App Awareness Month – DocuSign

This post is part of App Awareness, our month-long series where we spotlight a different Google Apps Marketplace application every day in April. Everyone’s favorite holiday – Tax Day – is this week, so we’re focusing on applications that make reporting and accounting easier. The applications we chose to highlight demonstrate excellent integration with Google Apps, and we either use and love the product or know a lot of other people who do. Have a favorite Marketplace app of your own? Tweet it to @bettercloud.

DocuSign – The Global Standard for eSignature

DocuSign is a great tool to use if you need to quickly obtain signatures for whatever reason, from legal contracts, to NDAs, sales agreements and more. And you can do this all without printing a single sheet of paper.

The service allows users to upload a document from their desktop or attach one from an online service, like Box, Dropbox and of course Google Docs. Once you’ve uploaded the correct document, you can then send the item by email (through the DocuSign site) to the signor, but don’t worry, viewers will only see the document in the DocuSign application and therefore won’t be able to download or alter the document.

To sign documents, first time users are prompted to create their own custom signatures by using their mouse to “draw” their name, or can “adopt” a pre-fab signature. To ensure all documents are signed correctly and in-full, DocuSign let’s document creators insert “Sign Here” tabs, which effectively point out where signatures need to be placed.

Google Apps Integration

DocuSign has been around since 2004, but with the Google Apps integration, the tool has become even more useful. The integration makes inserting files created in Google Docs seamless. DocuSign also integrates with Gmail. A handy button that appears at the bottom of every email in your inbox can be used to resend the message back to the initial sender via DocuSign, where you can then prompt them for a signature, request an in-person signature, ask them to acknowledge receipt of the file and more.

Why We Like It

As Google Apps users, we’ve become accustomed to a paperless business model, so we know how frustrating it can be when someone asks you to print, sign, scan and finally email an important document back to them. This often arduous process takes time away from real work. Since our business is built for the cloud, we choose to run it in the cloud.

DocuSign is offered for free in the Google Apps Marketplace (with the ability to send 50 “envelopes” or documents) and tiered pricing models allow higher usage.

Stay tuned for more of our favorite Apps in the Google Apps Marketplace!

Can you guess tomorrow’s app?
Hint: It’s a must for your accounting needs.

About App Awareness Month

At BetterCloud, we’ve seen first hand the impact Google Apps can have on a business: extreme cost cutting, streamlined management processes, enhanced collaboration and mobility and much more.

During our time as an independent software provider focused 100% on the Google Apps platform, we’ve interacted with thousands of organizations using Google Apps and we’ve discovered one common trend: knowledge and awareness of third-party applications that extend and enhance Google Apps is extremely limited.

This April, we’re devoting the BetterCloud blog to educating Google Apps users on the wide array of applications available for Google Apps today. These products not only enhance native Google Apps functionalities, but bring a diverse range of services from CRM, to expense management, process and systems management and more to your Google Apps environment. More importantly, adding these applications to Google Apps allows you to retire expensive legacy software licenses and creates a more cohesive organization.

Disclaimer: The companies appearing in this month-long series have not been contacted nor consulted regarding their inclusion. Our choices are based solely on reader suggestions and our experiences with the applications.