Why Should Businesses Start Using Digital Signatures
Signatures are vital in businesses because they allow them to legally enforce agreements with their customers, employees, and stakeholders. Signing corporate documents represents that the parties intend to go through a contract that's crucial in business processes. In turn, the entrepreneurs and their partners can provide proof that both of them agree to fulfill their written obligations.
The current market size in 2022 for digital signatures is estimated to be between $2.3 billion and $2.8 billion. The COVID-19 pandemic and the total lockdown have greatly affected the services market and contributed to a greater growth rate of the digital signatures market.
According to Deloitte research, the market growth in 2023 will be 4.5-5 billion US dollars and more than 14 billion US dollars by 2026, while the annual growth rate will be from 28% to 30%.
Since signing business contracts is imperative in companies, business owners must ensure the accuracy and safety of their documents. However, most traditional organizations still adopt manual document processing, which makes their legal files prone to error. If they face fraud, they might not have legal proof that they can use to file lawsuits against the other parties, which can be costly.
This article provides seven reasons and benefits why businesses should start using digital signatures.
1. Boost Workplace Productivity
Office productivity is a vital asset in companies because it directly affects their goal attainment. Organizations can receive higher returns on investment (ROI) when employees and technologies are productive and develop better products. As a result, they'll consistently deliver the needs of their customers without losing valuable time during downtime.
Business owners have to use modern tools like digital signatures to boost workplace productivity and improve document processing. Without technology like jSign and others, their staff has to manually upload files as email attachments and convert them to portable document format (PDF). During this process, the documents will be prone to manual errors that might slow down business processes.
2. Enables Workflow Tracking
Monitoring workflow is vital in operational activities because it shows precisely how much progress has been made on a specific task. Doing so helps managers to have real-time updates about the performance of their employees, which allows to guide them as they reach every step. In turn, they can avoid costly errors that could have been prevented if the staff had instructors who could help them as they work on crucial projects.
Entrepreneurs need to use digital signatures to improve task completion when enabling workflow tracking. This technology will allow them to give access to the signers so they can have the ability to insert additional files into the transaction while the managers are monitoring the process. During this activity, they can correct the involved parties by adding comments directly to the file rather than sending them manual messages.
3. Improves Document Security
Document security is crucial in processes because it helps entrepreneurs ensure that they're protecting their sensitive data. They can revoke access to third parties to safeguard the recipients' details if they have an efficient document management system. With that, they can prevent data loss due to identity theft and fraud, which might affect their credibility and legal compliance.
Business owners must use digital signatures to recognize and validate individuals when improving document security. When this signature is attached to an email, the signee assures the recipient that the original sellers signed the contents. As a result, these authentic brands can eliminate hijackers who might tamper with the document and steal information from the clients.
In addition, these digital signatures will help entrepreneurs in limiting fraud, forgeries, and human errors. On the other hand, traditional document processing means they must collect manual signatures by drafting an email, attaching a file, and delivering it to relevant parties. Without digitalization, they might forget to include a signee or create a lousy duplicate, which makes them prone to data threats.
4. Enhances Customer Relations
Customers are vital to the profitability of businesses because they can buy products and services from them. When companies build and nurture positive relationships, they can sustain their trust and make them feel secure as they transact with the brands. In turn, they encourage them to stay loyal to their offers and inspire them to create user-generated content (UGC), which attracts other qualified leads.
When enhancing customer relations, business owners read these practical ways to leverage electronic signatures:
Create A Smoother Transaction
Modern customers only expect a fast-purchasing process from online stores. However, businesses that use traditional processes in collecting signatures are likely to miss out on sales opportunities. In addition, they'll lose their customers and might never return to their digital stores since they can easily find a more efficient alternative.
Using digital signatures, entrepreneurs can exceed the expectations of their online customers with smoother transactions. Instead of going through time-consuming and costly paper files, they quickly enable their clients to order or sign a warranty extension contract online. Also, their clients won't have to travel and visit their physical stores to file a complaint, which creates a more convenient experience.
Faster Order Delivery
Online sellers across e-commerce marketplaces must keep up with the ever-increasing competition with new brands. If they don't enable same-day shipping, they'll quickly lose their prospective buyers and receive multiple complaints about slow orders. Additionally, they might have to deal with manual tracking errors, resulting in incorrect product or location delivery.
With the help of electronic signatures, entrepreneurs can receive inventory confirmation from their warehouse team. This process allows them to validate whether they have enough stocks in their inventory so they can produce more items and deliver the products quickly. Then, they'll update their sellers about their current stocks so their sales managers can assess whether they can process the orders in a given period.
Once they receive the digitally signed confirmation update, they can move along the sales order validation from their customers and let them sign documents online. After that, they can use these digital signature tools to sign contracts with the shipping company that'll deliver their customers' orders. In case of product dissatisfaction, customers can sign complaints forms, send them to the customer service team, and notify the return processing team.
Eliminates Time-Consuming Paperwork
Most modern customers order their desired items online because they don't want to go through excessive time-consuming paperwork. Unfortunately, those traditional companies still adopt old document processes, so they might lose potential clients.
With the help of digital signatures, business owners can offer paperless processing to their customers. For instance, they may use this modernization to allow clients to subscribe to online subscriptions by signing the contract directly for the website. On the other hand, old digital services include sending out contracts to be signed using a slow process like email, which can be tedious.
Increases Customer Retention
When customers sign contracts with a business, they want to ensure that it'll protect their sensitive information. Without document protection, these businesses are prone to giving access to attackers who might duplicate or misuse this data. If this incident happens, they'll lose the trust of their consumers and generate a lower market share.
With the help of electronic signatures, organizations can increase customer retention by assuring their clients that their information will stay within their companies. These signed documents are considered an international organization for standardization or ISO-structured PDF files protected with secure encryption. Furthermore, they'll quickly fill out and sign forms anywhere using their mobile devices, which creates a supportive mobile-friendly workflow.
5. Reduces Expenses
Stationery expenses are administrative costs from obtaining supplies like file folders, markers, paper clips, pens, paper, and staples. When a traditional company has to maintain these office supplies, they might create a cluttered workplace, which might cause trips and falls, illnesses, and fire. In turn, they might increase employee turnover, lower productivity, and generate costly lawsuits.
With the help of digital signatures, modern entrepreneurs can reduce their stationery expenses from these expensive office supplies. Instead of storing paper files inside their desks or huge commercial cabinets, they enable their suppliers and customers to sign documents online. Additionally, employees won't have to go through a pool of files since they can easily access digital storage systems once their transactions need them.
Signing documents online will also help them eliminate shipping costs since they won't have to send these files to their business partners. Since their employees won't have to wait for the response of their customers using traditional paper delivery, they can move through other essential tasks. As a result, they'll remain productive in their roles, so companies will generate more products while receiving a higher ROI in their workforce.
6. Allows Global Penetration
When corporations are ready to grow beyond their local market, they must have the means to go through with their expansion initiative. With digitization, they can persuade their international investors to give them financial support to build new locations in different countries. However, they won't be able to do it if they still have to send back and forth multiple documents because doing so is time-consuming and expensive.
With electronic signatures, growing companies have limitless opportunities to penetrate global markets. For instance, if they're planning to work with international freelancers, this digital tool will help them attract qualified candidates who'll contribute to their expansion. After they employ an excellent workforce, they can start finding upselling opportunities in various regions, and they'll have local teams who can promote their businesses using different languages.
Using digital signatures, these corporate leaders can send timely payments to their international staff without delays and pay slip errors. Before sending these income payables, their payroll team can communicate with their remote accountant to validate tax codes, employee details, and transfer account information. Once they do so, they can share signed insights with the human resources (HR) managers to deliver compensation to their global staff on time.
7. Increase Team Collaboration
Businesses need collaboration within their team because it helps them create unique ideas that might contribute to their success. When groups work together, they can find ways to resolve minimal issues before they lead to more significant problems that could affect the organization. Then, they can recommend these fresh ideas to their stakeholders who'll make informed decisions using these insights.
When increasing a team's online collaboration, entrepreneurs have to leverage electronic signatures using these ways:
Faster Collection Of Signatures
Instead of going through the time-consuming process of manually collecting signatures from the staff, digitalization helps them become more efficient with their tasks. As a result, they minimize the overall cost and risks associated with manual errors, which may lead to retyping of paper files.
Eliminates Long Email Threads
This technology will also help employers to gather their staff within a single platform where they can communicate with their teammates. For instance, teams can use these channels to ask permission from their team leaders about specific processes so they can move through crucial projects without conversing via long email threads. Instead of losing time printing documents and sending them to the location of their managers, they can share these digital files and wait for them to sign within a few minutes.
Sends Progress Notifications To Customers
Another thing about electronic signatures is that the sales, marketing, warehousing, and customer service departments can work together to deliver progress notifications to customers. For example, the sales team can communicate with the warehouse staff about real-time inventory updates within their store using digitally verified documents.
In turn, they can process inventory so the sales staff can send signals to the customer service team about overstocking and find ways to sell their excessive stock. After that, the marketing team can verify these updates and plan ways to promote their products on social media such as content or discounts. Once they receive more leads from these advertisements, their products will have more demand and they can verify these insights to the sales, customer service, and production teams.
Easier Task Assignment
Assigning duties is imperative for the success of projects. Department heads have to outline the responsibilities of their staff before the onboarding day, so they understand their jobs. With that, they should be able to deliver this information in a signed message to make their messages valid so their new hires will conform.
Instead of sending these documents to their homes or desks, the HR team can deliver them via email or virtual communications. In turn, their new employees can read them immediately, ask questions, and receive immediate responses from the HR staff. As a result, they won't have to go through the time-consuming process of filling up legal documents during the onboarding day.
Key Takeaway
Business owners must transform their workplace through digitalization to have smoother processes. Therefore, they should use digital signatures to take advantage of these seven benefits. Once they do so, they can boost the efficiency of their employees so they can consistently meet the demands of their customers.
