Every single company in the world is fighting hard for improving business efficiency in 2021. It’s about maximizing your output from given inputs and getting the most out of existing resources. Please take a look at some of the most successful companies in the world. They know how to optimize their available resources and extract maximum quality output from them.
A company can’t afford to be inefficient in a competitive market as it drastically increases the operating costs, impacting quality, output, and the company’s brand image. It is difficult to withstand market pressure and counter the demand-supply chain effectively. Unfortunately, inefficiency is a hard-hitting reality that is troubling companies every single business day, costing up to 30% of their revenue every year.
How to improve business efficiency?
A tested way is to make companies well organized and productive by introducing electronic signatures in their workflows.
Here is how electronic signatures improve business efficiency:
1) Limit interruptions in business
Interruptions are killing productivity at work. Forbes research says that around 71% of people report frequent interruptions during working hours. These unwanted interruptions are destroying their ability to stay creative and focussed.
Interruptions can be in various forms like:
- Leaving your work and running to the clients to get their signatures
- Continuous reminders & follow up with the clients to sign documents
- Getting up from your work desk to print-scan-mail the document
- Reminding other signees using calls, email to sign the document
- Getting regular calls from your boss to confirm sales agreement
- Lengthy follow up on emails to close the pending task
- Long meetings to tackle & complete the stuck-up business process
Electronic signatures help limit interruptions in business by
- Preparing documents online & eliminating the vicious cycle of printing-signing-mailing the documents
- Document tracking feature enables you to track the signees as to which people have signed the form and who have still not signed it
- eSignature apps allow you to send document notification to people who have not signed the form
- Your standard business processes would not be stuck up due to your absence in the office, as the application is used remotely from any location.
- Your busy clients don’t have to leave their physical locations to get the essential contracts signed, thereby saving companies’ time.
- You can speedily sign and email the document simultaneously without any wait time.
2) Save time
Signing of physical documents can be a time taking process for most of the companies. A process takes three days on an average to capture a physical signature. Sometimes, it may take more than a week to complete the entire process of signing, scanning, and mailing the concerned documents.
There can be multiple reasons responsible for stretching the timelines to complete the process:
- The concerned signee is not present in the office for signing documents
- Office hardware like printers and scanner are not functioning well
- The original document has been stolen, copied, or forged, forcing the process to start from scratch
When you use electronic signatures:
- The average time to sign a form reduces from weeks to just 1-5 minutes.
- You don’t have to wait for the physical presence of concerned employees as they can electronically sign a document using their smartphones from remote locations.
- You don’t have to get up from your workspace & leave your prioritized job to do printing & scanning activities.
- You avoid the chances of fraudulent activities that consume lots of business time as stored documents can’t be copied, scanned, and stolen.
3) Nullify risks associated with printing, scanning & copying of documents
There are multiple risks with paper documents during the process of printing, scanning & copying like:
- Sometimes, a printed document is left in the paper tray where anyone from the office can copy it leading to a data breach
- Staff members with access to confidential information can print, scan or copy the information freely
- No automatic security alert is sent on printing, scanning, and copying any personal or confidential information
- Anyone from the office can access the confidential documents stored in the memory of printing & scanning machines and send them to anyone
- You can’t track printing, scanning, and copying activities associated with physical documents
Electronic signatures help tackle each of these risks very effectively in day to day business.
eSignature applications make use of cloud solutions to store highly confidential documents. Only concerned employees with access privileges can view, access and edit the contract or agreement. Every time there is an action on the document, a security notification updates all the respective stakeholders.
With eSignature at your service, you don’t have to worry about security risks and data leakage happening due to unauthorized activities.
4) Simplify your workflow
Paperwork is challenging to integrate into the business systems. Multiple steps need integration with the existing business processes. The physical documents need printing and scanning before you can use their details in regular business processes.
But with electronic signatures, you can use them without any further delay!
The reason behind this is that eSignatures simplify business systems that are already in use. You don’t have to prepare contracts or agreements manually, as eSignatures apps use ready-made templates to prepare contracts online.
When both parties sign the online contract on eSignature application, the signed agreement is stored securely on cloud solutions eliminating the need for printing, scanning & storage of documents.
When there is a need to retrieve the signed contract, you don’t need to find it from a massive pile of agreements. You only need to have the company’s approval to access the document stored in the cloud.
Such systematic business workflow ensures that business processes are quicker, speedier, and more secure, with no chances of manual error and document fraud.
Furthermore, eSignature makes the signing process more enjoyable by enabling faster signing between the parties and reducing drop rates of contracts/agreements.
That’s why employees & customers prefer digital signatures to pen and paper signatures as it is more user-friendly and contributes to a positive customer experience that helps attract more & more business.
5) Helps cut costs and increases company incomes
Digitization of business contracts and agreements lowers the storage space and the need for resources like paper, pen, courier costs, photocopies, etc., reducing overall costs by over 30%.
It also boosts company income by:
- Speeding up client acquisition
- Increasing contract & agreement signing rates
- Increasing employee efficiency and productivity
- Cutting unnecessary travel costs for client meetings
- Requiring 80% less time for employee onboarding
- Reducing the average length of sales cycle by a factor of 8 times
- Eliminating hidden costs associated with human error
Digital signatures help increase cost-effectiveness, simplify the compliance process, and improve customer experience. Most importantly, the digitization of business empowers companies to tackle the threat of any competition at any time.
6) Boost remote work productivity
If we go by the physical workflow, employees get bombarded with repetitive, time-consuming tasks that eat up every spare second, profoundly affecting the focus and the right kind of thoughts to do the job smartly.
You got some excellent news with electronic signatures!
You can easily integrate this technology into existing business processes and see a quick boost in the employee and the organization’s productivity. Its time-saving features help streamline their business process to become easily adaptable and faster while offering an excellent experience for both the customers and the employees working remotely or from the office.
With an easy-to-use eSignature application like LunarPen, one can save nearly 40-50 hours per month by transforming the existing workflow and removing the need to print, scan and mail the document.
Conclusion
Want to improve business efficiency?
Electronic signatures are the safest way to eradicate interruptions in daily business operations, simplify daily workflow, cut costs and boost company productivity.
eSignature assures leaner turnaround time and excellent business efficiency as it removes the workflow obstructions and positively improves the customer experience of the application.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a valid e Signature?
In the ESIGN Act, an electronic signature is defined as “an electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with a contract or other record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.”
eSignatures refer to an electronic process that indicates acceptance of an agreement or record. They use various electronic authentication methods to verify the signer’s identity, such as password protection, corporate ID, email, or a PIN.
The proof of signing demonstrates via a secured process that includes an audit trail and a tamper-evident digital signature embedded into the esigned document.
How do I verify an electronic signature?
To verify whether a document or PDF is digitally signed and trusted successfully, the easiest thing is to open the signing panel in the Adobe reader for the document and check whether there is a green checkmark next to the signer’s signature.
The green tick shows that:
- The signature is valid.
- The document is un-modified since the application of signature
- The signature includes an embedded time-stamp
- Presence of signature details like last checked with details
- Signer’s identity is valid
- Signature is LTV enabled
What does signing electronically mean?
Electronically signing the documents means using a digital device to sign documents in electronic format. You can sign documents online using a smartphone, laptop, tablet, or using a mouse. It helps your business go paper-free and eliminate time-consuming activities like printing, scanning, and mailing documents.
Here is how you can use the LunarPen app to sign documents electronically
- Create a document using ready-made templates
- Upload online documents using Google cloud or Dropbox
- Use the signed document sharing feature
- Use the LunarPen interface to sign the document
- Receive esigned documents by email
What is the best eSignature software?
LunarPen is the best eSignature software trusted by over 1 lakh professionals at leading companies.
Look at some of the exciting features of the LunarPen App:
High-level security: Signatures collected via eSignature apps are legal and secure. Each party confirms their identity via a secret code sent via SMS to sign.
Legally Binding: All signatures collected via LunarPen are compliant with EU norms and automatically generate a time-stamped proof-file to safeguard your agreements.
Integrate with 3rd party apps: Seamlessly connect your LunarPen account to popular cloud storage solutions like Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, or Evernote, and even sign documents right from within Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, and the Google Chrome browser.
Sign documents from anywhere: No more printing, scanning, or faxing. An easy-to-use and fast signing experience, signing documents is a breeze from your phone and computer – whether at your desk or on the beach.