What are electronic and digital signatures?

How many of us have received this email? “Please sign the attached document and send us the scanned copy” and how many times we have felt this unnecessary task to print out a document just for a small signature and then scan it back to send it via email, right? Neither you nor your customer would prefer to stick with the traditional time consuming process of scanning documents for signature. The cycle time for sending the document and receiving the customer’s signature traditionally takes minimum a week. It is very important for any business to be lean “remove waste”. Most important of all is to improve the process where cycle time is more. If you can save time you eventually save money…after all we all know the fact “Time is Money”. 

Electronic signatures have brought the revolution in the industry by offering quick and secure method for signatures.  It is a boom for industry to get online applications signed using android and IOS devices, smart phone, laptop and computers. With millions and millions of documents getting signed everyday more and more companies are adopting the eSignature services and closing major deals.

What is the difference between Electronic Signature and Digital Signature?

Electronic Signature is any type of electronic approval sound, symbol or process which is adopted by the person who is willing to sign a document

Digital Signature have hidden data in them which is not visible to human eyes. Contracts always run with the risk of changing the terms and conditions without getting noticed. This is when the digital signatures come in to place. If any data or terms and conditions have been changed in the contract the digital signature changes. These changes can be encoded in the computer and the contract becomes void. This helps in authentication of contracts

How does eSignature Service work?

The best part about E-signature applications is they are affordable and easy to implement and that any size companies can transition themselves from the traditional way of scanning to the automated digital signature process. There are ton of companies offering the E- signature services with great customer support, if you are a salesforce user you can implement the trail version and feel the actual user experience by using it and sending documents. I have worked with many eSignature services but my favorite ones are DocuSign and EchoSign. For installation visit the company website and download the trail version. You can either use them as a standalone tool or integrate with any CRM application. Take an example of salesforce – If I were to explain you DocuSign in few simple steps I would say- download DocuSign-> Configure it-> Place the “Send Contracts” button on whichever object you wish to send the contracts-> Bingo you’re done. It is that simple.

In case you didn't know:

• Electronic signatures are legally valid in most of the countries around the world as per ELECTRONIC SIGNATURES IN GLOBAL AND NATIONAL COMMERCE ACT
  
• More than 60 countries are using E- Signature services
• From legal perspective electronic signature and digital Signature are two different terms
• Multiple people can sign one document
• You can store all the E-Signature data and archive it in the cloud
• Signers can be verified using phone authentication
• You can customize your own signature, it takes less than 45 seconds to sign a document electronically and return back to the sender.