Digital Handwritten Signature for Everyone

The complete digitizing of corporate documentation, including signing, accelerates processes, saves money and has the potential to transform entire business models.

If from time to time you visit your bank or cell phone operator, you have already signed your name on a small sign-pad for recording specimen signatures when signing contracts or for verifying the signatures when confirming transactions. It’s only natural that large companies were the first to turn to digital signing technology. Initial investments were high, but since they have to process large volumes of paper-based documents, digitizing made the most sense to them. 

However, today digital signature technology is much more affordable and provides broader possibilities for its use. It is no longer just about greater security or higher comfort for customers, which convinced the banks and operators in the first phase of the expansion of digital signatures. Smaller and medium-size companies are attracted to this technology due to the promise of accelerating of processes and making them more effective and economical.

Tablet instead of sign-pad

For example, Agentura Plus, which specializes in personnel leasing and temporary help, processes thousands of sheets of paper every month. The staff in the headquarters and seven branch offices throughout the country sign employment contracts, work agreements and various documents related to tax relief affirmation, indemnification affirmations and payroll slips.

In the past, the staff had to print and store all signed documents in paper form and naturally this involved high printing and archiving costs, as well as unnecessary downtime.  Printing, filing and searching for documents is extremely time consuming. But last year the agency’s paper archives stopped growing. Nowadays, all documents – starting with contracts and ending with payroll slips – are signed digitally.

However, Agentura Plus does not use sign-pads, but tablets and stylus pens. Special software (in this case, SIGNATUS), ensures that every document, be it a contract, payroll slip or another document, is signed. Agency employees have everything right in front of their eyes.  They can check all the data and thus eliminate possible conflicts about signing something different than what was intended. It’s reminiscent of the traditional way of signing; the only difference is that you don’t sign a piece of paper but an electronic document directly on a tablet.

Doing Business Faster

Doing business in the field is another example of how digital handwritten signatures on tablets are beneficial. Typically, a sales rep visits a customer, presents products or services and listens to the customer’s ideas in order to prepare custom-designed offer. If the customer agrees, another meeting is arranged to come to a final agreement, place an order and sign various documents. Only then can an invoice be issued. This usually takes several days, and in the worst case scenario, even weeks during which the customer could reconsider and accept an offer from a competitor.

A digital signature accelerates the entire acquisition process. Ideally, the rep adjusts his/her offer in the tablet directly at the meeting, inputs the necessary data and presents the order or contract for signing on the spot.  The signed document can be instantly delivered to the headquarters where the subsequent processes are launched – either issuing the invoice, activating the service or ordering the goods from the warehouse.

A digital handwritten signature can have similar benefits even for a service company, such as a maintenance company an elevator repair company or for company that supplies material to construction sites. When handing over and accepting the material, the protocol is signed by the driver and customer electronically.  Paper documents can get lost or damaged, but not electronic protocols.  

Digital signatures can create an entirely new concept of selling and customer care.  A customer service representative can move around the store or shopping center or square with a tablet to meet with customers, make offers and even conclude contracts in electronic form. Who knows, maybe in a few years banks will look more like cafes? And instead of standing in lines, customers will sit on a sofa and wait for the bank personnel to come to them.  With a tablet, naturally.

What to do with digital documents

The growth in the number of digital documents is a natural result of the digital signature system.  Naturally, one question that managers ask when deploying this technology is “How will we then process and archive electronic documents?”

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