It’s several years that the vision of going paperless is being chased all over.
Remember when vacation forms were on paper? What? Yours are still on paper?
Remember when everything had to be filled it in triplicate, and cross signed by half the country?
In offices everywhere there’s always that one guy that must have the document printed. So he can feel it. Touch it. Eyeball the signature. Then file it – never to be seen again.
The last barrier to being paperless was the fact a signature is needed. A proper signature. Not an email confirmation. A signature. On the document.
Enter digital signatures and electronic signatures.
What’s the difference between digital and electronic signatures?
A digital signature is based on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). It involves cryptography that guarantees authenticity of the signatory, data integrity, and most important, non-repudiation, ie, it’s binding.
Digital signatures can be complex to implement, as you need a Certificate Authority, some way of enrolling the users, and tooling to manage issuing and revoking the keys.
An electronic signature, on the other hand, is a representation of the manual signature. It could be a digitized image of a handwritten signature, perhaps a thumbprint or a voiceprint, or some kind of symbol that uniquely identifies the signatory.
Electronic signatures are easier to manage, but can also be subject to forgery, and in many cases, are not legally binding.
The best of both worlds
There is a new breed of tools that offer the convenience of electronic signatures with the security and authenticity of digital signatures.
Through these tools, you grab your document that needs to be signed, upload it to the tool, type the email addresses of the signatories.
Then you sit back and chill.
The software takes your PDF, sends it securely to each signatory in turn (you can even see the progress of workflow!).
The signatory receives an email with simple point and click instructions, he/she signs the document using their mouse (or fancy pen on their even fancier iPad), clicks submit and they’re done.
Imagine being able to send an invoice or contract to your customer, and they can sign it from their iPad or iPhone …
When all relevant signatures are collected, the document is locked, and archived into your account. Of course, you can download a copy for your records. It is, after all, legally binding.
RightSignature is one of the key players in this market. Featured on ReadWriteWeb and The Wall Street Journal, it has a nice interface that’s fast and responsive.
Plus the iPad and iPhone apps that support it are free.
The free trial takes about 20 seconds to sign up for, and gives you 5 documents to send for one or multiple signature.
Magic.
So if you’re contractor trying to get a change order approved by your client, or must have that pesky NDA signed before you can close the sale, this could really do wonders for your productivity and approval cycles.
Check out your free trial here. I dare you to not giggle at signing your name with a mouse!
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