How Small Businesses are Leveraging DocuSign to Accelerate Growth
Navigating the events of the past two years has reinforced and amplified the existing urgency to support the survival and success of small businesses. Now, more than ever, during National Small Business Week, DocuSign is a proud partner and ally in equipping small businesses with catered electronic signature solutions to protect themselves, their assets and streamline operations in this challenging time. Through digital transformation, DocuSign strives to supply small businesses with lean and sustainable tools that are accessible, efficient, and secure to push business forward.
To celebrate National Small Business Week, we’re sharing the inspiring digital transformation stories of three small businesses that leverage electronic signatures to accelerate growth.
Truffle Shuffle
In 2018, three alumni of The French Laundry, the famed Napa Valley restaurant, founded Truffle Shuffle. Truffle Shuffle provides their global customer base, particularly restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, with fresh, consciously sourced, traceable truffles as well as small-batch truffle products. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced restaurants in California to close, Truffle Shuffle immediately lost 80 percent of its business. This farm-to-table food provider adapted and created entirely new services and technology to deliver restaurant-level dining right to customers’ kitchens.
The Truffle Shuffle team leaned on technology to make the shift. To manage agreements with organizations interested in hosting cooking classes, Truffle Shuffle creates contracts and sends them out within DocuSign eSignature. Often, signatures and completed agreements are returned within minutes, letting the chefs spend more time on cooking and creating memorable experiences. After hosting over 80,000 customers last year and growing to a team of 26, Truffle Shuffle is glad to have left paper contracts and manual processes in the past.
Hear more about Truffle Shuffle’s story:
Clay Williams
As a food photographer and small business owner, Clay Williams wears many hats. In addition to executing on his artistic visions behind the camera, he also takes on the other roles of CEO, CFO, and Head of Sales in his small business. Since adopting DocuSign into his workflow, Clay has been able to focus on what’s important--his photography: “No one gets into photography because they like contracts. DocuSign lets me take care of the business side.”
By leveraging DocuSign eSignature, Clay can seamlessly personalize and send release forms, master services agreements, and a variety of other contracts. Easy to prepare and sign, DocuSign’s eSignature solutions securely automate, streamline, and optimize Clay’s business operations. Clay can rely on DocuSign to adapt to wherever and whenever he’s shooting for his clients.
Allies for Community Business
Allies for Community Business (A4CB), a nonprofit community financial development institution located on Chicago’s West Side, knows that small businesses play vital roles in building healthy, vibrant communities. A4CB offers grants and loans to entrepreneurs throughout Illinois and Indiana, helping individuals with the capital, coaching and collaboration they need to get started and grow their businesses. A4CB prioritizes Black, Hispanic/Latinx, women and low-income small business owners who typically face barriers accessing capital through traditional means.
When the pandemic accelerated the need for small businesses to access emergency capital, A4CB needed to quickly pivot to meet the demands of their clients. In order to do that, they would have to offer a fully digital—and ideally mobile—solution, as well as significantly cut loan processing time. Ensuring a smooth agreement process, protecting against fraud, satisfying audit requirements, and keeping client data safe were top concerns.
A4CB turned to DocuSign eSignature and ID Verification, part of the DocuSign Agreement Cloud, to help reach its goal of moving to a digital loan processing model, including electronic signing and remote identity verification of signers. Once DocuSign eSignature and DocuSign ID Verification were in place, the gains were immediate. A4CB went from closing an average of 30 loans per month to 400 loans per month.
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