Digital Signatures

05
Nov
2021
Type of Signatures

Type of Signatures

It’s no secret that professionals all over the world sign various documents daily. Whether it’s a notice board in your school or a file in your office, signatures are quite ubiquitous. There was a time when signatures meant doing signatures using pen and paper. If you’re wondering what the different types of signatures for your name are, you’d be surprised to know that there are plenty of ways to sign a document.

In this article, we aim to discuss every popular type of signature. Apart from that, we’d also guide you on which signature you should use and why. Let’s delve further!

Wet Signature

Wet signature is the traditional type of signature. When you use a pen to manually sign a paper or document, it is called a wet signature. Like other kinds of signatures, the main purpose of wet signatures is to indicate that the signatory has read, understood, and agreed to the contents of that document.

It’s said that wet signatures were first practised in 1677 when a law was passed in the UK, which states that every contract should be written and signed in order to have legal standing.

Since then, every contract was signed manually until the invention of electronic signatures.

Considering the fact that a wet signature could be forged, it’s a good rule of thumb to do a wet signature in the presence of at least two or three people that you trust. A wet signature could be your nickname, real name (first or second name), your company’s name, or even a symbol or mark.

Electronic Signature

An electronic signature, also known as e-signature, is another widely used type of signature. It has gained so much popularity lately and organizations across the globe have switched to it. It’s an online version of your wet signatures. In other words, it’s an illustration of your wet signatures in digital form. A scanned picture of a signatory’s wet signatures or a bio-metric signing on signing hardware are a few electronic signatures examples.

As technology grows, signing documents has become more convenient. Gone are the days when you had to spend a great deal of your time signing the documents manually. The most obvious benefit of electronic signatures is that they save your time and money. The thing with the wet signature is that you have to buy pen and ink week in, week out, or you’d be caught short. Thankfully, that’s not the case with electronic signatures.

In the light of the differences described by the EIDAS regulations (Electronic Identification, Authentication, and Trust Services regulations) in 2016, let’s discuss the types of electronic signatures briefly:

  1. Simple Electronic Signature: In simple electronic signatures, you don’t have to go through any hassle of verifying your identity. Predictably then, they are not as secure as the other types of electronic signatures. You can go for these signatures, but it’s recommended not to trust them in case of sensitive documents as they are more vulnerable to fraudulent activities.
  2. Advanced Electronic Signature: Next, we have the advanced electronic signature. In this type, you have to provide some verification of your identity. Generally, the signatory is verified by certificates, which are often delivered via a delivery service. They are safer than simple electronic signatures, as they require verification.

Digital Signature

A digital signature, also known as the qualified electronic signature, is the most secure type of electronic signatures. They take the verification a step further to comply with the eIDAS regulations. All the details about the signatory are saved in these signatures. If you want your signing process to be the safest, then you can’t go wrong with the digital signatures, plain and simple!

Our Verdict

There are times when wet signatures or electronic signatures are the only options. But if the choice is yours, we recommend using electronic signatures.

If you own a company and rely on wet signatures only, you are very likely to lag behind, as signing documents manually consumes a lot of time. Switching to electronic signatures will save time for you that you can invest in doing something productive. And yes, unlike wet signatures, electronic signatures can hardly be forged. This is why most organizations have replaced wet signatures with electronic signatures already.

Formats

Talking about e signature format, electronic signatures nowadays are compatible with pretty much every file format. Although PDF is the most widely used one, you can sign documents of other formats as well. The same goes for the digital signature formats. You can also save your wet signatures in PDF format. Many software such as Adobe Acrobat, Autograph signature app, are available that allow you to save your wet signatures.

Lunarpen- A Name of Trust

There are dozens of websites and software that offer electronic signatures, none better than the Lunarpen. It’s a company that offers the safest and seamless signing experience. Individuals and companies all over the world use Lunarpen to sign documents every day - and for good reasons. This entire procedure is quite meticulous for users’ convenience. A major part of the reason why it has won the trust of professionals is that it’s safe and easy. The signing process requires the signatory to confirm his identity via a private code.

The collected signatures at Lunarpen are in compliance with all the regulations.

From One-drive to Dropbox, you can connect your account to many applications. Apart from that, it comes with a highly advanced feature that helps you track the document and see the progress. Sign up now for a free account on Lunarpen and take your signing up a notch.

Final Thoughts

Wet signatures and electronic signatures are the two main types of signatures. While the wet signature is the traditional type of signature, an electronic signature is its digital form.

Organizations can save a great deal of their time by switching to electronic signatures.

Lunarpen is a well-known company that offers electronic signatures. Tons of innovative features at Lunarpen make the signing process an absolute breeze.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
02
Jul
2021

How e-Signatures Improve Business Efficiency

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.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
01
Jul
2021

How Using Electronic Signatures Helps Your Sales Team

2021 is the year of sales transformation and a critical factor in determining how businesses would grow in the coming years. B2B buyers and sellers have gone digital due to the massive digital transformation. What we thought of as a crisis response has become the current norm in the last two years. One thing is sure that the gigantic digital shift is here to stay and will continue to drive businesses in a safer, speedier & structured way.

B2B sales can adapt to any challenging environment and have not let us down in this tough situation. Crucial research from Mckinsey says that buyers & sellers prefer digital self-serve and remote human engagements over face-to-face interactions. It has made it easier for buyers to place orders, get information, arrange service and enjoy the speed and convenience of services.

If you observe the market situation, all manual processes & business activities have shifted digitally. We are keeping a complete ban on field visits, client meetings and lively discussions.

So, how do the sales team sign contracts and agreements with new businesses in 2021?

Introducing electronic signatures - one of the most gifted digital era technologies empowering your sales team to safely, securely, and speedily sign confidential documents.

Electronic signatures and digital signatures are increasingly replacing traditional methods of signing and authenticating documents.

What makes them safer for businesses is that for more than a decade, electronic signature laws have legalized and broadened the scope of eSignatures to facilitate more straightforward agreements, collaborations and business transactions of national & International importance.

Here is how using electronic signatures helps your sales team:

1) Boost Key Result Areas (KRAs) of your Sales team

Are you worried about your sales team’s performance? The pandemic is driving every sales team crazy as they are constantly worried about meeting their allocated sales targets.

There are endless questions to ponder upon by a sales guy:

  • How do we persuade the clients to sign up for the documents?
  • How to achieve sales targets in challenging situations like lockdown?
  • How to increase the market share of the company’s products & services?
  • How to build superb trust, rapport & credibility with sales prospects?
  • How to close every sale confidently?

Think no more! Electronic signatures are a win-win solution for any company’s sales team designed to perform in any challenging situation.

Sales teams can effectively use eSignatures to sign business contracts or agreements speedily. As a result, they do not have to depend on physical visits to the clients for follow-ups regarding contract/agreement closure.

The contractual agreement converts into electronic format, and its online copy is instantly available to the client for eSignature in a single click. Additionally, live notifications on the eSignature app ensure that you stay updated about the esigned status of the documents.

Sales team utilizing eSignature applications can score 100% in their KRAs and close sales more confidently by

  • Emerging as the undisputed sales champion of their sales territory as the client would sign contracts with your company only due to the excellent Customer Experience (CX) in the form of eSignature solutions
  • The sales team can close more contracts on the spot due to the ultimate benefit of multiple deals getting signed within a few seconds.
  • Building an excellent relationship with the clients with this latest technological marvel helps them sign contracts without travelling and that too at blazing fast speed.
  • Electronic signatures help gain market share by signing more contracts speedily than the competition’s sales team.

2) Electronically sign multiple Sales documents

Electronic signatures sign every possible sales document embedded in the business process. Here are the examples of documents that are signed electronically:

  • Non-disclosure agreements
  • Financial agreements
  • Sales quotes
  • Proposal and bids
  • Sales orders
  • Customer agreements
  • Sales receipts
  • Delivery orders
  • Invoices

3) Lightning-Fast invoicing

The processing speed of an invoice depends on the information synchronization between the sales and finance team.

Let’s talk about a situation where the sales team has billed the ‘X’ amount in the invoice, but the finance end shows some difference in the quoted figures.

The error may have happened due to manual mistakes at the sales end or the finance team going ahead with incorrect information. The tussle between the teams can cause an unprecedented delay in the processing of an invoice. Unfortunately, the only way to solve this issue is to do a data reconciliation, which can be highly time-consuming.

eSignature applications help in e-invoicing by making the electronically signed contracts available directly to the finance team. In addition, it eliminates any manual errors as the finance team has all the relevant available information to invoice your clients.

As sales commissions and bonuses ride on accurate reporting, electronic signatures ensure that both the sales and finance team have all the correct data to process invoices at the right time without further delays.

4) Improved productivity of the Sales team

Vital research states that Salespeople spend one-third of their day talking to prospects. In addition, they spend 21% of the day emailing, 17% on entering information, 17% on further researching and prospecting, and 12% on internal meetings and 12% on scheduling calls.

The traditional document signing process that helps close the final deal can take uncountable hours of calls, meetings, follow-ups, writing proposals, revising proposals, emails, filing documents, convincing the clients, etc.

It can lead to colossal burnout and a drastic reduction in employee productivity. So, you need to ensure that you empower your sales team with the tool to cut down the hours spent on mundane tasks.

Using an electronic signature online significantly reduces any manual efforts.

Salespeople using electronic signatures have a lot of free productive time for finding new opportunities, nurturing leads, building customer relationships, and generating new leads.

5) Close deals on the spot

Signing contractual documents with a pen is a thing of the past as it is an extremely lengthy process. Nowadays, clients want to close deals speedily and laser focus on their business in 2021.

Suppose you are still using handwritten signatures for closing the agreements. In that case, the decision-making teams from both the parties need to be present at a common destination, and every detail of the deal would need advanced planning like:

  • Agreement venue
  • Travel arrangements
  • Identification proofs
  • Stamp of both the parties

You don’t have such a constraint with digital signatures!

The contractual document is prepared online and available for counter-signature on the eSignature application. Therefore, there is a negligible waiting period for electronically signing the contracts, which needs only a few seconds.

eSignatures are easy to use, completely legal & backed by electronic laws worldwide. They are available for users from any remote location on any digital device. It empowers the sales team to shorten the lengthy agreement cycle and close deals with the qualified leads right on the spot.

6) Reduce Turnaround Time (TAT)

There are multiple reasons for insufficient turnaround time in business

  • Presence of too many manual processes
  • Lack of business planning & execution
  • A great deal of human intervention
  • Lack of clear communication

These pointers are responsible for delays in completing the contract/agreement in time. Your business clients expect to start the deal quickly. If you take too long to respond, you are less likely to earn their respect as well as the repeat business, forget about making word-of-mouth recommendations or business references, that are highly recommended in increasing your market reach and boosting the sale figures.

All documents can be signed online using electronic signatures, reducing the turnaround time by more than 80%.

It means the moment your client signs a document with your company. Then, you can send it to the next party for their eSignature. That too without any waiting time for printing, scanning and mailing the signed document. As a result, the company can quickly start giving services to the concerned client for which the deal was signed and build a positive brand image in the market.

Conclusion

Are you still using pen and paper for signing your sales contracts? Think again! You can also transform your sales process today and integrate electronic signatures to boost your revenue, even if you have a small sales team. Start eSigning your documents today!

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
14
May
2021

How eSignatures are Saving Our Planet

Take a minute and look around you; You will see tonnes of papers in our daily lives.

It isn’t easy to imagine a world without paper!

We use paper for data storage, print newspapers, magazines, keep track of transactions, and so on. Students use it for studying, research with books and notebooks, as well as extra notes. Offices use it for printing and storing different records physically. If you visit a post office, you can see that every collected mail is paper made.

According to the researchers, human activity led to the destruction of 15 billion trees every year, reducing the green cover on our planet by 46%.

A paper may appear harmless to you! But in reality, it has caused more significant environmental damage to our planet:

  • Deforestation: 9,541,559 hectares of forest were cut down or burned globally in 2021, which has a whopping 11.3% contribution to global emissions
  • Pollutants: Paper & pulp industries are responsible for producing 100 million kgs of harmful contaminants like SO2, H2S, CIO2, CO every year
  • Waste disposal & recycling: Paper waste disposal & recycling is the main problem as 40% of the total waste is paper waste contributing to 71.6 million tons of waste annuall

Now let’s look at some of the official use of paper:

  • An average employee uses 10,000 sheets of paper every year
  • Sending details on paper costs up to 31 times the original price (printing, copying, postage, storage, filing, recycling, etc.)
  • Each year 7.5 billion documents produce 15 trillion copies of the original documents.

The most prominent observation from the above statistics is that the more you use paper, the more demand is created in the paper industry to produce them every day.

What if we reduce our paper consumption, go green to save substantial operational costs, and transform your company into an eco-friendly company?

How to achieve this feat superfast? The answer is using esignature applications.

Here is how esignatures are saving our planets:

  • Get rid of storage concerns

A standard piece of paper uses cellulose wood fiber strengthened and glued together by strong hydrogen bonds. Suppose the storeroom having paper documents is exposed to hot, moist, and wet conditions. In that case, they are easily destructible—such concerns associated with paper storage force organizations to keep the paper documents in temperature-controlled environments. As paper documents take huge space, such document storage facilities come at mammoth annual costs.

Businesses using eSignatures don’t have to worry about storing paper documents, as documents are stored in electronic format using secure cloud storage managed by third parties like Google, Microsoft & Amazon.

Companies using eSignature solutions save huge costs (power, rental & maintenance bills) associated with the storage of physical documents and make a remarkable contribution in reducing the toxic fumes emitted by power plants, preserving natural resources, and protecting habitats from degradation.

  • Eliminate paper wastage

Some documents are printed, copied, and mailed multiple times to fulfill a company’s requirements, but employees often print unwanted copies of the papers unnecessarily.

It also happens that people require several copies of the document for different purposes and carry document copies with them. The best examples are students using temporary notes for their examination, doctors’ prescriptions for illness, old newspapers, paper bills after shopping, paper envelopes used for mailing paper documents, and many more.

When the purpose of these documents is over, then they are thrown off in the dustbin.

The result is excess paper wastage.

Electronic signatures enable users to sign documents electronically rather than print, sign, scan, and return them by mail.

Companies can actively put a curb on paper wastage using eSignature systems and help our environment breathe better.

  • Reduce harmful emissions from vehicles

An important use of paper is to sign essential contracts and agreements.

There are several instances when the new contract has to be sent to an individual for signature and then sent back to the company. Often, the parties associated with the contract or agreement must travel to a familiar location to complete the deal. They have to use train, flight, personal, or transport services to travel or send the paper documents to the owner or receiver.

If you are using transportation services to travel, send or receive the contractual documents, you actively contribute to multiplying the greenhouse gases responsible for climate change, extreme weather conditions, wildfires, droughts, and a lot more.

eSignatures reduce harmful emissions from vehicles by esigning essential contractual documents without moving out from your location.

  • Get rid of plastic ballpoint pens and refills.

Plastic ballpoint pens are everywhere. They are at home, work, and school, but they are just as polluting as plastic bags and straws because as the ink runs out, you have to throw it away.

All disposable plastic pens and refills contain toxic materials like lead, end up in waterways, landfills, and other places with the harmful content trickling down to the soil and the groundwater table, causing considerable damage to the natural reserves and aquatic life.

As ballpoint pens are not biodegradable, they are a big nuisance for the environment as they can take more than a century to decompose. Nowadays, we have already started seeing the ill effects of plastic in our environment, like microplastics found in fruits & vegetables and plastic getting into the gut area of animals.

eSignature helps you get away from the daily issue of writing documents with a plastic pen. You can create and esign the documents online. If businesses use eSignatures, they can minimize stationery expenses in the workplace. Secondly, they can do their bit in ensuring a greener environment by using fewer plastic pens wherever necessary.

  • It helps reduce electronic waste.

Several electronic products come towards the end of their product life, are irreparable, and have to be thrown away. Offices use computer monitors, printers, scanners, copiers, fax machines, and many electronic devices. Such old hardware can be recycled and disposed of properly. But if not done correctly, they have a horrible effect on the environment as they are non-biodegradable and can lay as indestructible waste on earth for centuries.

How?

When electronic waste is warmed up, toxic chemicals are released into the air damaging the atmosphere, causing colossal damage to human blood, kidney, and central nervous systems.

Organizations using eSignature solutions have significantly less dependability on external hardware devices for the daily task of printing, scanning, and mailing the documents. Employees can use the electronic signature application to create-edit-eSign-Email the documents. It eliminates the need for printers and scanners and helps the companies to do their bit in safeguarding the environment from e-waste.

eSignatures reducing carbon footprints and protecting the environment are not the only benefits of eSignature solutions.

Here is how your business can benefit from eSignature solutions

  • Legally recognized

eSignature applications are lawfully recognized by countries worldwide as the ESIGN Act and the eIDAS Act. These laws help your organization to do business globally.

  • Improved Customer experience

You get instant access to services using eSignature solutions. Waiting time to activate a service like opening a bank account, shopping online, or SIM activation reduces from weeks to few hours, resulting in improved customer experience.

  • Increase in productivity

eSignature technology helps increase productivity as it lets you focus on essential tasks by avoiding time taking activities like printing, scanning, copying, and mailing physical documents.

  • Positive return on investment

You get a lot of direct savings after switching business operations to a paperless workflow. 81% of digital signature users saw a payback in 12 months or less, and 25% saw ROI in three months or less.

CONCLUSION

Are you looking to make your business greener and eco-friendlier in 2021? Learn here how LunarPen benefits your business to achieve swift digital transformation. We are the global leader in eSignature applications and help business organizations manage proposals, NDAs, contracts, and agreements. Our mission is to assist you in digitizing processes in which we are experts while maintaining the protection, confidentiality, and legality of your business operations at all times.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do electronic signatures hold up in court?

Electronic signatures will hold up in court as long as they authenticate the documents. The best way to ensure authentication is to use the LunarPen e signature solution backed by different esignature laws like the IT Signature Act, eIDAS Act, and the ESIGN act.

Are electronic signatures safe?

Electronic signatures are safer than a wet signature as the esigned documents are accessible on the cloud. The encryption technology makes it impossible to duplicate and use the signed documents for illegal purposes.

How do I convert my signature to a digital signature?

You need to follow these simple steps to convert your signature to a digital signature:

  • Use a piece of paper to do your signature
  • Scan the signature using a scanner app
  • Crop to capture the signature and save it
  • Copy, paste & use the saved signature for a new document.

How are digital signatures verified?

One user generates the digital signature, and another user checks the signature. The signatory and the verifier each have a private and public key for the completion of each operation.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
06
May
2021

Industries That Can Benefit From eSignature Solutions

Moving fast in business is crucial for survival! You move slowly, and the rising competition devours your market share. eSignature solutions help companies to minimize delays with paperwork and move things faster. They cut the turnaround time by 90%, which means a document can be signed and shared online even before the ink dries on the paper. Apart from these benefits, they allow businesses to work smartly, save money, boost productivity without using the costly, time-consuming age-old processes.

Investment in eSignature service is the best bet for organizations that want to blast past these issues and speed up their digital transformation journey.

Here are the industries that can benefit immensely from eSignature solutions.

eCommerce Industry

Is there anything familiar between eCommerce and electronic signatures? Both have closer ties with each other and are dependent on the internet for smooth business operations.

The sole credit of the eCommerce industry getting into a monstrous growth phase (USD 4.28 Trillion worldwide), breaking national boundaries, and reaching genuine customers goes to electronic signature solutions.

eSignatures have entirely changed the way eCommerce companies do business with customers.

Here is how they complement each other!

Every order on an eCommerce website is like an online business contract initiated when the buyer places an order. The open contract is closed when the buyer acknowledges the product receipt with an electronic signature.

The plan of using an eSignature application is evident here.

Its use means genuine company representatives are delivering the ordered product on behalf of the company, and there are minimal chances of the order getting duplicated and misplaced.

Another critical point is that if a business is present in other geographical locations, the company needs not seek the customer’s signature on a physical document as consent to the contract. When you esign the document using an eSignature solution, you can instantly use it as an agreement signed by both parties.

You are miles ahead of the competition in a tough eCommerce market as your customers get the impression that they are doing business with a trusted company.

This way, eSignatures provide a critical way to boost online branding, gain positive word-of-mouth marketing, and enhance Customer Experience (CX).

Banking Industry

Implementing eSignatures in the banking industry can save an astonishing 1.3 hours per transaction! As they are efficient and track documents very fast.

Banks adopt eSignature solutions in daily business operations to offer a better customer experience and digitize their processes.

Here are some ways banks can benefit from using e-signatures:

Minimize transaction time: It allows banks to process a good number of transactions within a short period

Ensures document security: If your bank uses esignature solutions, you don’t have to worry as esigned documents are stored securely in the cloud storage.

Streamline Internal process: Banks can eliminate all time-consuming steps involved in paperwork as you don’t have to print, scan and mail the documents.

Improved customer loyalty: eSignature solutions give clarity, transparency & excellent efficiency in a bank’s internal processes allowing customers to reach them for more services, thereby improving customer loyalty.

Telecommunication Industry

If an industry has truly capitalized and received immense competitive benefits from electronic signature, then the credit goes to the telecommunication industry.

When the world embraced 4G technology, they needed to acquire customers in mass numbers to justify the infrastructure costs.

But the biggest Achilles heel of this industry was manual document processing as companies received connection requests from lakhs & lakhs of applicants every day. Activating these connections in a few hours and providing them the selected services at the right time was like daydreaming.

Then the telecom industry adopted eSignature technology, which completely changed the scene. Here is how it has benefitted from electronic signatures:

Fastest Customer Acquisition: Process KYC documents in a matter of minutes instead of days.

Pleasant Customer experience: What is more pleasing than seeing your applied services getting activated before your own eyes? You apply for a sim today and enjoy voice and internet services the same day.

Contract Signups and renewals: B2B customers sign their contract online on a paperless document with real-time approvals on contract and eForms.

Tamper-proof documents: Digital signatures are tamper-proof as they use highly secured encryption technology.

Ensures compliance: Electronic signature confirms to ESIGN, eIDAS and IT signature act making it suitable for intercontinental business.

Here is a live example of Reliance Jio using electronic signatures to acquire 20 Million customers in a month.

Insurance Industry

Insurance is the second industry after telecommunication searching for new customers to add to its business. The more customers, the greater is the month-on-month revenue.

But the main challenges faced by them are reducing costs, increasing turnaround, and profitability.

To overcome these challenges and remain relevant in the market, these companies have started deploying electronic signatures as a proven solution to acquire online customers securely, build engagement and grow customer loyalty.

The benefits of implementing eSignature for the insurance industry are:

  • Sign new/existing insurance policies with speed and accuracy
  • Super convenient for clients as they can quickly sign and retain copies of their signed policies
  • Get new customers with ease leading to more significant improvement in productivity of field agents
  • Reduce chances of errors by securing your insurance document flow
  • Get a considerable return on investment (ROI) by saving paper, mailing costs, and back-office processing
  • Boosts up brand image in the market as an eco-friendly company
  • One of the most significant benefits of eSignature is that it helps reveal the identify the signer
  • It helps save your office space as you don’t need printing and scanning machines

Construction Industry

Do you know that the global construction market would grow to USD 8 Trillion by 2030? There is an incredible opportunity to be a part of this boom and climb the ladders of success.

The construction industry has tonnes of paperwork- contracts, material sourcing, paid bills, unpaid bills, builder-customer agreements, employee records, bank agreements, construction project management, and a lot more.

According to a recent study by the World Economic Forum (WEF), full-scale digitalization within ten years is capable of producing annual global cost savings of USD 0.7-1.2 Trillion (13-21%) on Engineering & Construction and USD 0.3-0.5 Trillion (10-17%) in the Operations phase.

Electronic Signatures are an essential weapon in swiftly ensuring the digital shift.

You can barely escape from paperwork! Whether the construction company is a smaller company or a larger company, contracts and agreements form part of everyday work. The most important thing is to keep all the records safe for years & years, preventing them from misuse and getting destroyed.

LunarPen eSignature applications are born to handle these situations pretty well.

Here is how LunarPen eSignature helps the construction industry:

  • Stores all documents in one place and keeps construction industry contracts completely secure
  • Eliminates the risk of construction project delays by getting required signatures from engineers, managers, and contractors
  • Process construction company documents in the most efficient way by uploading, eSigning, and emailing the documents
  • Prevents forgery of essential documents and contracts as online documents are accessible only to authorized users

Law Firms Industry

The law firm industry is worth USD 300 Billion a year. It provides expertise on various practices, including business law, criminal law, commercial law, tax law, intellectual property, and real estate.

It involves loads of paperwork hassles that are always a pain and needs due care for document creation, usage, security, and storage.

Paperless electronically signed documents simplify the process of document signing and increase document safety.

Here are the main benefits of electronic signature in the law firm industry:

Time Management: LunarPen eSignature application saves a lot of time doing manual tasks like printing, scanning, mailing, and storing the documents.

Cost savings: It considerably reduces the amount of paper needed for printing, scanning, copying, and mailing documents.

Security: It offers the highest level of protection than a paper contract due to encryption technology, allowing verification of every signer and maintaining the chain of custody.

Client conversion rate: It allows to increase the conversion rate for retaining new clients by signing with the organization immediately at the first intake.

Use from anywhere: Your clients won’t have to take work off to come in and sign documents that are essential to their matters. They go to their email and can review and sign their documents quickly.

Protects confidential documents: It helps protect personal information with secure electronic storage. Your clients will love how fast and easy it is to sign documents with eSignatures.

Legally Enforceable: Electronic signatures used for signing online documents are legally enforceable by law.

Conclusion

The growing list of companies and industrial sectors using eSignature solutions is undeniable proof of its adoption in day-to-day business operations. Take the name of any industry, and you can see the way companies are using this technology to speed up business processes, boost productivity and win consumer confidence. Electronic signatures are a dream come true for companies trying to reduce operational costs and increase market share without constraint on a company’s existing resources.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the three benefits of a digital signature?

The three main benefits of using electronic signatures are enhanced security, lower transaction costs, and speed.

What is an eSignature example?

Examples of electronic signatures are

  • Using an ePen to create a signature on a touch screen device,
  • Using your fingers to draw your signature on smartphone or tablets
  • Using the mouse to remove your name as a signature on desktop or laptop
  • Signature at the bottom of your email
  • Typing your name as a signature
  • Scanned images of a signature

Is email an electronic signature?

The components of an electronic signature are

  • Your name
  • Name of company
  • Role in the company
  • Contact details
  • Website URL of the company
  • Your photo or a company logo

What is the symbol for electronic signature?

An S-signature is an electronic signature formed by forwarding slashes that include any non-handwritten signature (i.e., electronic or mechanical).

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments