Digital signature with hand held devices

Background

Back in 2014, Comprova.com was the leading digital signature platform and digital certificate authority in Brazil. DocuSign saw a huge opportunity to expand its market by acquiring Comprova. The acquisition brought DocuSign platform to more than 200 million people in Brazil, and provided the foundation for delivering digital signatures and transactions initially in Latin America, and lately in North America, Europe and Asia.

Read more: Comprova has been sold to DocuSign

Problem statement

While electronic signatures are generally accepted in modern agreement systems, specific businesses, regions, or use cases may require the use of digital signatures. Digital signatures provide a stronger level of identity assurance through the utilization of digital certificates. DocuSign platform did not support signatures with digital certificates.

Business goals

  • Integrate Comprova's digital signature solution with DocuSign's platform

  • Allow customers from regulated industries to sign electronic documents using a hand held certificate

    • A hand held certificate refers to a personal digital certificate issued to someone by a TSP (Trust Service Provider), and “held” by it being either directly installed in their computer, in a smart card, or in a USB drive.

  • Expand DocuSign's market to several use cases in Brazil such as Financial Services, Insurance, Real Estate, Agriculture, Health Care, and Telecommunications

  • Expand DocuSign's digital signature market even further, to Latin America, North America, Europe and Asia

Project details

I was the product manager that led the integration between DocuSign and Comprova solutions, and performed tasks with several teams to launch this product:

  • Defined technical solution with two Engineering teams - one in Brazil and one in US

  • Worked with UX Design to make sure Comprova solution would match DocuSign UX standards post integration

  • Continually enhanced the product based on customer feedback and user research

  • Helped Customer Support create documentation, support articles, and troubleshoot guides

  • Constantly met with Sales to learn about new use cases and educate them on PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)

  • Learned international government regulations and defined the roadmap to launch the product in several other countries

  • Launched the product in the following locations:

    • Americas: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, USA

    • Asia: Mainland China, India, Japan, Kuwait, Singapore, Vietnam

    • Europe: any digital certificate compliant with eIDAS, and issued by any of the TSPs on the EU Trust List

    • Also, any location whose government would require a digital certificate but had a more relaxed regulation in terms of certificate expiration and revocation requirements - for such use cases we created a baseline digital signature type

Final considerations

  • Since its launch in 2015, this product has contributed to DocuSign's revenue with approximately $44 million in annual contract value.

  • About 3,000 paid customers use this product to generate more than half a million of digital signatures per month.

Important links

Accepted trusted services providers in DocuSign

Sign a document with DocuSign using a hand held digital certificate