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Transforming Life Sciences with Intelligent Agreement Management

Published Oct 24, 2025
5 min read

Life sciences organizations are under immense pressure to accelerate the delivery of life-saving innovations while managing strict global regulations and fierce competition. Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) transforms slow, manual processes—from clinical trial enrollment to supply chain logistics—into seamless digital experiences. By eliminating paperwork bottlenecks and reducing administrative burdens, Docusign empowers your teams to focus on core tasks like research and patient care, rather than paperwork. 

The Docusign IAM platform, along with the Life Sciences Module trusted by top global biopharma companies, enables organizations to meet their compliance obligations with the FDA 21 CFR Part 11 requirements. Docusign is committed to ensuring data is protected— preserving the confidentiality, integrity and availability of our services to our customers, as evidenced by the many global certifications and standards the company maintains.

Accelerate research and clinical development

Docusign helps accelerate the R&D process while simplifying the complexity of compliance. By optimizing processes like informed consent, investigator site agreements, and research collaboration agreements, Docusign reduces manual work and document turnaround time. This enables faster trial starts, more efficient patient enrollment, and quicker access to critical research data. 

Modernize manufacturing and quality

Docusign helps streamline operations and proactively support compliance obligations across manufacturing, quality, and supply chain processes. Docusign helps to digitize and automate critical agreements such as vendor contracts, procurement agreements, and manufacturing authorizations. This ensures a transparent, secure, and efficient flow of information, reducing administrative burdens and helping to maintain the highest quality standards.

Enhance commercial effectiveness

Docusign solutions accelerate the creation, commitment, and management of agreements related to sales, marketing, and distribution. By providing a secure, mobile-friendly platform for agreements like sales contracts and GPO agreements, Docusign enables your teams to close deals faster and improve the overall customer experience. 

IAM boosts efficiency

The IAM platform scales with your organization, ensuring efficient operations while simplifying compliance. 

  • IAM Core: This customizable application is built for life sciences organizations of any size. IAM Core goes beyond Docusign eSignature to help any team with agreement creation, review, and management. You can build customized workflows, automate agreement processes, centrally store completed agreements, and transform static documents into dynamic assets that drive decision-making.

  • IAM for Sales: This preconfigured application is designed to help you generate, sign, and manage sales contracts with unparalleled speed and accuracy. It helps sales teams boost deal velocity, reduce manual work, and gain valuable insights from sales agreements with integrations into existing tools like Salesforce. This helps close deals faster and streamline the entire sales process from a single platform.

IAM platform capabilities

Docusign uniquely addresses each step of the agreement process to help transform your organization and advance your strategic plan with these capabilities: 

  • eSignature: Enable secure, intuitive signing experience across any device. Collect approvals in minutes and reduce turnaround time.

  • Life Sciences Module: Support compliance with electronic signature practices outlined in FDA 21 CFR Part 11. Our core Part 11 module includes Part 11-specific eSignature functionality authentication, reason for signature, and signature manifestation. 

  • Web Forms: Simplify clinical trial enrollment by capturing patient data and dynamically populating it into informed consents and authorizations for signatures in a seamless, interactive experience, reducing manual data entry and improving data quality. 

  • Workflow Builder: A no-code workflow automation solution that allows you to create custom workflows – like clinical trial eligibility based on built-in logic – and automate data writeback to your system of record with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. 

  • Workspaces: A central hub for teams to track and manage agreements throughout their lifecycle. Store, track, and manage documents for study site setup and investigator onboarding in one centralized location, improving transparency and efficiency.

  • Audit trail: Automatically generate a comprehensive, defensible audit trail to record every action taken on a document. 

  • CLM: An end-to-end solution that allows life sciences organizations to streamline the entire contract lifecycle, from creating, signing, and managing a contract. It reduces risk, increases efficiency, and improves compliance for contracts related to vendor qualification and research partnerships.

  • App Center and integrations: Our unmatched ecosystem of 1,000+ integrations and robust APIs helps ensure a seamless data flow and create a more efficient ecosystem. 

Results

  • 1 day saved in document signing turnaround time

  • 40% reduction in personnel time per agreement

  • 41% reduction in paper used

  • 19% reduction in compliance incidents

  • 95% improvement in data quality

Source: "Industry benchmarking research." Paradoxes, Inc., 2022.

"Docusign fits right in as one of the tools that drives simplification, drives speed, and drives value clearly. It's an enabler."

Chief Information Officer, AstraZeneca

Use case examples

Research and clinical development

Manufacturing

Quality and compliance

Preclinical study agreements

Clinical trial enrollment

Informed consent forms

IRB amendments

CDMO agreements

Technology transfer agreements

Equipment and maintenance agreements

Executed batch records

GxP document management

Quality agreements

Audit agreements

Document and change control

Supply chain

Commercial

Departmental

Supplier qualification and onboarding

Warehousing and storage agreements

Transportation and logistics agreements

Distribution agreements

Sales contracting

GPO and IDN agreements

HCP engagement contracts

Patient assistance enrollment

Legal and compliance

HR

Finance

Explore how Docusign supports FDA 21 CFR Pt. 11 requirementsLearn more
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