The digital revolution is changing the way many businesses operate and introducing many new solutions and technologies. While the benefits of digital solutions have always been present, they’ve proven even more critical to businesses as they adapted to the unprecedented conditions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even one of the most basic elements of conducting business - getting and receiving legally-binding signatures - has been improved by digital technology. E-signature is a great example of how digital technology has helped companies update their processes and improve their customer relations to adapt to operating more remotely amidst social distancing guidelines and quarantine lockdowns.

As more companies undergo digital transformations, it’s critical that your business begin adopting digital solutions like e-signature in order to keep up with the competition and customer expectations. 

Enhanced security

With an e-signature, you get peace of mind and you'll have less to worry about. While physical documents can be tampered with, lost, misfiled, or damaged in unexpected events like floods or fires, digital documents are much easier to protect. Whereas using a reputed e-signature platform offers robust audit trails, ensuring documents are only accessed by the right individuals. 

Faster document sharing

One of the biggest benefits of e-signing is speed. There is no longer the need to print and mail contracts in order to capture a signature - a particularly time-consuming undertaking when multiple signatories are required. With an e-signature or contract management platform, you can share your contract with many signatories in different locations and capture signatures without any hassle. Reading a document digitally is also much easier, as you get to skim through and search for necessary information quickly. 

Sustainable and environmentally friendly 

As per the University of Southern California, on average Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper in a year which is about 680 pounds per person. Not only is the process of physically maintaining and mailing these documents expensive, but it is also not a sustainable solution. Using an e-signature platform will contribute positively to the environment by reducing paper usage.

Global acceptance and legal compliance

One of the most common concerns businesses raise regarding adoption of e-signatures is their legal legitimacy. Simply put, electronic signatures are becoming more widely recognized and accepted, including via legislation and regulations. The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN Act), along with its precursor UETA, provides the legal foundation for the use of electronic records and electronic signatures in commerce. It validates that electronic signatures have the same legal effect as wet-ink signatures. When obtained correctly, an electronic signature using compliant technologies, certifications, and authentications will have full validity under the law.

Exela DrySign is compliant with all relevant laws and regulations, including the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN) and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA). It uses smart tracking and powerful audit trails to improve compliance and mitigate risks. Not only will you be able to process your documents faster, but you get an audit trail on your documents. DrySign will make the entire process of document management easy - get in touch today to understand how it can assist your functions. 

Considering today’s fast-paced work life, we are all looking for solutions that can help us do more in less time. On top of that, the Covid-19 pandemic has forced many businesses to make major changes, adopting new technologies and solutions to adapt to a more remote, but no less time-strapped environment. In order to maintain business continuity and streamline processes, many organizations are turning to eSignature platforms.

Even before the pandemic hit, entirely paper-based signing and approval processes could take days to complete. Now, with more people in the approval chain likely to be working remotely, a paper-based process is becoming completely untenable. The global pandemic has shown businesses just how vulnerable traditional processes are - and just how effective digital solutions like eSignature technologies can be.

The traditional contract signing process meant a document would have to be signed, shipped, faxed, or scanned, and then finally filed. For even a simple approval, a document would go through multiple steps and often physically travel great distances. This makes it time-consuming and costly, and creates unnecessary dependencies.

Electronic signatures have many advantages, but the three key benefits of using electronic signatures are: increased speed in processing documents, enhanced security, and significantly lower transaction costs.

The Law on Electronic Signatures

Still, while eSignature platforms are becoming more common, many professionals across industries are hesitant to fully embrace digital signing. For one thing, it’s not always clear whether eSignatures are legally binding. Let’s clear that up here.

The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN Act), along with its precursor UETA, provides the legal foundation for the use of electronic records and electronic signatures in commerce. It validates that electronic signatures have the same legal effect as wet-ink signatures. When obtained correctly, an electronic signature using compliant technologies, certifications, and authentications will have full validity under the law.

The law states:

- No contract, signature, or record shall be denied legal effect solely because it is in electronic form.

- A contract relating to a transaction cannot be denied legal effect solely because an electronic signature or record was used in its formation.

The law requires the signer's intent to execute or accept the agreement, which can be accomplished by affirmative action, such as typing their name or drawing their signature.

Keep in mind, though, that although electronic signatures are widely accepted for business transactions in the United States and internationally, there are still a few cases under which old fashioned signatures are required, such as on wills, powers of attorney, and birth certificates.

So yes, electronically signed documents are legally valid and binding.You should not only feel free to use them to conduct business, you should encourage using electronic signatures whenever possible to utilize their benefits.

Finding a Digital Signature Solution

There is then just the question of choosing the best platform. At Exela, we developed DrySign to offer a holistic approach towards procuring signed documents over the internet - an approach that goes beyond a conventional digital signature solution. The platform is easy to operate and will help you keep processes moving forward without any delay. It can also be integrated with a wide variety of enterprise solutions like Salesforce to accelerate sign-offs and improve productivity.

Key highlights of the platform include:

• - Flexibility - determine who signs and in what order
• - Visibility - you can see who has signed the document and pending signatories
• - Security - offers tracking and audit trails to improve compliance
• - Efficiency - accelerates the singing cycle and eliminates the inconvenience and space requirements of storing executed documents
• - Sustainable - eradicates the need for paper and ink
• -Affordable - now available in a freemium version!

Explore the benefits of DrySign today.

Over two years ago, in order to slow the spread of COVID-19 and adhere to public health and safety guidelines, many businesses had to hastily transition to remote and online work. Digital and automation technology was growing prior to the pandemic, but the sudden shift to remote working arrangements supercharged it. Since then, adoption of digital and automation technology has only progressed, with one McKinsey study showing a leap equivalent to several years of development.

Electronic signatures may not have started with the pandemic, but their use was certainly supercharged by it. While the necessities of the pandemic have led many to incorporate digital and electronic signature options, many businesses and individuals still rely on physical signatures.

Why use electronic signatures?

Electronic signature platforms give you better visibility and transparency to online interactions and develops trust between customers, business partners, and vendors. These tools can also help significantly speed up processes, as documents are submitted, signed, and returned nearly instantaneously across even vast distances. You can use your electronic devices to access files quickly, read through, and authenticate them instantly, eliminating any need to print, mail, and scan documents.

If you’re still on the fence about using e-signatures for your important business documents and approvals processes, let’s go through some of the most common concerns regarding e-signatures so you can start taking advantage of all the benefits they offer.

Compliance

One of the main concerns preventing people from adopting electronic signatures is compliance. There are regional and international electronic signature laws in place, as well as rules and regulations regarding presenting documents, disclosures, and other information. It’s important for organizations to remain in compliance with all of them. Luckily, competent electronic signature service providers take all of this into consideration, and stay up to date with the necessary credentials and certifications to ensure that your signatures are compliant.

The laws and regulations regarding e-signatures vary across countries and industries. For example, electronic signatures have been given the same legal status as handwritten signatures under the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) and the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN) in the United States. In the U.K., e-signatures are legally binding under U.K. eIDAS regulations, shorthand for 'electronic identification and trust services’. In India, the IT Act 2000 grants electronic signatures a legal status whereas in the Philippines, e-signatures are allowed under the Electronic Commerce Act of 2000.

E-signatures service providers should make it clear which laws and regulations they adhere to in each locality where they operate.

Fear of forgery or fraud

New technologies always invariably come with new risks and dangers, which is a major reason some people wait to fully adopt them. Security concerning signatures is of particular importance.

The truth is, most e-signature solutions are secure, as they are backed by digital signature technology that encrypts and protects your online paperwork through a slew of systems like audit trails, PKI technology, etc. This ensures that document processes are 100% encrypted and sealed against tampering or forgery. They are based on asymmetric cryptography, generated through a public key algorithm with two unique keys - a private key that is unique to a signatory, and a public key, which is available to everyone and used for decrypting the online signature. When users want to sign a document, their private, unique, non-transferable key is used, ensuring the veracity of the signature to others.

When selecting an e-signature solution for your business, it’s always a good idea to check that the compliance and certifications of the software are up to date and meet your standards.

Risk of unauthorized signing

Today, many electronic signature platforms come equipped with multiple layers of security to prevent compromising sensitive information. For instance, you can adopt an extra anti-fraud element such as multi-factor authentication protocols.

E-signature platforms not only allow users to sign a document, but also enable detection of changes made to the document’s contents, ensuring legitimacy. This equips you to make decisions faster, have more control, and better visibility into your document and approvals processes, allowing you to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies. You should spend some time comparing various e-signature platforms out there to make sure you find a suitable match for your requirements.

Exela’s DrySign is a legally compliant and secure digital signature platform that helps you digitize the internal and external sign-off process while offering a wide array of features that make for a smooth online signing experience. It works on all internet-connected devices and operating systems, allows for multiple signatories to review a document simultaneously, improves workflow efficiency, is environmentally friendly, and reduces costs related to printing, shipping, and storing documents.

See what DrySign can do for you – start a free trial today!