E-Signature
What is an electronic signature?
An electronic signature is the electronic approval stamp of a party on any official document, from contracts to transactions. Unlike the name suggests, electronic signatures are not restricted to traditional signatures. They can be a scanned image of the person’s ink signature, a mouse squiggle on a screen, or a hand signature created on a tablet. They can also be a typed name or initials, your e-mail's bottom signature, a voice or audio signature, or a check sign to confirm your approval on the document, among many other formats.
Digital Transformation & e-signatures
Although very useful, e-signatures are still not widely adopted within business processes. Uncertainty around the legality of e-signatures is often cited as an obstacle to mass adoption, but as of the Law Commission’s ruling in 2018, they now carry equal weight to handwritten signatures. With COVID-19 accelerating business digitization by pushing companies to think outside the box to guarantee their continuity, e-signatures are expected to become a largely used tool and a key element of digital transformation strategies, enabling digitization of manual and paper-based processes.
What are the advantages of electronic signatures?
1. Increased Productivity
Employees spend considerably less time on printing, signing, and filing documents.
2. Improved Customer Experience
Customers benefit from convenient and digitized processes which increases their customer satisfaction.
3. Enhanced Safety & Security
E-signatures have become a safer alternative to handwritten signatures, with companies adopting increased security measures to verify and authenticate identities, track potentially fraudulent signatories and encrypt documents.
4. Better Compliance
E-signature tools and technologies ensure compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in terms of capturing a customer's consent. In fact, they enable full transparency and audit trail by capturing key information about the signatory and the circumstances of the consent.
5. Reduced Costs & Greener Practices
Managing hard-copy documents can be quite costly. With e-signatures, companies have fewer papers to print, sign, and file, thus reducing their operational costs and waste generation.
Digital Signatures
A digital signature is a cryptographic mechanism adopted to create e-signatures. They come in four different types, namely: Electronic Signatures, Certificate-based Signatures, Signing Services (Adobe Sign), and Document Certification Signatures.
Key Features & Benefits of a Digital Signature
• A digital signature is characterized by a unique digital feature which is embedded in the signed document.
• Digital signatures are authorized by certification authorities. The latter are responsible for providing digital certificates that can be compared to licenses or passports to help validate a signed document and verify its original signatory.
• Digital signatures prevent tempering with digital documents through security options that restrict document edits to authorized individuals.
• When applying a digital signature to a specific document, the document's content and the digital certificate form together a unique digital fingerprint.
• E-signatures help you save money and time spent on processing paperwork, correcting errors and redrafting documents. They also contribute to increasing employees' productivity and enable them to focus on their main tasks.
• The right e-signature solution can also ensure a business is compliant with national and international regulators' standards.
