10 Facts About E-Signatures in Today’s Any Time, Any Place World

by Darryl K. Taft

It’s the combination of this paper savings along with the millions of dollars saved in deflected disputes, and penalties and settlements around non-compliance that shows the true ROI of e-signatures. Besides cost-savings, organizations see ROI such as faster loan processing, lowered risk, faster revenue recognition, lessened drop off rates in highly competitive processes and, most importantly, a better customer experience.

When considering how to take business processes into the digital domain, it’s important to consider the types of evidence an e-signature solution can provide because one of the biggest components of e-signature ROI is the software’s ability to not only gather but replay evidence that can help keep organizations out of court in the event of a dispute. When it comes to e-signature evidence, the solution should offer two types: document evidence (what was signed) and process evidence (how it was signed—what the customer saw and did).

E-signatures need to be vendor-independent to ensure an organization is always able to access its evidence. This is made possible when the audit trail is embedded directly into the document along with the signature, detailed information about the signer’s identity, and the date and time stamp. This creates a self-contained, portable record.

You have countless processes throughout your organization that require e-signatures. To ensure project success, start with a single process or line of business, always keeping the bigger picture in mind. Once you have a successful implementation under your belt, and internal champions building, the expansion becomes easier.

Gone are the days of choosing either on-premise deployment or software-as-a-service (SaaS) when you opt for an e-signature solution that scales to your business. When looking for a true enterprise e-signature solution, organizations should look for a flexible solution that provides multiple deployment options. Depending on many factors, including process volume, project timeline and available resources, it may make more sense to use either SaaS or on-premise storage.

Choosing a vendor that couples innovative technology with the deep industry knowledge gained through many implementations is one of the keys to getting your company up and running quickly and successfully on e-signatures. The experienced vendor will be familiar with your most common use cases.

Ease of use is important with an e-signature solution; otherwise users will not adopt it. Choose an e-signature provider that can offer e-signing anywhere, on any device. Ensure the e-signature solution has a flexible workflow that can adapt to different channels and processes. Check that the solution offers a customizable graphical user interface for a seamless experience.

In today’s connected world, you should be able to e-sign anywhere, any time and on any device. E-signature providers should be able to leverage capabilities of e-signatures on mobile tablets and phones for handwritten signature capture using a stylus or fingertip, clicking a button to sign, extended e-evidence gathering and more. Signers should also have the ability to start the e-signature process on one device, pause and continue with a different device or computer at a later time if that’s more convenient.

Security-conscious, regulated industries face unique challenges when bringing processes online. For example, customers who have implemented Silanis’ e-SignLive include eight of the top 20 North America banks, eight of the top 15 insurers and the U.S. Army.

We’ve all heard of (and used) crowdsourced information to make decisions—think Trip Advisor—and the same value applies to crowdsourced software-rankings, like those from G2 Crowd. Look for crowd-sourcing platforms that validate the user’s identity through a third party, like LinkedIn, and prevent against employees and friends creating fake reviews.