Docusign Transforms Creative Operations to Unlock Value with -lution
Transitioning a creative team from a reactive service desk into a strategic growth engine requires combining data-driven capacity planning with a bulletproof financial business case.
The Challenge
Docusign’s Brand & Creative team was high-performing but operating under severe operational strain. Caught in a reactive environment, short-term sales tactics consistently overshadowed strategic, long-term brand building. Without a structured annual planning cadence, the team was forced into a constant state of handling last-minute, urgent requests, effectively turning a talented creative group into an executional service desk.
This reactive mode created significant visibility and financial blind spots across the enterprise:
Lack of Data Visibility: Performance and value proof were severely unmeasurable. In reporting benchmarks, Docusign scored below the industry average.
Unquantified External Spend: A significant amount of budget was being spent on external agencies without clear visibility into what work could be commercially brought back in-house.
Cost Centre Perception: The creative team was viewed primarily as an operational expense rather than a strategic driver of enterprise growth.
Docusign engaged -lution to close the planning gap, quantify external spend, establish data transparency, and transform the creative function into a properly resourced engine for long-term growth.
The Solution
Utilising the proprietary Evo-lution framework, -lution partnered with Docusign leadership to design and implement an end-to-end operational transformation.
Comprehensive Discovery & Diagnostic: Conducted 39 benchmarked survey assessments, 14 executive depth interviews (including the President of Growth), and a line-by-line review of internal supplier purchase order data.
Future Vision Co-Design: Facilitated an in-person workshop in San Francisco with key leaders to align on a unified future vision and operating model.
Solution Architecture & Process Design: Delivered a new team charter, an Integrated Activity Planning framework, P0–P4 prioritisation and T1–T4 asset tiering models, tier-specific SLAs, and optimised Jira workflows.
Automated Capacity Forecasting: Built a custom Story Points Model that integrated live data from Jira and Workday to forecast, cost, and manage forward creative capacity in real time.
Commercial Financial Case: Constructed a line-by-line financial business case using internal PO data to validate the commercial impact of in-sourcing external agency work.
The Results
We respect our client’s commercial sensitivities so don’t publicly share our results. We can share that we saved Docusign a significant amount of time and money, and improved their in-house capability. If you’d like to know more, contact us.
