Vestwell Ramps Up Automation and Boosts Revenue by Investing in DocuSign CLM

For too long, small businesses have been shut out of the retirement savings world because of the high costs and heavy administrative burdens from legacy providers. Vestwell set out to change that. “We’re on a mission to close the savings gap in America,” said Jon Mark, senior vice president of business operations and strategy. 

The New York-born company’s digital recordkeeping platform removes the friction from workplace and individual savings programs, powering one million savers and 25,000 small businesses across the country.

A leader in modernizing an outdated industry, Vestwell is committed to optimizing each layer within recordkeeping. At the heart of it all are documents—from client contracts to plan adoption agreements and third-party fiduciary agreements.

As Vestwell rapidly scaled, propelling the firm to the top of Inc. Magazine’s fastest-growing companies list, it needed a streamlined system to meet the unique requirements involved with bringing on a high volume of diverse clients and savings programs. With DocuSign CLM, Vestwell accelerated agreement processes by over 90% while creating a better onboarding experience for customers, partners and employees. 

Creating a streamlined path from CRM to contract and billing

Every month, hundreds of new businesses and thousands of savers sign up to use the Vestwell platform. “In such a high-volume sales environment, it’s really critical that we’re able to move fast,” said Mark. DocuSign CLM automated a lot of the time-consuming administrative work for sales teams, including contract preparation, while simplifying legal review processes. To gain even greater efficiencies, Vestwell integrated DocuSign with core enterprise platforms, including Salesforce and Ordway Labs.

Now, everything about the opportunity is in one place. Documents are generated with the click of a button in Salesforce—with deal and billing details automatically brought over from the source of truth into the right template, depending on the customer type. 

“We work with some of the world's biggest financial institutions, and their requirements are a bit different than a one-off small business looking to start their first retirement plan,” said Mark. “Having the ability to automate those variances and ensure everything is set up correctly has been extremely helpful for us to scale the number of sophisticated partnerships.”

DocuSign CLM’s workflow configuration helped speed up preparing everything for signature, enabling the client and Vestwell’s legal department to redline with enhanced governance and velocity.

Reaping the benefits of automation 

“Vestwell has reshaped the industry by providing a tech-forward experience in a space that has historically been neglected and plagued with far too much paper,” said Mark.

After standardizing and digitizing agreement processes, client onboarding packets—which contain anywhere from 40-70 pages of documents—take only five minutes to create and can be sent in a single envelope for a streamlined signing ceremony. Throughout it all, CLM facilitates collaboration between all stakeholders, ensuring everyone who needs to weigh in receives signed documents automatically. 

As part of its transformation initiative, Vestwell automated yet another step in its agreement flow—using DocuSign’s pre-built integration with Stripe to incorporate a $500 down payment directly into the signing process. The integration had a positive impact on revenue.

“That four-week project led to a 70% reduction in drop-offs for partners who chose the option for their clients,” said Mark. “It would not have been possible to implement this functionality so quickly without the investment we’d made into CLM—and we appreciated all the help from DocuSign along the way.”

Enabling a seamless flow of documents from DocuSign CLM to core systems

Having the ability to onboard clients more efficiently has helped fuel Vestwell’s continued growth. In 2021, the company tripled its client list—and it’s on track to do the same this year. 

“Thinking back to what it was like two years ago to where we are now—it’s been an incredible ride,” said Mark. 

After simplifying contract creation with CLM, Vestwell has turned its focus to streamlining management. The company’s latest optimization project includes coordinating an automated document flow from DocuSign CLM to Vestwell’s platform using the CLM API and web services—reducing staff time spent organizing files. 

“Vestwell’s proprietary platform is our true source of differentiation, but partnering with DocuSign to do what they do best has created a great foundation,” said Mark. “This next automation project, which combines the best of our respective capabilities, should save us about 50 hours per month and will only grow as we continue to scale the business and work to close the savings gap across the country.”