CEO Mikita Mikado on PandaDoc: How the Document Management Software Helps Businesses Streamline Sales Ops and Boost Conversion Rates

TL; DR: Launched in 2011 by Co-Founders Mikita Mikado and Sergey Barysiuk, PandaDoc hit the business scene with a mission to improve the ways organizations approach document management. The company’s cloud-based platform was built to optimize the creation, accuracy, and full lifecycle management of contracts, quotes, sales proposals, and other documentation essential to closing deals. We recently sat down with Mikita, who told us how PandaDoc is committed to helping SMBs and enterprise-level businesses automate workflows and convert more customers with easy-to-use, SaaS document management solutions.

OpMentors is a consulting firm on a mission to help businesses improve their overall operational efficiency. The company specializes in training, integration, and process development, and empowers clients to evaluate and enhance their work environments. With a majority of its customers using FinancialForce and Salesforce, the consulting process involves heavy use of documents that require signatures.

Initially, OpMentors relied on a combination of Google Docs and DocuSign, which still required its consulting teams and clients to handle most of the process manually. Then, OpMentors discovered PandaDoc.

Founded in 2011 by Mikita Mikado and Sergey Barysiuk, PandaDoc aimed to offer a more streamlined approach to document management. Using PandaDoc templates, built-in electronic signatures, and other cloud-based features, OpMentors was able to greatly reduce its workload. And a large part of that success was due to the ability of PandaDoc solutions to easily integrate into the company’s existing Salesforce applications and provide advanced analytics — all in a fast, cost-effective manner.

In total, OpMentors was able to decrease its sales cycle duration by 27% and enjoy a revenue increase of 24%. These impressive results even prompted OpMentors to recommend PandaDoc to its own clients. Kyle Enke, OpMentors’ Director of Practice and Business Development, described PandaDoc as “smooth, seamless, and impactful.”

Since its inception, PandaDoc has helped companies like OpMentors close more than $16 billion in sales. From small operations and startups to enterprise-level organizations, the easy-to-use PandaDoc document management platform can help streamline the creation and lifecycle management of proposals, contracts, and quotes, among other documentation types.

In early 2010, Mikita Mikado and Sergey Barysiuk created Quote Roller, a SaaS platform to ease the creation and management of sales proposals. As a precursor to PandaDoc, Quote Roller quickly gained popularity among businesses previously using manual or otherwise tedious methods. Roughly a year later, PandaDoc was launched as a more complete solution for document management. Like many tech innovations, PandaDoc was the answer to the group’s long-standing sales document frustrations.

“A major internal pain we had at the time was dealing with sales documents and sales proposals,” Mikita said. “It would take us forever to put those docs together. The process was disintegrated from our CRM, and we would have no idea if our clients had opened those documents.”

Before creating PandaDoc, the team would have to continuously exchange emails with clients just to close a contract. It soon became clear that the business world needed a better way to handle sales documents. PandaDoc would need to allow for easier editing and sharing, as well as be able to integrate smoothly into existing business systems.

“We thought this process of making an offer, negotiating the deal, and closing it was just too complex,” Mikita said. “It doesn’t have to be that difficult.”

Upon the software release, Mikita and company founded PandaDoc as a full-fledged business.

In its relatively short existence, PandaDoc has already changed the way many businesses handle workflows. And one of the biggest challenges involved removing factors leading to slow communications practices that inhibited collaboration efforts.

“We’ve seen more and more teams wanting to corroborate online instead of doing it in silos,” Mikita said. “We’re getting used to communicating in the cloud, as it’s not just a desire, but an expectation of the modern workforce.”

In response to the rising popularity of cloud applications, PandaDoc has risen as a cloud-friendly and automated alternative to traditional document managers, with built-in commenting and other feedback features that make draft collaboration a breeze.

PandaDoc customers largely consist of SMB sales and marketing teams. Due to the smaller budgets of SMBs, PandaDoc is a viable option between its capabilities and price point. Document management is streamlined via easier editing through the cloud, automated e-signature software, and a large library of templates.

“Our clients are primarily sales teams, but we also help marketing teams to enable sales with conference templates,” Mikita said. “We’ve got templates for proposals, contracts, presentations, and more.”

Each template is designed for quick document creation and is compliant with regulations, drastically cutting down on the time it takes to create and revise lengthy documents from scratch.

A wide range of features and integration capabilities complement the general ease of use of PandaDoc. The platform comes with robust CPQ functionality and profit margin calculation, as well as easy user management.

PandaDoc also allows for multiple workspaces, immediate payments through a Payment Block, content locking, and branding via logos and custom footers. Additional features include document analytics, audit trails, and other tools to track performance. With PandaDoc, businesses have the sales process covered every step of the way — from document creation to sharing and closing.

Users of PandaDoc not only have a vast library of templates to work with, but these templates are also highly customizable — allowing for the creation of branded documents in mere minutes. The templates also remove the need to correct errors or worry about compliance. Interactive elements, such as embedded media and dynamic pricing tables, can also be added. Once a document is released, sales teams can track statistics, including view counts and the amount of time users spent reading a page. Documents that require multiple signatures can be automatically sent with a single click, and there are no fees or limits on the number of signatures a business can process.

As its customer base largely consists of SMBs in a variety of markets, PandaDoc was built with flexibility in mind. PandaDoc is ideal for a wide variety of document types, such as proposals and contracts. Furthering its versatility are its impressive integration capabilities, compatible with the most widely used CRMs, including Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zendesk.

For most businesses, PandaDoc works straight out of the box, with one application for the entire sales documentation process.

“We’re an all-in-one solution,” Mikita said. “You don’t need to have 10 different products to pitch and make offers, corroborate on those offers, get them signed, and then transact money through their documents.”

Created to address the personal pains of its founders, PandaDoc was born out of necessity. Considering the origin of PandaDoc, it should come as no surprise that customer feedback is the main inspiration behind its creation and continued improvement.

“Our clients are what drive a lot of our product strategy and new additions to PandaDoc,” Mikita said. “A large part of our core strategy involves client visits and client calls; we try to do as much as we can.”

And, if things go awry, PandaDoc is there to provide personalized support.

Not only does PandaDoc greatly value input from its own clients, but also from the customers of its clients. By streamlining the workflow, the entire sales process takes much less time, leaving customers with a favorable impression.

“The buyer experience is what we care about the most,” Mikita said. “If you want to present your company in a customer-centric way, then PandaDoc is a great solution.”

By taking interest in the success of its clients, PandaDoc is recognized as a people-first company, with its products designed to make everyone’s lives easier. PandaDoc, the preferred choice of many SMBs, has received glowing feedback from reviewers, including G2 Crowd and Capterra. The end result is more sales and happier customers.

“What we’re looking forward to this year is taking all the research we’ve done and applying it to every aspect of the business,” Mikita said.