DocuSign Invests $15M in Seal Software: DA Poised to Go Mainstream

by Samra Anees

DocuSign announced on March 28th that it is investing $15 million in Seal Software, furthering its relationship with the document and contract analytics firm. This blog explores this partnership and investment and what it means.

Seal Software and DocuSign Partnership

It’s no secret that DocuSign has been building out it’s AI and DTM portfolio with the acquisition of machine learning intellectual property rights from Appuri, the acquisition of SpringCM, and then the partnership with Seal Software.

DocuSign has been partnering with Seal Software since last year, a strategic partnership that places both companies in the Intelligent Content Analytics (ICA) space. The partnership agreement included that Seal Software’s technology be distributed through DocuSign’s platform extensions program.

DocuSign’s investment in AI companies helps build a more holistic offering surrounding documents, extending the reach of  Digital Transaction Management (DTM) by providing more understanding of what is happening in those transactions.

What is Intelligent Content Analytics?

Aragon identified ICA as a market in 2017. ICA has four sub-markets: document, voice, image and video analytics. The emergence of voice analytics is making areas like sales, customer support, and identity authentication more intelligent, while image and video analytics is pushing for more insights in areas ranging from retail to security.

Intelligent Content Analytics is a Growing Market

As more and more companies begin to make their offerings more automated and intelligent by investing in AI, the Intelligent Content Analytics market is growing rapidly. The addition of Seal’s AI-based document and contract analytics capabilities into DocuSign will help make transactions more intelligent by allowing for a better analysis and understanding of documents. More intelligence in products has become a norm among industry leaders, which is why the market for document analytics (and the broader ICA market) is poised for explosive growth.

The DTM Market is Being Put On Notice

With the rise of the ICA market and the growing demand for document analytics, the Digital Transaction Management (DTM) is evolving—buyers want more information about their transactions. While Adobe has had document analytics (Adobe Sensei) for some time, the rest of the providers in the DTM market will need to make the move towards intelligent document analytics if they want to remain competitive.

Bottom Line

We are seeing the rise of more intelligent offerings in every area of ICA (voice, image/video, document, and messaging). It is time for enterprises to understand if and how they can leverage artificial intelligence capabilities in their product offerings. Aragon will be publishing research on voice, image and video analytics, and how these technologies are already being leveraged by enterprises today.