France-based Yousign acquires Canyon; aims to expand beyond e-signature and offer document automation

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France-based Yousign, a leader in digital signature solutions, announced that it has acquired Canyon, a document and workflow automation company. The acquisition, which is the first for Yousign, comes on the back of a €30M Series A funding round around seven months earlier.

The acquisition also shows the broader trend where digital transformation and work-from-home are here to stay and a broader suite of services will win in this transformation. Canyon already had integration with Yousign, but the acquisition will result in even tighter integration between the two companies.

Canyon integration with Yousign

Caen-headquartered Yousign also announced that it will fully integrate Canyon with the Yousign platform. Canyon was founded in 2020 by Adrien van den Branden and Thomas Vanderstraeten in Belgium with the mission of automating administrative and legal work. With its 1,000 employees workforce, Canyon targets SMBs and is used by the companies such as Aircall, Spendesk and Le Wagon.

Canyon makes it easier for SMBs to speed up legal and administrative processes with a no-code solution that can be set up by customers without any technical skills. The integration between Yousign and Canyon will result in a product suite that will enable SMBs to respond to use cases that go beyond electronic signature. Post the integration, Yousign will be able to cover the entirety of the administrative process in an organisation.

Alban Sayag, COO and M&A Head, Yousign, says, “Acquiring Canyon will strengthen our position as a market leader by propelling the company into a new dimension. We want to cover the entire document automation value chain and additional acquisitions could very well be on the cards in the near future.”

Yousign: what you need to know

Yousign is a French e-signature solution founded by Luc Pallavidino and Antoine Louiset in 2013. The company helps small and medium businesses to execute agreements in a fast and secure way with its secure contract automation platform. Yousign has over 8,000 customers and more than 3 million monthly signers in France, Germany, Italy and Poland.

The company plans to equip 50,000 European SMBs with its e-signature solution by 2024. Yousign also aims to hit annual recurring revenue of at least €70M and the Canyon acquisition will act as a catalyst to reach that revenue target.

“Today SMBs spend too much time doing mundane admin and legal work that could be automated. We can’t wait to help Yousign’s 8,000+ customers save countless hours in their document processes through automation,” says Adrien van den Branden, CEO and Co-Founder of Canyon.

The document automation market is valued at €20B in Europe and the synergy in customer base between Yousign and Canyon makes the acquisition a natural collaboration. An integrated solution that allows SMBs to not only sign their contracts in a fast and secure way but also automate their administrative and legal work will be a major upsell for SMBs in Europe.

Alban Sayag acknowledges that becoming the leader in Europe’s e-signature market cannot be improvised. It needs to add a new dimension to its product suite and with Canyon, Yousign will be able to expand its solution. Sayag envisions a product where Canyon’s expertise interacts with its customers before the electronic signature in the contractual process.

Automation is becoming essential for SMBs in the face of global pandemic, workforce shortage and existing employees looking to upskill themselves. With Canyon acquisition, Yousign will be able to automate more tasks for SMBs and it will be interesting to see whether it manages to reach its revenue target earlier.

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