In the latest edition of our AppExchange Connected Leaders series, we talk to Alex Correa, Systems Admin at Shutterstock, about how Salesforce Sales Cloud and DocuSign, an e-signature app available on the AppExchange, helped streamline and simplify Shutterstock’s entire contract management process.

Shutterstock is the leading, global technology company providing high-quality licensed imagery and music to businesses, marketing agencies and media organizations. Alex shares how they manage the massive volume of contracts that comes from selling four images per second from 70,000+ contributors, with a website in 20 languages and customers in 150 countries.

Salesforce: Can you give us a quick overview of what Shutterstock does?

Alex Correa: Shutterstock has created the largest two-sided marketplace for creative professionals to license and sell content - including images, videos and music. If you want to create an ad and need an image or a video clip, you can find it on Shutterstock. We also integrate our collection via our API with various services, including Facebook and Social Studio.

Salesforce: Tell us about Shutterstock’s key business challenges.

AC: Our contract process was overly complex driven by the global nature of our business. We have customers in 150 countries and needed to provide long contracts in multiple languages. Our legal team had to approve 10 different contracts from multiple locations instead of having it all happen from one place. We needed to streamline and simplify the whole process. We turned to the AppExchange to explore all our e-signature options and ultimately decided to go with DocuSign.

Salesforce: How did that decision change the game for Shutterstock?

AC: It completely revamped our whole process. Our time to turn around a contract went from a week to a few days, and that’s largely due to the fact that individuals are now able to select which language they want to do business in, eliminating the need for translators.

Salesforce: What else can you do now that you couldn’t do before?

AC: We also implemented DocuSign to make communicating with our contributors easier. In the initial sign-up process to become a contributor, they give consent for Shutterstock to use their imagery and videos and acknowledge our royalty percentage, and all that used to happen through individual emails. Now we use DocuSign. To give you an idea of volume, we recently sent about 575 documents in 14 days, so it’s much easier to manage now.

Furthermore, we automated processes across every department, so we’re extending its use to ensure that everything is secure and done properly.

Salesforce: What advice would you give to peers facing similar growth challenges?

AC: First, think about the journey of your company and take long-term goals into account. Consider whether you’ll use an app like DocuSign as just an e-signature solution, or if you will want it to plug into many different systems. If you’re using it for a quick-fix project, will it scale?

Second, if it’s not easy for internal teams to use, don’t buy it. The end user is the most important person to take into account, for both customer and internal audiences. But if the internal team can’t get behind a solution, no one will.  We started with 40 Salesforce users and now we have more than 400.

Third, make sure that you have great support--that goes a long way toward adoption. Our DocuSign account manager responds instantly when we have a question. In some cases, they serve as a technical resource.