The modern workspace is constantly evolving to keep pace with customer demands. Primarily, the most valuable asset a team may have at its disposal is time. Efficiency the word that keeps organizations running, and the tools a team employs dictates how effective those processes are. When the conversation turns to contracts and signatures, there is only one real solution for the modern business, that being the implementation of electronic signatures. How much more value could electronic signature services be for your team? Let’s discuss the inherent value of such a system.
Change and Efficiency
Initially the most dramatic change will be the lack of physical documentation. Change can be difficult for any organization; however most electronic signature services provide their API (application programming interface). Some solutions require a purchase or fee to access, while others provide it as a complimentary service. With a technologies API, your team can seamlessly integrate digital document preparation to already existing programs being used daily. This could be anything from a document management service or your team’s primary email application. This ease of access not only promotes more use by your workforce, but also allows them to access virtual documents and PDFs that they already use for other purposes.
Understanding Integrations
With your electronic signature service now integrated into your teams’ applications of choice, each user now has the capability convert any document or contract into an interactable form. This process is fairly simple to do and usually does not need to be repeated once finished per document. The real value now comes from how quickly those contracts can be sent and signed by customers. Electronic signatures provide two major values for you. The freedom for customers to interact and sign contracts from anywhere, at their convenience. As well as additional document security that is inherent with using such a service. Traditionally electronic signatures based their legality off a user’s identification through either a business-related email address or other valid account. However, there are several additional verification methods available to confirm the signer’s identity. These range from knowledge-based authentication to phone verification, to password-based security. These options can usually be freely selected on a document-by-document basis, providing an authenticated audit report for the documents being signed. This creates a situation where not only are contracts being signed more efficiently, but they are also validated beyond what a traditional paper form would be.
Ease of Interaction
In a sense, the largest value add from such a service is the customer’s perspective. Not only are they receiving critical documents moments after they are sent, but they also can interact and sign these forms with minimal effort. Many of these electronic signature services allow customers to interact and sign forms without any type of additional software being required. If the customer has a device that allows access to their professional email, then that customer has the capability to complete and sign the forms in question. In an evolving, modern workplace most individuals have access to a business smart phone, which is the only asset they need to complete a signature process.
Tracking and Management
With so many documents being sent for signature, you might be wondering what options there are in terms of record keeping. Electronic signature services rely very heavily not only legally authenticating the users involved but also with access and document security. Many of these services provide a direct option to store documents perpetually, this allows easy access and a simple way to filter and find whatever form is in question. However, this simply is not the limit of the options available to you. Through an API (application programming interface) they can be curated to do all sorts of things with signed documents. This includes distributing copies of forms into local servers, or alternative storage options that your team already has deployed. The authenticity of these files can be validated at any time once acquired. This also confirms that no additional changes or adjustments have been made to a contract, once its signing process is complete.
Many government teams already use email and messaging services to communicate between team members and customers; so why should your contracts be treated any differently? For more information on electronic signatures and services, check out the on-demand webinar, “Refresh Digital Document Workflows with Powerful E-Signature and PDF Capabilities.”
