How Docusign transformed unstructured agreements into instant insights

Customers need to quickly locate and gain insights from key, unstructured documents

Docusign serves 1.6 million customers and over 1 billion users across 180 countries. Its customers were facing challenges in efficiently finding the documents they needed. Friction points included:

• Disparate storage across disconnected platforms like Google Drive, SharePoint, and email meant key business agreements were scattered.
• Inefficient manual processes meant that procurement teams working with vendors had to manually search for documents, which often relied on legal team intervention.
• Urgent requests from teams across organizations meant legal teams received requests after hours that required a substantial time commitment to search for documents.

Unnecessary costs were accumulated from unused vendor services that were lost in complicated contract language.

From manual search to instant AI-enhanced insights

Docusign created a generative AI-powered solution, Navigator, which allows customers to store, manage, and analyze their agreements. With the generative AI capabilities of Elasticsearch, a solution on Elastic’s Search AI Platform, Navigator stores executed agreements in a searchable, intelligent repository.

In Navigator, customers can ask natural-language questions, such as “find me all agreements with termination clauses.” In seconds, Elasticsearch indexes and highlights the relevant sections, along with the surrounding context. This shift has dramatically reduced retrieval time for business‑critical documents and has enabled Docusign to safely add and scale millions of agreements daily. What used to be a slow, manual hunt for the right document is now an instant, insight-rich experience. This has unlocked billions in value by streamlining agreement creation, renewal, and management.

Armed with AI-driven insights, customers accelerate contract cycles, reduce risk, and cut waste because Navigator helps customers:

• Find agreements and information fast by searching for key attributes, specific keywords, or related terms.
• Leverage AI-generated, customizable reports and dashboards to make data-driven decisions with greater confidence.
• Identify unused vendor services and trigger proactive reminders before costs accumulate.

Elastic’s Search AI Platform transforms the contract cycle with rich insights

The powerful engine behind Docusign’s Navigator is Elastic’s Search AI Platform, namely the Elasticsearch solution with its rich generative AI capabilities. Docusign also uses Elastic's serverless technology, which enables Docusign to deliver solutions based on cloud-native architectures to its customers at scale.

Navigator is purpose-built to understand the nuances of agreements and transform how they’re discovered, managed, and analyzed. Using Elasticsearch, Docusign is able to make these insights searchable in natural language. This empowers customers with agreement insights that are accurate, contextual, and immediately actionable.

Docusign initially hosted Elasticsearch on its servers, but it transitioned to the cloud and now runs Elasticsearch on Microsoft Azure. This gives Docusign the “best of both worlds.” It can deliver powerful AI capabilities with Microsoft Azure AI with Elastic’s robust search functionalities.

With the Search AI Platform, Docusign’s customers can now:

• Store documents in one place. All agreements are stored in a central repository, where all the data is structured.
• Find specific information within documents. Using Elasticsearch, Docusign’s identity and access management (IAM) system surfaces key agreement insights, allowing customers to find specific critical information in seconds, without having to read the entire contract.
• Receive relevant context. Within Docusign's Navigator, users can ask a question — such as "Find me agreements with that end next month" — in the search bar. Elasticsearch indexes all relevant agreements and highlights the content, providing not just the answer but also the surrounding context.
• Use AI throughout the entire agreement lifecycle. From creation and negotiation to execution and analysis, AI can help customers draft an agreement and review suggested redlines, highlighting the key deviations and suggesting changes.

Time and cost savings thanks to efficient, AI-powered search

A streamlined agreement management process built on Elasticsearch allows customers to create and renew contracts faster to save money, reduce risk, and grow their business. Before Docusign implemented generative AI into its IAM through its Navigator solution, customers spent hours searching for and analyzing documents. Now, they experience:

• Rapid retrieval of business-critical documents
• Increased savings of billions from a streamlined agreement management process
• Faster contract creation and renewal with increased visibility into vendor agreements
• A scalable repository for critical documents that can handle the millions of documents added daily

Docusign handles millions of documents daily and needed a partner with a scalable solution. Hiral Shah, director of product at Docusign, said Elastic is the only company in the world that can manage the level of activity Docusign’s IAM requires.

She also praises the Elastic team for supporting Docusign's mission to bring generative AI to customers worldwide and for the flexibility and willingness to innovate and propose solutions.

"There’s no other company in the world that can manage this level of activity, making Elastic an essential partner in our operations."

— Hiral Shah, Director of Product, Docusign

Shah adds that one of the best aspects of working with Elastic is its willingness to listen and adapt. The Elastic teams consistently pushed the limits of innovation given Docusign's unique requirements and scope. At one stage during beta testing discussions, Shah expressed the desire to optimize for cost. Elastic offered various storage capabilities — such as hot, medium, and cold storage — to deliver greater value and cost efficiency.

Now that Docusign’s IAM is running smoothly on Elasticsearch, the company is exploring the idea of integrating semantic search. This would allow customers to ask natural language questions and receive relevant, accurate answers based on the data in Navigator. Shah says she is looking to use Elastic’s vector database and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) solution in the future to further enhance user interaction and facilitate better data-driven decision-making.