Today we began the day back at the docklands area with Dr. Kelly to get context and background on the area. As I mentioned in earlier blogs, understanding a company, country, and/or persons history is vital for understanding the businesses as a whole. During Dr. Kelly’s presentation he went over how the area went from a bunch of struggling businesses to a great booming area.
Today’s company visit was DocuSign. Michael Kelliher, DocuSign’s international controller, gave us a beautiful presentation on the company’s history, his personal story and path, and finally talked to us about some things that are in DocuSign’s pipeline. What this shows me is that this company is by far the leader in this space, but when with having the majority of market share there are possible issues with continuing to grow earnings.
DocuSign has many similarities and differences from Google in the way that these multinational corporations are managed and ran. As DocuSign is in the process of replacing all of their senior management because of 2 bad quarters, it makes it clears that the company has to have a much stricter approach because of the niche service they provide.
Both of these companies are expanding globally continuously, but as Google already has a larger footprint, it’s again clear that DocuSign is further behind in global expansion. They need to continue working on global expansion as they are right now in India and throughout Europe to continue to increase revenues. Another thing that both companies have to pay a large amount of attention to in which facilitates the way that their business cultures are is that with operations in many different foreign countries there’s always a language barrier, time zone issues, and other factors that play a huge role in day-to-day business. This allows both companies from their customers to their employees, to have a very diverse culture which would make for positive and great work environment.
During Michael Kelliher’s presentation as I mentioned he gave us his personal story and path. When he was giving us his personal story and path one thing that stood out to me was that a company’s culture was very important to him, and this was actually in part reason why he had left his previous job at Global Telecoms and came to DocuSign to be the international controller that he is today. Another thing that stood out to me, is that he came from a small farming town in western Ireland. As I grew up on a farm, it was easy for me to feel very inspired with how impressive his path has been throughout his career and how he has made it to the amazing role that he’s in today.
In conclusion, from Google to DocuSign I’ve definitely and my eyes opened and the fact that culture is such an important thing to these big companies. Especially from Michael Kelliher’s story, I know that I will be looking for a company with a very diverse culture, as I know this plays in part for the role being enjoyable, system successful, and sustainable.
The featured image is of Trinity Business School, where Michael Kelliher gave us the presentation on DocuSign today. The attached images below are from yesterday afternoon’s adventure to Sandycove Beach in Dublin.
