For years, businesses have been growing their customer bases and generating more revenue with the help of the internet and mobile apps. However, with the abundance of scammers posing as trustworthy businesses, consumers have become highly skeptical of who they do business with. Unless a company is extremely thorough with its security protocols and verification methods, they aren’t going to get much business. In fact, a survey by the Ponemon Institute shows that only 10% of US consumers trust e-commerce businesses. That’s a lot of capital stuck in a market with a limited number of buyers. However, businesses are starting to see the value of digital signatures and secure business practices. Here are seven reasons why digital signatures are safe and valid for businesses.
8 Reasons why digital signatures are safe and valid for business
1. Digital signatures are convenient for everyone involved.
The convenience of digital signatures is enormous for businesses and people alike. No longer do you need to worry about mailing a document across the country to be signed by the right person or wait for someone in the office to sign it before getting on your way. Digital signatures give you more freedom than ever before from traditional practices that were once obligatory, and they allow you to work from anywhere (even in a boat ). Use these eight reasons as motivation to make this switch in your own business!
#1: You no longer need anything other than a computer and a mouse or touchscreen. With paper contracts, there’s always the risk of misplacing them or having them ruined during shipment. And if they’re delivered digitally, you might have problems with your email going down or sending an incomplete file. This can cause delays that can cost businesses time and money—not to mention all the hassle on everyone’s end, either by phone or snail mail.
#2: You no longer have to wait around if it’s not possible for someone else who needs to sign off on something in person. Maybe it’s an employee who is out for an extended period of time because of illness or someone who is always hard to reach. Whatever the reason, with electronic documents, people don’t have to keep traveling back and forth between offices until things are signed off on—everything happens online!
#3: There won’t be any more confusion among employees about which documents are signed. Signatures are often illegible when scanned into PDF format because they were handwritten originally; sometimes, one employee will think another has signed off on something when they haven’t! There’s also less opportunity for document tampering when everything is done electronically. This kind of protection may be beneficial if confidential information needs to be exchanged between companies that aren’t well acquainted with one another just yet!
#4: Your clients will appreciate how convenient it is that files don’t need physical signatures anymore.
2. Digital signatures are legally binding.
Digital signatures are a topic of intense interest for many business owners, and there are real advantages to having them in your operation. Here are eight reasons why you should give them a try.
3. Digital signatures are efficient and cost-effective.
When it comes to handling business communications, a few key elements are essential: timeliness, convenience, and security. When you think about these essentials in terms of a paper-based solution like a physical signature, the concept feels quite antiquated. In contrast, by utilizing digital signatures for this workflow, you can seamlessly streamline the process of authenticating and validating documents. Here are just a few perks of going digital:
Paper copies can be damaged or destroyed
4. Digital signatures prevent the loss of documents due to misplacement.
Most people have never heard of a digital signature, and even fewer know what it is or why it matters. However, once you see how this technology can be used to streamline your business and personal life, you will wonder how you ever completed important documents without it. We should note that this guide is relevant only for documents that must be sent via email or uploaded to the internet (such as an online insurance form). While digital signatures are also an option for physical paperwork, they are typically not required by law as they are in an electronic context.
5. Digital signatures make it easier to track down missing documents.
Digital signatures are easy to use, efficient, and save you time. Here are some of the ways that digital signatures improve your business:
- Vastly improved search capabilities. You can search for documents by keyword, date sent, date received, signer or recipient name, content in the document itself, and even file type (pdf or doc). This makes it easier to figure out if a given document exists on your computer. Even if it exists somewhere in your system’s filing cabinet (or on a server), you can find it more quickly and easily because of this search functionality.
Digital signatures also make searching through past contracts and agreements a breeze. If an existing contract runs up against an unforeseen circumstance—such as someone leaving the company or needing to change their hours—you won’t have to sift through thousands of papers looking for that contract anymore. Your system will be able to find the necessary document in seconds flat—no matter where it currently resides on your network.
- Digital signature saves time by allowing you to track important information such as when someone received or sent a particular document; who they sent or received that same document from; what content was included with the original version of that contract; what changes were made over time; when each of these events occurred; and much more information is included with every digital signature record created. This sort of tracking functionality allows anyone involved in a project—be they salespeople sending out proposals for new clients’ consideration, accountants preparing documents for tax season, HR reps processing employee files, etc.—to create richer histories with every signed contract or contract agreement.* Digital signatures allow for faster turnaround times overall because everything is electronic instead of paper-based. You can look at email records both collectively and individually without having to go digging around in different folders across numerous hard drives.* And finally—perhaps one of the biggest benefits digital signatures offer is no need to worry about lost paper copies! If you have multiple people working.
6. Digital signatures provide a secure way to share documnets with clients, vendors, and partners.
What makes a digital signature secure? You need to be sure that the document hasn’t been modified and didn’t come from anyone but yourself—and that you’re in control of how it’s used after you’ve signed it.
Why would someone want to change a document? Asking for trouble, sure, but not only is altering official documents illegal, but there are also plenty of practical reasons why someone might want to edit something. Maybe they don’t agree with what you’ve said! Maybe they just want their name listed more prominently on the first page. Whatever they’re thinking, the original author must be able to identify the changes made to their work so no one can take advantage of them in an unfair way later on down the line.
What do I mean by ‘unfair’? Let’s say that Bob wants Alice’s help with his project list for a fundraiser. Alice sends over her completed list (already signed by her) for Bob to use, so he doesn’t have to spend time re-creating it himself. But let’s say Bob decides he doesn’t like what Alice wrote about donating $50 towards buying mosquito nets for orphaned Amazons living near Mayan ruins in South America and changes a few things around before passing it back off as his work. What happens then? It may sound silly at first, but when you look at the bigger picture and consider the potential consequences, this scenario becomes much more serious (and dishonest). And this is just one example of how easily something could go wrong without proper security precautions built into your system from day one.
7. Digital signatures are easy to implement in existing workflows and processes.
Signing contracts and documents in person is a hassle, especially for business owners who are constantly traveling. Long flight delays can mean long hours away from home, and the last thing you want to do when you finally arrive at your destination is drive to yet another office building or stop by an attorney’s office. Thankfully, there’s now a more convenient way to sign documents digitally; it’s called e-signing, and it’s fast, easy, and cost-effective. By implementing digital signatures into your workflows and processes, businesses can save time and money while maintaining security. Digital signature software also saves paper—an environmentally friendly feature every company can appreciate!
8. Digital signatures help organizations maintain compliance and control over their workflows and data sets.
So, let’s say you’re the CFO of a small business, and you need to sign some documents that contain sensitive information. You don’t want to leave your standard pen or USB drive in your office somewhere so that a hacker could walk by and intercept it and gain access to your company’s data. That would be bad!
You need a way to safely store signed documents in an environment where pre-signed persons, systems can only access them, and software then later retrieved for signing at will. This is what digital signatures are for—they provide a safe way for you to sign documents electronically.
Conclusion
Rest assured that digital signatures are completely acceptable for all businesses to use. These may be the most secure and efficient way to execute a business transaction in the 21st century. Not only are they legal and binding in most countries, but they’re also used daily by billions of people across the globe. Digital signatures can also help you manage your team members’ workflow more efficiently than any other type of signature. They eliminate the need to print, scan, and deliver documents back and forth between two parties before it is complete.