific region. At Momentum 25 in Singapore recently, Docusign showcased some of these tools and also announced when they will be available in the region.

Docusign Iris, the company’s AI engine, applies advanced AI models to key stages of the agreement lifecycle, from drafting to reviews, to make processes faster, more accurate, and easier to manage. For businesses operating across the diverse APAC region, Iris is built with multi-lingual AI capabilities and is already supporting all English-speaking countries, including Singapore, helping businesses handle cross-border agreements more effectively.

At the summit, Docusign also announced that its new AI Contract Agents will be available in Singapore in 2026. These agents automate time consuming tasks that previously required days of manual work. For example, a procurement team can instruct an AI agent to analyse vendor risk, cross-check contract terms against legal standards, and flag outdated clauses, all within minutes, with full transparency at every step.

Given these innovations, Docusign relies on its partner network to ensure these solutions can be deployed seamlessly for customers in the region. As such, Docusign is now focused on making sure partners are skilled and specialized to support customers. This is where the new partner program plays an important role.

The role of partners

Docusign launched its new partner program in April this year. Focusing on Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM), the new program also offers specializations to help partners sell, service or build with Docusign’s AI-powered platform.

According to Bronwyn Hastings, Group Vice President of Global Partners and Alliances at Docusign, the aim of the new program is to provide partners the opportunity to lean into specialization, especially with the increasing demand for IAM.

“We need partners to lean into specialization. We need them to understand the difference between e-signature and the more comprehensive ability. So, we've introduced specialization in IAM for customer experience, for sales, for different use cases, and different scenarios that customers would be looking to us for,” said Hastings in an interview with CRN Asia during the summit.

Acknowledging that the investment and specialization does take time, Hastings is hoping by the end of this year, partners would have reached the recertifications, specializations and the ability to be recognized for what they do.

“We did two things in the program relaunch. First one was we changed it from resale only to sales, service, and build. And if you think about that, that's just logical partner motions, the build being the one where if they were building an asset for an ISV, the service is about adoption or implementation or solutioning, and then the sales is obviously about transacting with us. And partners can be in multiple of those streams. They can choose what relationship they want to have with us and in what context.”

“The second one was specialization by product and by motion. So, the partners have been excited by it because they can see the opportunity, and they appreciate that we've given them time. We're giving them a bridge to get to where they want to go to. But it also means as we've launching things on IAM,” Hastings explained.

More opportunities for partners

For Docusign’s partners, they see the comprehensiveness of the types of capabilities being offered and it excites them. Hastings mentioned that partners understand the need to be specialized to be able to make the most of the opportunities available to them.

“The partners don't see it as a negative at all. They can see the opportunity; they can see the path they need to take. And at the same time, we also announced the activation of the partner community with discounted IAM offerings that they can participate in when they specialize. And they can see how we're trying to help them once they've invested to actually be participating in the economics of it,” she added.

Hastings also mentioned that Docusign also announced sales plays for partners to participate. These specific sales plans are based on propensity models that can help partners get better targeted at the new opportunity.

“A number of partners are leaning into it. I'm actually surprised, we've got more acceleration of the specialization than I expected,” Hastings said.

Addressing customer needs

When it comes to customers, Hastings pointed out that customers want their most common use cases and pain points solved. For example, one customer wanted to improve their onboarding process for its customers. When they implemented IAM, they were able to save a lot of money and time as well as have improved customer experience.

“These are tangible use cases customers want to have. And that's where partners can play a big role because they can provide the solution for use cases as well. Customers also want partners that are competent, that know what they're talking about in the newer products. That's an important thing for us to be able to surface these partners that have the competency customers are looking for and at the same time do that for our sales people who are selling, saying these are partners that have reached the right level, can be engaged because they have the knowledge sets needed with confidence,” she explained.

For Hastings, Docusign has a lot of knowledge on the platform, having dealt with 1.7 million customers globally. That in itself, she believes is a key differentiator for both customers and partners.

“We're building on the things that we hear from customers on what they need in the lifecycle of an intelligent agreement management environment. And our platform not only gives them the functional strength but also the flexibility to answer key questions in the agreement world that that customers need to answer. We’re also bringing the intelligence, the agentic into the equation, which a lot of companies are trying to actually work with. How do we bring that to life? We're in interspersing that in the platform to be able to go that agentic phase, to give insight with AI, and to make it actionable as a platform,” Hastings concluded.