Many organizations in different industrial sectors are starting to adopt electronic signatures when handling specific business activities due to their effectiveness and high-security level in obtaining and managing signatures. Below are 10 uses of electronic signatures in the business world:
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Sales contracts
When it comes to signing contracts, e-signatures can help seal business deals. The use of e-signs does not involve printing and scanning, making it a convenient and straightforward way to sign a contract. Moreover, signatures are legally binding and thus reliable. With e-sign technology, a business owner can format online deals and track a document’s audit trail. Therefore, one is sure of security for all business contracts, sales or freelance.
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Vendor/supplier agreements
The traditional handwritten way of signing documents is sometimes challenging for businesses. Most times, business owners create a form, work out the necessary interventions, send the copy and await approval and signing. This cumbersome process can delay contract execution because although manual signing is outdated and slow, signing is still a crucial part of vendor/supplier agreements. Electronic signatures can decrease send-to-sign time and fast track the contract lifecycle; This helps improve the relationship between a business and its suppliers/vendors.
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New customer forms
New clients and customers can quickly provide their signatures on a form by simply clicking on a mouse. A business owner can adopt a form template to suit the intended purpose, and clients can select their choice of fields, for example, using captcha, checkboxes or signatures. Additionally, a business owner can safely store contracts digitally or share the template easily by simply copying and pasting a snippet of the form onto a webpage or sharing the form’s URL through email or text message. One of Asia’s fastest growing inbound marketing companies Incify.co says that most of their clients who opted for digital or better developed business processes like eSign, eAssets management etc. are able to scale their business efficiently and also save more time.
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Change orders
Being familiar with e-sign tools will allow you to send proposals and change orders to your clientele for them to approve and sign. This level of professionalism can help you gain a competitive advantage. Using e-signature is a fantastic marketing feature that can help improve your relationship with your customers by ensuring that your contracting process is transparent. Managing change orders using electronic signatures provides a high level of organization, ensuring efficiency, promoting the reliability needed to build safer and stronger business relationships.
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Parental consent
Adopting electronic signature protocols can assist socially distant parents who cannot access and sign documents through mail. Transmitting specific educational documents, for example, evaluation reports, have never been quicker and reliable than with electronic transmission. Many educational institutions are embracing the use of electronic signatures in acquiring parental consent, especially to address time-critical education matters. There is minimal need to obtain written parental consent in this virtual world, which can be slow and sometimes unreliable.
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Non-disclosure agreements
With electronic signatures, NDA documents no longer need to be physically written and sent since signing is completed online and sent in real-time regardless of location. Furthermore, the document is secure and cannot be easily tampered with. Encryption technology minimizes NDA documents’ possibility of being forged because electronic signatures are unique to the sender and recipient. Using e-sign in NDA documents assures authenticity and therefore, the legitimacy of the contract is not easily questioned.
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Intellectual property licensing and other legal agreements
Electronic signatures are legally binding, meaning they are the perfect solution for sealing legal agreements, for example, intellectual property licensing. Design technology reduces the risk of manipulation and forgery, which helps guarantee the security of contracts.
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Filing tax returns
Most revenue services recommend using electronic signatures for people and businesses looking for faster and convenient alternatives for filing returns than the long and tedious process of visiting government institutions.
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Online banking
When it comes to banking, security is crucial. Online banking is always a target for fraud and manipulation, and, therefore, a more secure system is required to authenticate users. The security services of signatures make online banking more secure as it accounts for authenticity, confidentiality, non-repudiation and integrity.
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Employee onboarding
A lot of paperwork is required when hiring a new employee. However, with electronic signatures, handing in the necessary documents is quick and easy. E-signatures make the hiring process seamless, thorough and fast.
As mentioned above, there are numerous uses for electronic signatures in different industrial sectors. Click here to learn more about how you can incorporate signatures into your business activities.