eSignature

How can the Tourism Industry use Electronic Signatures?

How can the Tourism Industry use Electronic Signatures?

The tourism industry is the world’s largest employer with more than 260 million employees and has more than 1.2 billion travellers taking trips outside their own country. This sector contributes a huge part of the world’s GDP and is one of the fastest-growing lucrative industries.

The industry has its fair share of problems with lots of challenges like last-minute cancellations, surprise accommodation requests to people not showing up at all, along with a lot of paperwork for admission requests and guest records.

There is a great way to deal with these challenges with electronic signatures, which are now a common thing that is rapidly being incorporated in the tourism industry. In this business, you can use electronic signatures to make your life easier and your company more efficient.

Why electronic signature is the solution to Tourism industry woes?

The present form of tourism industry has several shortcomings in the way it works. It suffers from paper-based processes, which are time-consuming and can be error-prone too. Electronic signature solves all these issues by providing secure and instant digital transactions that do not need any paper for further processing or storing.

With a digital signature, you can:

  • Protect the integrity of your records from manipulation and tampering
  • Do away with all the paperwork that has been used for centuries
  • Create a seamless process – be it your travel bookings, hotel check-ins or even bill payments – just by pressing a button!

Once you have this excellent solution in place, it will benefit you and make life easier for millions of tourists across the globe.

How do electronic signatures simplify the guest check-in experience?

It is crucial to assist guests in spending less time on paperwork and enjoying services in the tourism industry. Electronic Signature apps help the sector in the following ways:

  • Guest check-in and checkout processes are accelerated as the guests can register themselves in just a few seconds and receive personalized itineraries for their entire stay.
  • Substitutes precise, appealing digital forms for paper forms shown on eSignature enabled devices to reduce errors and improve customer experience.
  • Retains the reassuringly familiar sign-in experience that many guests appreciate without depending on the inefficient and wasteful use of paper.
  • Allows fast cross- and up-selling by displaying new services and special offers on colour screens while not in signing mode.
  • It helps the guest avoid the hassle of carrying bulky pen and paper as they can sign their name digitally, which is then stored in the database for access at any time.

How the electronic signatures help the tourism industry?

  • Streamlines back-end activities & paperwork at the front desk through digitalization, reducing the hassles of storing paper documents.
  • Creates a good first impression on the customers by differentiating the premium experience and convenience in a competitive market.
  • It saves significant time on paperwork allowing your guests to enjoy a better experience by capturing details of your guest like identity, preferences & more.
  • The innovative technology provides a cost-effective solution to fraud, forgery or alteration of documents and signatures in the tourism industry.

Tourism Industry documents that can be signed using eSignature

  • Booking confirmations
  • Hotel check-ins & checkouts
  • Commercial hotel bookings
  • Expense reports
  • Audit reports
  • Time & attendance records
  • Travel policy
  • Consent forms
  • Employment contracts
  • Data entry
  • Cash settlements
  • Employee instructions

Tours & Travels Case Study

About the company

H&S Travels and Tours began operations in 2004. From humble beginnings, they’ve grown to deal with over 200 airlines worldwide, assisting customers in getting affordable aircraft tickets without any hassles or confusion. Additionally, they have a global presence, with offices in the United States, Canada, South Africa, and India.

Challenge

H&S Travels processes paperwork for passengers and tourists worldwide, with the majority based in the United States.Before implementing eSignatures, travellers were required to print, scan, and email the documentation to H&S Travels, which was confirmed only after receiving the countersigned documents on email.  Turnaround times were slow, and it wasn’t easy to track which traveller had signed and who had not.

Rather than tracking hundreds of separate contracts scattered across email inboxes, H&S Travels determined it was time to build a centralized hub for all the document signing needs.

Solution

These were the benefits enjoyed by H&S Travels after the implementation of eSignature solutions:

Significantly reduces turnaround times

H&S received positive feedback from their clients, who report that the signing process is now easier than ever as they received signed contracts back in as little as five to ten minutes.

A simple way to track the progress

The H&S eSignature dashboard enables them to see who has signed and who has not signed their documents. All data is easily understood and accessible in a single, convenient place.

Templates that save time

The company uses the functionality of the templates to load customer contracts rather than creating a new document each time. They save their agreement to the software, make minor adjustments for each new customer, and then send it off.

Hotels Case Study

About the company

Hotel 1926 is operated by Roosendaal Hotels, a modest hospitality firm with three facilities on the Mediterranean island, governed by Bortex group holdings. Following a big makeover a few years ago, Hotel 1926 now has a unique focus on eco-friendliness and sustainability woven into their entire business model.

Challenge

Throughout its year-long hiatus, the hotel was completely renovated with an emphasis on modernity & sustainability. It took significant efforts for being environmentally friendly: paperless brochures, hotel information printouts, tablets in every room, and PIN admission for guest rooms rather than plastic key cards.

Before exploring eSignatures, Hotel 1926 signed most contractor agreements & corporate partnership agreements during in-person meetings. The hotel employed local contractors to assist them in managing other properties on the island. Inviting them in was another cumbersome step that hampered the process.

However, delays frequently happen when parties desire additional time to analyze a contract before signing on the spot. As they were already going paperless by digitizing brochures and other assets, it seemed sensible to do the same with the physical documents of hotels 1926.

Solution

Streamlined workflows for signing

Rather than requiring partners, contractors, and guests to sign documents immediately upon receipt, Hotel 1926 staff can notify the signees. This way, nobody feels rushed or pressured. Their signature is requested over email, which allows them ample time to review the documents. Once they’re finished, they can quickly sign and return it.

Enhancements to customer service

Hotel 1926 appreciated the ability to get digital signatures on credit card authorization documents. It is far more convenient to offer a digital signature than to print the document, sign it, and email a scanned copy. It is incredibly suitable for those who do not have access to a printer at home.

Templates that save time

Before implementing electronic signatures, Hotel 1926 painstakingly changed the company’s name whenever they drafted a new contract or agreement, then spent time manually entering dates, terms, and other information. They breezed through this phase with templates, as all their standard fields are recorded in the appropriate locations.

Conclusion

The tourism industry has tremendous potential to grow in the future, but it is difficult to achieve it without the help of technology. The main concern of travellers is to have a hassle-free travel experience. They want the complete travel management to be done online. That is why the tourism industry is moving towards digitization. Digital signatures have made it easier for travellers to plan their trips with ease.

Register free to use the eSignature application and learn more about how electronic signatures can help the tourism industry reach new heights.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
How Telecom Industry benefits from Electronic Signatures?

How Telecom Industry benefits from Electronic Signatures?

The powerful presence of the telecom industry is responsible for boosting communication, workplace flexibility, and the worldwide market reach of every small & big company.

Telecom services have proven vital in the COVID-19 epidemic by providing video conferencing, mobile communication, and high-speed internet services. It is a huge comfort for companies trying to stay afloat in one of the toughest business environments.

Thousands of vendors partner with telecom operators to ensure service quality and continuity. The paperwork for service contracts, partnerships, and agreements takes up most of the vendors and the network solution providers.

When you have uncountable applications related to new service requests, agreements, and contracts, paper-based processes become time-consuming, costly, and increase customer dissatisfaction.

Customers get impatient if their requested services get delayed. In addition, failing to meet service quality standards increases the rate of customer churn.

Electronic signatures can help firms improve internal business processes and provide exceptional customer service.

Here is how the telecom industry can benefit from electronic signatures:

1) Improve customer experience

In the highly competitive telecom industry, customer experience is a critical factor in maintaining a competitive advantage. After the automobile and hotel industry, the telecom sector has the third-highest potential for increasing revenue by improving customer experience (CX). According to Forrester’s research’s CX index scoring system, telcos that increase CX scores by one point generate an additional USD 3.39 revenue in per-customer incremental revenue.

Another research by HBR states that customers with the most satisfying experiences spend an average of 140% more than those that have experienced a shortfall in customer experience.

Electronic signatures improve customer experience in telecom industry by

  • Limiting time taking paperwork
  • Blazing fast customer onboarding
  • Enabling self service for faster response
  • Eliminating waiting time to access telecom services
  • Accelerated closing of vendor contracts

2) Acquire customers in record time

Guess about a single industry accepting new connection requests from uncountable customers every day.

You guessed it right! It’s the telecom industry that gets prepaid, postpaid and broadband connection applications from trillions of customers around the globe.

Order fulfillment at the right time is the biggest roadblock in new customer acquisition as the customer service team of every company has to accept, process & verify tons of physical documents for every service request.

Every online document in the electronic signature application can be signed, stored, and verified on the same day. It assures speedy acquisition of new customers compared to the competition, which is not using electronic signature technology.

3) Sign all documents related to telecom business processes

The telecom business processes require a massive amount of paper due to handling a high volume of business data. It involves sharing extensive information with employees, business partners, vendors, OEMs, and others.

Management of data and documents in the telecom industry is of the highest priority. It has to ensure the documents’ security, validity, and integrity by having critical information about customers, contracts, & other confidential data.

Hand-written signatures on paper documents significantly slow down critical processes and have a detrimental effect on daily business operations.

You can digitally sign different documents in the telecom industry, some of which are:

  •   New connection requests
  •   Service requests and approvals
  •   Internet services documents
  •   Contracts and agreements
  •   Invoices
  •   E-statements
  •   Purchase orders (PO)
  •   Vendor agreements

4) Increase employee productivity and satisfaction

Sales employees spend most of the time-traveling, visiting client offices, follow-ups, and doing the usual printing, signing, scanning, and submitting customer applications, contracts, and other documents. They struggle to focus on their Key Result Areas (KRAs) due to these distractions and lack of time.

Electronic signatures boost employee productivity by rapidly closing sales much faster in comparison to physical documents. The sales team can focus on their job better as they don’t have to travel and do physical follow-ups with the clients anymore.

They can close sales, contracts, and agreements using eSignature applications from their offices or any other location and focus on other essential tasks like chasing monthly goals from other business accounts and meeting critical business deadlines connected with their KRAs.

5) Protect your loyal customers from telecom frauds

Telecom fraud is a severe threat to the telecommunication industry. Data fraud happens when the customers provide their ID documents during their onboarding stage in the company.

Another fraud SIM swap is a significant problem where scammers use fake IDs to access a subscriber’s SIM card. Then they use the SIM to authenticate transactions with the subscriber’s bank account and plunder his money to take full advantage of the situation.

Do you want to know the stage where customer IDs leak?

Customer IDs are leaked during the customer onboarding stage when companies receive physical documents from the customers.

How to avoid customer IDs leaks?

eSignature applications eradicate the time-consuming copying, scanning, and storing processes of physical documents. It is where there is a high probability of fraud due to leakage of customer data.

The technology stores the documents in digital format securely using cloud storage solutions that block all unauthorized attempts against data leaks.

Case Study

Telenor’s store in Norway ran on a franchise model. Multiple companies handled store operations that posed a significant customer support challenge due to the absence of a central document repository.

It forced the stores to manage paperwork and individual contracts at their own risk in warehouses.

If a customer approached a Telenor store to resolve their issues. Then it meant coming to the same store that had stored the documents of the customer. Another store could not service them due to the unavailability of customer documents.

Locating an older document meant a lot of work for the salesperson, as they had to travel to the document warehouse to search for the paper contract. It doesn’t always guarantee success as the crucial paper contracts get lost or damaged in storage facilities.

It resulted in customer dissatisfaction, increasing customer churn, as well as huge revenue loss.

Major Challenges

Support and Fraud

Slow resolution of customer issues as well as the fraud case due to decentralized documents

Customer churn

Large number of customers leaving Telenor & increasing churn costs

Presence of different systems

Multiple systems for sales, insurance, service, and finance increasing business operations complexity.

The Pain Point

  •   Searching paper documents submitted in different stores
  •   Paper documents getting lost
  •   Slow resolution of customer issue
  •   Rising cases of document fraud

Solution

Telenor adopted digital signature solutions for their rising needs. They used this technology to sign up documents generated by their internal systems and several partner systems.

The company was quickly able to digitize all the documents without any integration.

They got promising results:

  •   Store managers and owners began concentrating more on what they do best: selling their products and services.
  •   Customer support representatives started addressing customer issues on the first call due to rapid access to customer information.
  •   The fraud department discovered contracts that were previously impossible to locate.

Conclusion

Electronic signatures automate critical business processes in the telecom sector, boosting customer acquisition, sales, employee productivity, and customer loyalty.  If you’d like to learn more about how e signature solutions would help your telecom operations run more efficiently, connect with us now.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
Benefits Of Electronic Signatures For The Real Estate Industry

Benefits Of Electronic Signatures For The Real Estate Industry

The ultimate goal of every real estate business is to simplify its business processes, boost customer experience, increase profitability and cut costs. Every company in the industry is running a race to achieve them and striving to discover an intelligent solution that will improve company workflows & win customer loyalty while minimizing the operating expenses.

Electronic signatures are one technology that helps real estate companies avoid delays in signing documents and reduce the chances of misplaced papers, mismatched signatures, or document fraud that may lead to bad customer experience and deal cancellation.

How eSignature works for real estate agents?

Real estate agents can utilize the eSignature application to create, edit and prepare the purchase, sales and financing documents by following these steps.

  1. Agents open the eSignature application on desktop, smartphone, or laptop
  2. Upload the purchase, sales & financing documents in the application
  3. Enter the client’s email address who will sign the documents electronically
  4. Fill out the subject & message to the clients explaining the agenda of documents
  5. Click send to share documents with the clients
  6. The client receives email or app notification of receiving the documents
  7. The client signs the received documents using the esignature interface & hits send button
  8. The completed esigned copy is automatically sent to the agent
  9. The deal is confirmed between the client and the real estate company

Factors to be considered while selecting an electronic signature for a real estate company:

1) Mobile Friendly: Is your eSignature application mobile-friendly? If yes, this will help real estate agents stay updated with every pending document on the move.

2) Integration: Does it allow integration with third-party tools to extend its functionality?

3) Storage limits: Does it help upgrade storage space if you reach your limits?

4) Security: Are your confidential transactions safe with the eSignature tool? How does it help protect the client & company interests?

5) Core usage: Can it be used for different activities in the real estate industry? Examples:

Administration: Approval, change requests, repair orders, appointments

Rentals: Contract renewals, termination notices, non-payment notification, payment authorization

Construction companies: Contract with the company, sub-contractors, Purchase orders

Buying & selling: Agreement with third parties, home insurance, Terms & conditions

Check out some of the fantastic benefits of electronic signatures for the real estate industry:

1) Faster closing of real estate deals electronically

You may face surprising issues at the time of closing sales like missing documents, missing signatures, client unavailability on specific dates, or sudden objections from signing parties that could slow down the closing of real estate deals.

LunarPen electronic signatures let real estate agents sign documents more speedily and efficiently from any location. The application assures that all necessary signed copies are available during the closing of deals.

The electronic signing of real estate documents offers these benefits to close real estate sales quickly:

Faster and efficient: There is no need to rush to sign, re-sign, and deliver the updated agreements. As a result, the closing times of the real estate sales reduce.

No chances of missing document: Never miss an important document when closing an agreement with your client. The application helps in managing all the necessary documents in a single place.

Review the documents before closing: Parties can receive the documents well before closing. So, there is plenty of time to seek clarifications, review, and understand the documents before signing.

2) Accuracy and efficiency of the signed documents

Any important real estate document may be signed incorrectly. The signee may leave some fields blank or forget to sign in some locations.

Incomplete or incorrectly filed real estate documents can invite unavoidable legal problems, fines, or penalties. In this case, the company may put the deal on hold until the issue is resolved.

If you use electronic signature applications to fill an online document, the software highlights the essential areas within agreements to ensure that you fill the entire document.

Due to such useful features, real estate companies do not have to spend time in error rectification and repeated documentation, thereby improving the accuracy & efficiency of business processes.

3) Get enhanced security for real estate documents

A real estate document is highly confidential as it contains sensitive information about the proof of a new property, agreement, taxes, and financial transactions.

You need a highly secure, hack-proof software application to secure these documents from theft and cyber-crimes.

A digital signature is equivalent to a handwritten or stamped seal built on robust security algorithms that only allow authorized personnel to access the documents.

The application uses different security processes like email authentication, login credentials, OTP over SMS, secret questions to protect, verify and validate the editing & access rights of sensitive information.

4) Offers pleasant experience to real estate customers

To buy or sell a property, every potential or existing real estate customer must go through complicated paperwork. The unending list of required documents may cause delays for both customers and companies.

Customers favor businesses with quick and easy processes.

Agents can utilise electronic signature software to reduce the stress of filling out time-consuming and error-prone paper contracts.

So, instead of waiting for contracts to arrive in the mail or awaiting clients to come into the office to sign, the application allows you to eSign and securely send the secret agreement,thereby improving customer experience.

5) Never lose your contracts again

Real estate companies can confidently store documents using eSignature technology as they utilize cloud storage solutions that keep all the sensitive eSigned records in a safer place. The technology ensures that you never lose a contract again due to misplacement of physical documents or manual errors.

If you have trouble finding the contracts of a specific company, then you need to have login credentials & view access rights to use the eSignature application. After that, you can download the online copy of the contract easily without wasting time.

Case Study:

Introduction

William Ryan Homes (WRH) is an award-winning home builder with 27 years of experience, 11,000 projects under its belt and offers single-family homes in Phoenix, Arizona, Tampa, Florida, Madison, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Chicago.

The pain points

Superintendents at WRH had to rush to print a work order ahead of time, carry it to the job site, hand gather the appropriate signatures, locate a scanner, and email the finalized document to the admin team.

Instead of utilizing email, the next step was sometimes to drive the physical document back to the office to fill them.

This process squandered a tremendous amount of time and resources.

The Solution

Electronic signatures offered a couple of exciting benefits to William Ryan Homes:

Time Savings

By digitizing their workflow, WRH improved their process time by 90% with electronic signatures.

Mobile compatibility

Mobile compatible eSignature apps allowed employees to get online and offline work done & sync their progress with the rest of their team.

Quicker Sales

Getting documents signed faster meant a faster build time that helped the property sell quickly to the customer.

Document centralization

With electronic signatures, all signed documents are available at a central location that can be sent anywhere instantly at a click of a button.

The sharpened focus of employees

WRH superintendents are now able to focus more on the home building process and what the customer wants.

Conclusion

Electronic signatures provide uncountable benefits to the real estate industry, from quickly closing sales, reducing face-to-face processes, managing paperwork, & improving customer satisfaction.

If you are trying to bring digital transformation to your real estate company. Sign Up with LunarPen right away to start using electronic signatures and turn around your business.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
How Does The Insurance Sector Benefit From Electronic Signatures?

How Does The Insurance Sector Benefit From Electronic Signatures?

What difference can a year make to the insurance industry? 2020 may be the answer. The ongoing pandemic transformed customer needs, habits, and expectations, stressing on overnight virtualization of operations.

Now, customers desire quicker transactions for insurance services. According to the PWC report, rising customer expectations are tipping the power balance in favour of the consumer.

The ripple impact of the switch is so strong that insurance businesses adopting a remote working model are struggling to adapt to these technological changes. It is directly impacting their brand name and customer service in the market.

To address these issues adequately, electronic signature technology has emerged as the strongest, fastest & safest option to approve insurance documents quickly.

Here is how the insurance sector benefits from electronic signatures:

1) Increase productivity of Insurance agents & employees

Electronic signature has become well known as a powerful technology to ease signing documents for clients, offering an impressive productivity boost for insurance agents and employees.

–        You can adequately categorize and archive different types of insurance policies in digital format using this electronic method.

–        You can send updates about the insurance deals status that helps reduce human error chances.

–        You can track clients more quickly and efficiently, as every document that is signed, transmitted, opened, and read is handled from the eSignature dashboard.

–        It ensures that insurance policies are not mixed, lost, or sent to the wrong address.

–        Get more policy orders from customers, boosting productivity & business revenue.

–        Automates insurance process flows and minimizes repetitive tasks.

2) Enhancing business efficiency

As paper or faxed insurance policy agreements are challenging to track, it isn’t easy to follow the steps of the clients in the process of signing documents. Different parts of the world are experiencing a lockdown, disrupting the document delivery methods and supply networks at all levels.

This situation makes it particularly difficult to track down actual insurance documents and the sudden absence of a critical stakeholder like the delivery partner can derail the entire process.

In this case, electronic signature technology allows for improved speed and transparency, allowing insurers to take action to move the process along by implementing reminder mechanisms or forwarding the documents to a new signing authority.

This mechanism saves precious time for the employees and the clients in follow-ups for document receipt acknowledgment, follow-ups for contract or agreement closure, thereby enhancing business efficiency.

3) Security Prioritization

As the insurance sector ventures into uncharted territory with digitalization, it is critical to guarantee sufficient checks and balances to ensure that the industry’s highly regulated norms are permanently adhered to and followed.

With so many data breaches hitting the insurance companies, there are so many questions to answer:

–        How does the company handle the signed documents after receiving them from customers?

–        How secure are the storage services used to store insurance documents?

It is pretty easy to tamper with paper-based documents, and even physical signatures get falsified easily.

Electronically signed papers route to high-tier data centers with SSL-encrypted endpoints and 256-bit AES encryption which are the most acceptable security measures to keep sensitive data safe at all times.

4) Mobility and speed in the signing of insurance policies

Customers can utilize an electronic signature to complete the entire onboarding procedure as fast as possible after acquiring a policy.

One of the most significant advantages of employing eSignatures in the insurance sector is that documental work is done from the comfort of one’s own home or anywhere globally using a computer, tablet, or smart device.

When the client has decided to purchase insurance policies, the electronic signature solution allows them to complete the documentation formalities and the related processes almost immediately without waiting for confirmation from the company’s end.

Customers’ confidence in utilizing eSignatures on the go grows as they sign insurance policies online.

5) Reduced spending on insurance paper policies

Research has estimated that 1.024 billion pieces of paper are required each year to deliver insurance policies and the cost to deliver these policies using paper is USD 703 Million.

Check out the savings to deliver insurance policies electronically:

–        Reduce costs by up to 85%

–        Cut more than 20 days off of delivery cycle times

–        Reduce not-in-good-order policy delivery by 99%

Apart from that, an electronic signature results in significant savings in paper costs and other linked materials such as ink, scanners, and printers.

Furthermore, businesses that adopt paper-based processes create an image of being forward-thinking and environmentally conscious. These are the qualities that digital consumers highly value when evaluating service providers.

6) Improved insurance investment experience

Another significant advantage of electronic signatures in the insurance sector is that they assist in improving the insurance investment experience for clients.

Clients have gotten used to the older experiences of facing delays in taking insurance policies.

Digital signatures have given a magical transformation to the customer experience. You get instant verification and confirmation of purchased company policies, which serves as a differentiating element for world-class companies.

In addition to increasing the speed and efficiency of the policy signing procedure, it also reduces the danger of policyholders switching to another alternative carrier before the signature.

Case Study

Knight insurance group is a member of the Hankey Group of Firms, a financial services conglomerate centered in Los Angeles that consists of seven operating companies with 3,100 workers worldwide and $15 Billion in assets at the time of writing. It is a capital support provider and underwriting capability for casualty insurance programs and niche property. The group operates in six Midwest locations: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo and Findlay, Ohio, Chicago, Illinois, and Indianapolis, Indiana.

In addition to delivering outstanding insurance products and financial services to people and businesses of all sizes, Knight Insurance Group has maintained its dedication to superior customer service.

Challenges

The Knight insurance group agents located at these six different locations were processing all paperwork manually. Their new clients took two weeks to fill out and return the applications. Because of this procedure, the likelihood of client churn grew, and administration times exceeded the desired time.

Solution

Following a thorough review of the process, Knight Insurance Group decided to investigate the possibility of digitizing the business processes. Following an inspection, the system administrator for the Knight Insurance Group began looking for alternative methods of completing the documentation. eSignature expedited the paperwork process, and after the research, they decided that eSignature was the most suited solution for such situations.

 Benefits

  • Client forms that took two weeks to complete began arriving within one or two days, and they returned 75% of the documents within 24 hours of receipt.
  • Customers of Knight Insurance Group express high satisfaction with the ease, simplicity, and convenience of submitting papers by electronic signature.

Conclusion

An electronic signature massively benefits your insurance business. It moves you ahead of your competitors and prepares you to meet the needs and demands of the next generation.

eSignature solutions bring out the best in insurance companies that have adopted this technology. Sign up for a free eSignature account today.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
How eSignatures are Saving Our Planet

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.

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Industries That Can Benefit From eSignature Solutions

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).

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eSignature Laws

eSignature Laws

Do you know electronically signed documents have the same legal rights due to valid eSignature laws in comparison to the documents signed by a ball pen? Despite this, people suspect if they are permissible by law and are hesitant to use esignatures because they believe it can be forged, misinterpreted, and copied quickly. The hard reality is handwritten signatures can be easily duplicated using different methods adopted by fraudsters like simulation, tracing and freehand. In contrast, electronic signatures have many security and authentication layers to protect the esigned documents along with court-admissible transaction proof backed by the law.

The popularity of esignatures has risen since the year 2000 as world powers have put them on par with handwritten signatures by introducing laws making them legitimate.

To recognize the enforceability of e-signatures:

– India recognized esignatures under the IT Act
– USA recognized ESIGN and UETA
– EU recognized eIDAS Act

Let’s look at the esignature legality in these countries of the world

INDIA

In India, the Information Technology Act 2000 grants the same legal status to electronic and digital signatures as handwritten signatures in Indian law.

Electronic signature

Defined under Section 2(1)(ta) of the IT Act, 2000 as “Authentication of any electronic record by a subscriber using the electronic technique specified in the second schedule and includes a digital signature.”

Chapter III Electronic governance of the IT act grants legal recognition to electronic signatures and electronic governance.

Digital Signature

According to section 2(1)(p) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, a Digital signature means “authentication of any electronic record by a subscriber by means of an electronic method or procedure in accordance with the provisions of section 3”

Section 5 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 gives legal recognition to digital signatures.

Chapter V of the IT act provides these details about securing electronic records and electronic signatures.

Secure electronic record: Where any security procedure has been applied to an electronic record at a specific point of time, then such record shall be deemed to be a secure electronic record from such point of time to the time of verification.

Secure electronic signature: An electronic signature shall be deemed to be a secure electronic signature if –

  • the signature creation data at the time of affixing the signature was under the exclusive control of signatory and no other person.
  • The signature creation data was stored and affixed in such an exclusive manner as may be prescribed.

In case of digital signature, the ―signature creation data means the private key of the subscriber.

How to know if an esignature is valid in India?

Under the IT Act eSignature law, an electronic signature must meet the following requirements to be deemed accurate and lawfully valid:

  • An electronic signature must be unique for each signatory.
  • The signatory must have control over the data used to produce the electronic signature when signing.
  • Any tampering with the affixed electronic signature or the document must be detectable.
  • An audit trail records all the steps taken during the signing process
  • A certifying authority (CA) must issue the signer certificates authorized by the Controller of Certifying Authorities under the IT act

eSignature IT Act impact on business

Saved up to 1.3 hours per transaction in preparing, reviewing & negotiating documents

  • Improved document security & reduced time spent on documents from hours to minutes
  • Faster sales cycles with ready-made templates & document tracking features
  • $11 cost saved per transaction after switching to digital signature
  • Massive reduction in operational expenses by the banking sector

USA

The ESIGN Act was declared a law on 30 June 2000 and defined electronic signature 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”.

The most significant takeaway for contract compliance is that the signature’s electronic representation must be aligned with a contract or other document and adopted by the signatory, by any act, with the intent to be bound.

Following federal preemption, ESIGN law allows esignatures in all fifty US States where the federal law applies. It means it affects people who do online business in these states. The regulation applies both to electronic signatures and electronic records. If the federal government’s law does not apply, every State has electronic signature laws, most of which follow the UETA act.

The UETA Act centres exclusively on electronic business, commercial and government contracts. Compared to the ESIGN law adopted by the US states, the UETA act followed a state-by-state basis. Every State has the power to accept or reject the guidelines present in the act. If there is a conflict between ESIGN and UETA Acts, then the state law is abidable. Right now, forty-seven states adopted UETA, excluding New York, Washington, Illinois, Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

How to check compliance with these Acts?

  • There must be explicit consent to do business electronically
  • Electronic signatures are valid only if parties intend to sign
  • An electronic signature must be associated with the signed document
  • The electronic signature must be attributable to the person signing the document
  • An esigned document must be in the form of an electronic record that the recipient can retain at the delivery time.
  • Presence of checks and measures to know if the document has tampered

Impact of ESIGN Act on businesses

  • Revolutionized the real estate industry by eliminating clunky transactions & customer pain points
  • Armed with electronic signature on tablets, field sales executives observed a 50% reduction in the average no of meetings to acquire new customers.
  • HIPAA compliant eSignature in the healthcare industry made it easy to manage patient records

Impact on the banking industry

  • Reduced the application time from 8 days to 24-48 hours
  • Annual scanning and imaging costs decreased by $1 million
  • 90 per cent reduction in document errors
  • 80 per cent of document handling costs eliminated
  • The entire workflow reduced to just 4 steps
  • Manual back-office operations no longer required

European Union (EU)

The eIDAS act (electronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services ), also known as Regulation (EU) No. 910/2014 is established by the European Commission to achieve a Digital single market.

It recognized three signature types as electronic signatures, Qualified electronic signatures, Advanced electronic signatures and defines

electronic signatures are “data in electronic form attached to or logically associated with other data in electronic form.”

A qualified electronic signature is an advanced electronic signature created by a suitable electronic signature creation device based on a qualified certificate for electronic signatures.

An advanced electronic signature means an electronic signature that meets the requirements set out in Article 26 of the eIDAS Act.

The purpose of this eSignature law is very clear from the first paragraph of the act “Building trust in the online environment is the key to economic and social development. Lack of trust, in particular, because of a perceived lack of legal certainty, makes consumers, businesses and public authorities hesitate to carry out transactions electronically and to adopt new services.”

The regulation seeks to enhance trust in electronic transactions by providing a common foundation for secure electronic transactions between citizens, businesses and public authorities to increase the effectiveness of private and public online services, ecommerce, online companies in the European Union.

How to check compliance with eIDAS Act?

Electronic signature: The electronic signature must be

  • Applied by the person associated with the signature
  • Involved in a manner that demonstrates the intent of the signer
  • Associated with the document or data the signer intended to sign

Advanced Electronic Signatures (AES): It must

  • Be uniquely linked to the signer
  • Identify the signer
  • Be under the sole control of the signer
  • Detect changes to the data after the application of AES

Qualified Electronic Signature: It must be

  • Created using a QES creation device
  • Supported by a qualified certificate

What does the eIDAS Act mean for businesses in the EU?

The growing use of electronic Identification schemes (eIDs) will save EU businesses worth 11 Billion Euros every year. It also benefits industries throughout the EU.

Financial Sector: One of the biggest beneficiaries of this act is the financial sector allowing eIDs and trust services to use KYC for quick onboarding of the customers. Thanks to eIDAS solutions, all processes are done online in a highly secure manner.

Retail Sector: Examples of how the online retail sector uses eID and trust services:

  • Customers buying restricted or high-value products use eID for thorough identification tests.
  • eSignatures & etimestamps save money by streamlining the processes improving document tracking.
  • Use of certified website authentication certificates to increase consumer confidence in online retail websites & prevent data phishing.

Transport Sector: Examples of how the transportation sector used eID and trust services:

  • Customers use eID and trust services to prove their identity, provide a safe log-in to the service
  • eTimestamps highlight transparency where several carriers are involved
  • Use of eSeals on essential documents to verify their origin & integrity while reducing reliance on paper-based documents

Lunarpen eSignatures comply with all eSignature laws with strict protection and authentication standards. It is legally valid for doing all online business transactions safely and securely.

SIGN UP Now to be a part of LunarPen family.

Conclusion

We have observed and understood eSignature laws in all of these countries. If we notice, the meaning and usage of electronic signature laws are altogether the same in every part of the world. These laws are designed with only one thing in mind- to make life easier for people, cut short the steps in manual processing of services, increase digital adoption, and ensure faster alignment with everyday activities supporting tremendous business growth. eSignature laws are the stepping stones to digital transformation- your gateway to a limitless world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are electronic signatures legally enforceable?

Electronic signatures are valid in India, the US & other major countries of the world as eSignature laws are enforceable in the form of the IT Act, ESIGN Act, eIDAS Act, and a lot more. These laws are responsible for making eSignature valid in each of these countries.

What is the law on electronic signatures?

Every country has its eSignature law clarifying the definition and usage of electronic signature and digital signature. You can read the above for detailed information about different eSignature laws.

Is LunarPen eSignature legal in Europe and US?

LunarPen eSignature is fully compliant with the eIDAS regulation in Europe and the ESIGN Act in the US, making it legal to do business and online transactions in both of the countries.

Is an electronically signed document legal?

As per the different eSignature laws in the world, an eSigned document is legal if it meets the defined conditions described in each of the laws.

What constitutes a legal electronic signature?

A legal electronic signature must have evidence of the signer’s intent and consent to sign the document. This is made possible if the subscriber takes positive action such as using an ePen, Smartphone, Tablet, mouse, or a keyboard to create the eSignature and electronically sign the document.

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How are electronic signatures better than handwritten signatures?

How are electronic signatures better than handwritten signatures?

Companies generate a lot of paperwork! Too much of it reduces your business efficiency, slows down data collection, storage, and retrieval, increases chances of errors, & has security issues. As more and more businesses automate their processes, the need to evolve from a handwritten signature to an electronic signature becomes increasingly crucial, fuelled by customers’ digital presence, demanding the availability of services from anytime, anywhere.

Handwritten signatures are swiftly getting replaced by electronic signatures worldwide due to their ease of use, quick return on investment, time saved on manual processing, speed, security, and verification by governments, banks, and regulatory authorities.

You can see the sharp surge in popularity for electronic signatures compared to handwritten signatures as per the latest trending data from Google.

electronic signatures

Source: Google Trends

So, what makes electronic signatures better than handwritten signatures? Let’s find it out.

Supports Work from Home:

From public transport struggles to global health concerns, sometimes things get in the way of getting to the office and forcing you to remain at home.

How to make sure that your contracts and agreements do not get affected if you work from home?

Now, we live in an era when companies have made work from home compulsory. We look at some of the different ways that electronic signatures help keep your company going forward, no matter where you are or what department you work in.

–         Close deals much faster as you don’t have to rush to the client physically for esigning the document

–         Helps in employee hiring by automating & accelerating the employee agreement process

–         Improves governance by centralizing the storage & management of all signed versions of the documents.

How to use electronic signatures while working from home?

You only need to install the esignature app on your device, connect with other parties to use the same. You would be able to create new documents online by uploading or using readymade templates. After that, you add email ids of signees needed for esigning the document by drawing, uploading, or typing the signature. Finally, you can send the document securely to clients, colleagues and speed up business processes without being present in offices.

Money and Time Savings:

Do you know that an organization spends 15% of its revenue creating, managing & distributing paper files for documentation?

Going paperless and adopting e signatures in a business helps you in so many ways. It restricts resources, workforce, and hardware equipment needed for procuring, printing, scanning, and mailing signed documents. The frees up time, allowing you to focus on essential tasks, saves processing time, and increases business response time, encouraging more cash flow in the industry.

Digital processes help fast-track business transformation by automating document flow, minimizes repetitive tasks to replace the time-consuming processes involved in manual capturing of data, re-entering data on machines, scanning, and storing it. It helps your team serve the customers more efficiently and create memorable experiences for them.

Electronic signatures need fewer resources like ink, paper, and postage resources. They support instant digitization of the business approval process. You don’t need to be in the office to prepare and esign a document. All necessary documents are ready online and forwarded to other signees in the online network. Electronic signatures apps empower you to access and esign a document using tablets, smart phones & laptops. So, you save a lot of time spent getting the document signed and sharing it with respective stakeholders without delay.

Enhanced Security:

A handwritten signature can’t assure you that the original document is signed by a genuine person as fraudsters quickly forge the signatures. Also, it is difficult to identify and authenticate the original signature from the fake ones.

On the contrary, electronic signatures only allow relevant invited parties to esign a document. If an online form needs esignature from other signees, the signer adds the signees’ email ids to access and esign the record on an esignature app.

Here are the details of the secure process of sending a document for esignature with the LunarPen app

  • Receive an email notification to sign a document on the esignature app
  • Go to the email and view the document shared for esigning
  • Verify the identity of the signee before esigning a document
  • Please review the document before signing it
  • Draw, write, or upload the signature
  • eSign the document securely

Electronic Record:

It is not easy to track changes in the document with a handwritten signature.

eSignatures comes with an audit trail feature to track every change in the document and capture details of when the document is opened, changed, viewed, and signed by a verified user. Audit trails maintain system activity and user activity records. It assists in detecting performance problems, flaws in applications, and security violations.

LunarPen audit trail helps you with all the tools to access, edit, send and sign the documents securely using the industry standard 256 bit HTTPS encryption. You can track all the details of the document right from

  • The time on which a user created the document
  • When the signee receives the document
  • When the signee consents to esign the document
  • When other stakeholders receive esigned document

Saves Environment

Around 40% of the world’s harvested trees produce papers. Even though the paper is recyclable, an A4 size paper requires 10 liters of water per sheet and emits methane, a greenhouse gas on rotting. Industry research firm Gartner estimates that as much as 3% of a company’s revenue is spent on paper, printing, copying, scanning, storing, transporting, and maintaining information files. Now you can realize the hidden costs of doing a handwritten signature.

Using an esignature for official work ensures:

  • No chopping down of trees for paper production
  • No paper wastage due to electronic transfer of data
  • Protects natural habitat of animals and earth’s natural biodiversity
  • Minimal usage of natural resources like water for paper production
  • Reduction in carbon footprint as esigned data is accessible from anywhere
  • Reduces electronic waste as you don’t have to buy printing machines

Indestructible Documents

Documents with handwritten signatures are prone to destruction due to mishandling, workplace accidents and can be easily lost, damaged, or forged. This forces the company and its workforce to leave the current prioritized task, trace the document, start every related business process from scratch, and waste valuable business hours.

Electronic signatures give a massive advantage to your business:

  • It is difficult to destroy documents in electronic format
  • Secure cloud servers ensure data is never misplaced
  • eSigned information is challenging to tamper and duplicate

Conclusion

There are many crucial business processes requiring signatures, such as the approval of contracts, invoices, and employee evaluation forms. Handwritten signatures slow down these processes as they are dependent on the exchange of paper and the signatory’s presence. Now you can see why electronic signatures fit better in modern business practices than handwritten signatures. They flawlessly integrate into an organization’s business processes and don’t depend on geographical boundaries and a person’s physical availability. They complement businesses in need of digital transformation, speed, safety, and security. Use the LunarPen to Fastrack and turnaround day-to-day business processes in a single click.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is an electronic signature an original signature?

An electronic signature is just like an original signature done by the signer on an electronic device rather than on paper. Pens create physical signatures, while ePen, mouse, tablet, and smartphone create electronic signatures. They have the same legality as that of a physically signed document. As many as 60 countries have passed laws to make electronic signatures fully legal and permissible by law. e-signatures are legally valid in India for over 18 years. The Information Technology Act (IT Act), passed in 2000, granted e-signatures the same legal status as handwritten signatures.

What is the difference between a digital signature and an electronic signature?

Key differences between a digital signature and an electronic signature are:

Usage: Digital signatures are used for securing a document from tampering while an electronic signature is used for verifying a document

Signature creation: You have to seek permission from a certification authority for using a digital signature While an electronic signature is done as per the intention of the signatory.

Authentication: Digital signatures use certificate based digital ids while an electronic signature verifies identity through email, OTP, phone pin etc.

What qualifies as an electronic signature?

The ESIGN act defines electronic signatures 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.” The versatility of its definition allows LunarPen to offer multiple solutions to capture an electronic signature using a smartphone, computer, or any portable device.

A qualified electronic signature (QES) includes all the secure features like

–  Ability to identify and link its signatory

– Allowing the signatory to access & control keys for creating an electronic signature
– Identify if the data is tampered after its accompanying message has been signed

What does an electronic signature looks like?

You have the sole authority to decide the look and feel of your electronic signature. Most electronic signatures look like handwritten signatures. When you create an esignature with LunarPen, you have the option to

  • Draw your esignature using mouse
  • Type the esignature with a keyboard
  • Write signature on the touch screen
  • Upload esignature into LunarPen account
Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
Electronic Signature is the Future of Business Contract Signing

Electronic Signature is the Future of Business Contract Signing

An electronic signature needs no introduction. In fact, it is already quite acknowledged. It has appeared as the aptest successor of the traditional methods. Esignature and business contract signing are trending and considered to be the future at all levels. The biggest assurance is achieved through the E-sign act. In a technology-dominated era, this is indeed a great concept. One may not hesitate to accept it in the future. 

However, there are various dimensions that are essential to be analyzed. The transition phase is obvious to be challenging for any aspect. The same has to be the case about esignature and business contract signing as well. There remain various factors, starting from the budget to feasibility that has to be analyzed. The following aspects throw more light on this aspect.

Also Read: Top 10 Uses of Electronic Signatures

Here’s Why Electronic Signature is the Future of Business Contract Signing

1. Perfect for contemporary business Practices

Digitization has grasped the entire business segment so effectively that no functionality is looking feasible without it. It’s just quite impossible to think about a business operation without web connectivity. Usage of communication modes like email has become conventional these days, at even the rural level. Needless is to talk about the impact of smartphones in modern times. On such occasions, esignature and business contract signing being the future is very much acceptable.

2. Incredibly accessible

Modern-day business groups emphasize about the portability of the business service segments. Flexibility is something that every organization and even the employees seek. Both users and service providers want to have access to business platforms powered by technology from anywhere. Esignature and business contract signing meet this requirement quite well.

Specifically, it assists the HR departments hugely. It is reliable enough during the urgencies. Things have gone much encouraging for such concepts powered by high-end technicalities ensuring speed. Modern-day data-oriented technology makes it a flawless concept to be adapted. In short, there is a perfect platform set for this technology to be adapted. From these perspectives, the future is obviously assured.

There are a number of reasons to adopt electronic signature. Here are the top 10 reasons why you should adopt Electronic Signature for Your business.

3. Studies suggest about its bright future

There is no scarcity of studies and speculations regarding esignature and business contract signing. It is quite a feasible option for large scale organizations. The interesting part, as per the studies, is that the technology is speculated to associate with ecommerce sectors as well. In fact, studies claim that its adaptation in the retail sector is going to increase by two times in upcoming years. 

These studies are based on the investments being made by the leading technology companies on esignature and business contract signing. Focus is being given more towards the retail sectors by these tech houses. In this context, the emphasis is being given towards making things as cost-effective as possible.        

4. Encouraged by digitization

Digitization or online presence of the business groups is highly encouraging for the esignature and business contract signing. It is evident that almost every industry has an online presence these days. Such online modes of transaction and operations always prioritize simpler access and quicker processing. 

After all, productivity is something that every organization wishes for. Needless is to say that esignature and business contract signing fits this bill quite well. It is accessible and cuts shorts the number of steps involved. Naturally, the process becomes faster. With faster processing, productivity is obvious to grow. All these aspects assure the future of the industry quite well.

5. Easiest to be implemented

Ease of adaptation is the primary reason behind esignature and business contract signing getting such popular. The way it seamlessly gets adapted to the needs of the businesses is quite well. This is because these technologies address the core aspects of business administration. 

The entire aspects, starting from preparing the draft to sending the same, everything becomes a matter of a few clicks. There remains no fear of missing documents, missing signatures, etc. It is quite automatic in its way. From this perspective, the concept is quite bright with its future.

Check Now: Top 10 Ways to Future Proof Your Esignature Investment

6. Assured from legal perspectives

Modern-day businesses involve various complexities related to contract signing. This is done to avoid the legal complexities at all level. Enterprises prepare contract documents articulately, specifying each point thoroughly. These are done to avoid legal issues in the future. At the same time, it is equally important for the concerned employee to have thorough clarity on these aspects. For a new recruit to go through all these details is obvious to be time-consuming. 

Things get especially tough with conventional paper-based documents. However, things are much simpler these days powered by esignature technologies. It helps the HR professionals in conveying the terms well. Similarly, going through the terms through such technology modes is way simpler. Taking all these into account, the future of business contract signing can indeed be claimed to be the brightest.

7. No concerns of security

Be it about esignature or any other technology; it needs to be secured enough to be acceptable. From that perspective, e-signature is indeed a reliable concept. The best part is that it is reliable enough for all industries. It is already tested and proven. Moreover, the future of business contract signing is expected to be enriched with much-advanced security features. 

First of all, there is no hassle of dealing with a huge bulk of paperwork. It means there is no threat of missing any document. Powered by high-end technicalities, the privacy aspects of data remains very much ensured. Through advanced digital storage, it makes things absolutely easy for HR professionals. In addition, there remains high-end user verification for using electronic signatures for better protection.

Digital Signatures and Electronic Signatures are two similar looking terms but are different from each other. Check out the difference between the two i.e. Digital Signature vs Electronic Signature

8. Associated technologies equally enriched

It’s not just that e-signature technology is a security enriched technology. Rather, the associated technicalities for it are equally fulfilling these days as well. For example, the servers in modern times are much secured, encouraging the technologies of such. This enables the secured storing of contracts using electronic signatures. At least it is far better than the conventional mode of files and paper-based documents.

9. Providing incredible control

The level of control that esignature provides for the users, as well as the organizations, is incredible. Tracking things, like whether the contracts are gone through, is much easier through these technicalities. In fact, it can be tracked when the concerned party or staff signed the documents. In other words, e-signature and business contract signing provide the much-needed transparency. 

It was never as assured as it is at present. Specifically, the managers and HR professionals don’t have to feel baffled in any aspect. This is high confidence-boosting and productive for the organizations. With greater control, business forecasts can be made much accurately. Now it is obvious for e-signature and business contract signing technology to be highly acceptable. This ensures its bright future.

10. Acceptable being corruption-free

There is absolutely no chance of anything illegal to occur through this technology. This avoids the corruption occurring at the higher levels of top corporate houses and the government houses. In fact, it is possible to prove the identity of the party signed the contract or the documents as well. Moreover, it assures the organization proving that the party was aware enough prior to sign it. 

This is a great accomplishment that any organization would seek. Top corporate houses have already adapted this. Smaller and mid-range companies are also expected to get attuned to it in a very short time. Keeping all these in the eye claims that electronic signature is the future of business contract signing holds the absolute truth.  

Thinking to adopt electronic signature for your business? Here are the points you need to consider while choosing an e-signature vendor.

11. Saving numerous costs for documenting

It’s not just that electronic signature is efficient and safe. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the technology is the way it saves the budget for the concerned organization. First of all, it nullifies the paper works associated. The needs of printing, Xerox, scanning, etc. also get zeroed. It means there is no need to have equipment meant for these purposes. 

This discovers space or the entire office can remain functional at the lesser premises. Needless is to say about the growing cost of office rents. Similarly, there are no threats of costs associated with color, stamps, pins, files, etc. High-end papers used for making bonds and contracts are pretty expensive. However, through e-signature, there is no need to worry about such expenses. In short, the technology saves the budget of the organization in a great way.

12. Preferred for reducing manpower and technology costs

Apart from the discussed above points, technology helps in lessening the manpower requirements as well. No need for hiring separate staffs for separate tasks like printing, scanning, etc. A single person can achieve all these at the fingertip using the technology. Moreover, it reduces the level of burden on HR professionals in a great way. 

There is no need to employ a person simply to maintain different registers. Through automation of data keeping, report generation also gets swifter. Here one doesn’t need to hire special staff for report generation only. It can be claimed that there is no need to use different tools for different purposes with e-signature tool

The cumulative cost of different technologies and their operators can be saved by an all-inclusive e-signature tool. In short, the speculations like electronic signature is the future of business contract signing are absolutely true. It is going to revolutionize the entire business segment.

Posted by Brian Felix, 0 comments
Benefits of E-Signatures for HR Department

Benefits of E-Signatures for HR Department

E-signature is already on a roll. Many renowned enterprises have already adopted this. Among all, the benefits of e-signatures for the HR department are indeed most of all. Electronic signature software provides a higher level of convenience in comparison to the old school method of signing the documents. It is more hectic for the HR department to deal with the paper documents as they have to deal with a variety of those.

For example, starting from contracts, bank documents, to various agreements, they have to deal with all. There is no need to handle any such hassles through e-signature. At the same time, making things simpler, it assures them from safety-related concerns as well. E-signature is a much effective mode of operating, which enables HR professionals to handle things in the least possible time. Naturally, the productivity level can be increased.      

Use of electronic signatures for contracts has been widely accepted. Here’re the 10 ways electronic signatures are changing how contracts are signed.

Almost every industry is digitized in the modern era. In fact, even the production and manufacturing units are digitally enriched. On such occasions, HR departments are obviously expected to make the most of the e-signature software.

The following abstracts discuss the benefits of the e-signatures for HR department in a broader way   

Hastens the process of recruitment and other formalities

The primary work of the HR department is indeed to handle recruitment affairs. And, one of the primary benefits of e-signature for the HR department is that it makes those tasks look easier. Needless is to say that the HR work processes involve various kinds of formalities. Starting from document checking to signing on different documents, it involves various steps. E-signature software can turn these tasks into minuscule affairs. Naturally, much precious time in the department can be saved. Documentation and the formalities often delay the joining process of new talents for the organizations. It also delays the hiring process. Such delays affect productivity greatly. One of the major benefits of e-signatures for the HR department is to end such delays to a great extent.

Reduces extraneous tasks:

HR departments often involve a range of unwanted works like printing, scanning, Xerox, etc. All these things involve various machinery installations. There remain issues of maintenance of these devices, their performance lagging, etc. All these things ultimately delay the process and affect productivity. On the other hand, one of the prominent benefits of e-signature for the HR department is that there are no such hassles here. It’s a smart way that can be addressed in the least possible time. Making things faster, the technology turns it much cost-effective as well.

It encourages automation

E-signature for the HR department enhances the process through incredible automation. Specifically, the hectic administrative tasks can be greatly enhanced through such technicalities. In fact, the entire paperwork needs can be digitized for them. The whole talent acquisition process can be streamlined through such technical mode. Moreover, it is quite simple as a process that can be easily handled by even the older generation people.

Must Read: 10 Reasons Why You Should Adopt Electronic Signature for Your Business

Makes things easy for the younger generation to adapt to 

HR departments often pay a lot of emphasis on hiring young manpower. Technologies like e-signature can indeed be impressive for them. Not just the staff from other departments, the budding talents from the HR departments also would prefer having such tools. It provides them the ease of functioning. Considering the fact that most of the modern-day youth is tech-oriented, such technicalities always interest them. They don’t need much special training to learn the working ways of the HR department. This is indeed one of the prominent benefits of e-signature for the HR department. They would love handling problems through such high-end technicalities; rather than the old-schooled paper works.     

Reporting turns easier like never before

One of the major challenges that the HR departments face is regarding reporting. They have to submit reports of different kinds to the managers or other department heads. Specifically, the reporting of documentation status is one of the most challenging affairs for them. It is understandably tough for them to produce such documents in real-time. However, the benefit of e-signature for the HR department is that it makes such a report generation process look simpler. Through regular ways, various kinds of confusions are obvious to appear. For example, the HR professionals remain in dilemma whether the candidate received the file, checked it, etc. In addition, they have to check whether the candidate has signed at each of the points. In case some mistake occurs, the process turns even longer. However, through the benefits of e-signature for the HR department, such issues can be totally reduced.

It’s updated and always available for urgencies:

HR departments often have to deal with the urgencies. They are asked to submit a report in a hurry and also fulfill certain formalities. All these are indeed time-consuming processes in traditional ways. However, through technical options like e-signature software, things have gone much simpler. The prime benefit of e-signature for the HR department is that it enables the department to stay updated about the entire affair. No more probable answers by the HR professionals as these tools deliver an exact answer.   

There are a number of myths about the e-signature. Here’re top 10 electronic signature myths and facts behind them.

Provides flexibility of working; no place constraint

One of the top benefits of e-signatures for the HR Department is in terms of the flexibility it provides. Specifically, it is much more helpful for HR managers than others. It enables them to work from home, or anywhere else in the world they would wish to. Officials who often have to travel a lot and still have to report can find these technicalities absolutely useful. It also provides them the leeway of working as per their comfort zone. This means they can maintain the workflow despite relaxing somewhere. Naturally, this boosts the overall productivity of the organization. In fact, they can communicate with the employees of the organization from any point.

Cost-effective in many ways

Being cost-effective is of the top benefits of e-signatures for the HR department. Though it appears like an expensive aspect, it saves the budget for the department in reality. First of all, the expenses associated with affairs like printing, scanning, Xerox, etc. get reduced. In addition, the expenses involving stamping, inks, paper, etc. get reduced significantly. Digital documentation needs no special management, as well. There is also no need to spend money on courier related affairs. As there is no requirement for Xerox, printer, etc. devices, the space required can be greatly reduced. Overall, the expenses related to administration tasks get nominal as possible. One doesn’t even need to worry about maintaining the documents. Through e-signature software, any document can be generated from any point anywhere. All these aspects save money for the organization.  

Maintains utmost transparency

Through the benefits of e-signature adoption in the company, the recruitment process can be greatly hastened. Moreover, it maintains incredible clarity overall. It allows the concerned employee to go through the documents thoroughly. The points of confusion can be thus cleared instantly. Moreover, they can sign those digitally immediately. Earlier through traditional ways, it was quite tough for an employee to go through a range of documents, agreements, etc. E-signature software enables them to enjoy this facility from any point. It thus assures the concerned company from legal perspectives as well. The candidate also feels confident regarding transparency. All in all, a better deal is settled between both the parties.   

Use of electronic signature can bring several benefits to you. If you have any doubt regarding the use of electronic signature, read out these 10 reasons to adopt e-signature for your business.

Maintains simplicity

One of the major benefits of e-signature adoption in the company is the simplicity it provides for the concerned company. Needless is to say that there remains a great range of documents that the employees have to go through. It’s the duty of the HR department to prepare these documents and maintain them as well. Handling things manually is always challenging for any HR professionals. However, high-end e-signature tools have made things look absolutely simpler. These benefits of e-signature adoption in the company maintain a good relationship between the employees and the department. Most importantly, it doesn’t disturb any of the parties. No workflow is disturbed as well through the course. Obviously, this is something that every company would wish for.

Smarter safety awareness: 

Keeping employees aware of the security norms of an organization is the duty of the HR department. In general, these safety guidelines involve a huge number of documents. The concerned employees have to go through various complicated terms and conditions. However, through the uses of e-signature for the HR department, these issues look much simpler than ever. The best part about these tools is that it maintains things in an updated fashion. In fact, the staffs get the details regarding the security norms in a spontaneous way. This reduces pressure from the HR department.    

Smarter environmental awareness

Not just the safety-related norms, the HR depart has to guide employees regarding environmental policies as well. Now through the uses of e-signature for the HR department, these works look much more strategic and simpler. At the same time, lesser paper consumption also is a great step towards environmental benefits. It saves time for the HR department that would have wasted in educating. This enables them to focus on other works, which ultimately improves functionality and productivity.

So, using electronic signature for HR department is a great idea. Don’t think much and take the right decision and incorporate electronic signature to experience the great benefits of electronic signature. for HR department.

If you still have any questions, put your doubts in the comment section below and I’ll be happy to answer.

Posted by Brian Felix, 0 comments