Role of eSignatures in Small Businesses
It is an exciting time to witness digital transformation in both large corporations and small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and thanks to acts like the IT Act (India), e-Sign Act of 2000, and UETA (USA) all business processes can be optimized using eSignatures. While providing ease of doing business, is one of the key benefits, the true goal of implementing new technology is to generate greater ROI (Return on Investment). This holds even for the implementation of eSignature solutions in SMEs (Small-Medium Sized Enterprises).
More than often a small or medium-sized business owner has to function across departments, including sales, marketing, HR, finance, legal, procurement, and more. This is followed by messy paper trails and haphazard documentation. Over time it adds up, takes time, and can slow the business down.
This is where implementing an eSignature solution into the workflow can save the day! Although it is primarily conceived as an alternative to wet signatures, you can reap greater ROI from this solution. While its time efficiency, cost efficiency, and customer experience benefits span all industries, the use differs based on unique business needs. Given that there is a myriad of unique needs among businesses and industries, let us see the different use cases of eSignature solutions for small or medium-sized businesses.
Top 10 eSignatures Use Cases for Small Businesses
Streamline or digitize your business workflow with eSignatures. Let us look at some of the common use cases of eSignature for small or medium-sized enterprises.
1. Sales Contract
Sales contracts are among the most frequently signed documents. Whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, a signed and authenticated sales contract is a prerequisite for a successfully closed business deal. Any delays or errors can downsize the profits, thus with an e-Signature solution in place, you can save both time and money.
2. Vendor/Supplier Agreements
Small businesses often have to undergo a lot of vendor negotiation hence it is best to lock in the price and terms of the agreement swiftly. Curating a manual agreement and getting the signatures of involved parties can be a tiresome and lengthy process, having an e-Signature and paperless office solution like emSigner can ease the overall process.
With eMudhra’s emSigner application, you can create and optimize the agreements within a span of a few minutes! A smart eSigning solution is not only time efficient but can also help in streamlining the complete workflows.
3. New Customer Forms
If your business requires any type of documentation for customer onboarding, eSignatures have a place in your business strategy. Incorporating an inclusive esigning and workflow management solution can not only save you time and money but also reduce dependency on paper-based consent forms, liability waivers, or policy updates that often require you to generate multiple iterations of documents.
4. Intellectual Property Licensing & Other Legal Agreements
Securing intellectual property rights and settling legal agreements are some of the extremely crucial aspects of establishing a brand name. Whilst these are some of the key aspects of a business it requires intricate reviews and signing to be legally valid. Because electronic signatures are legally binding with a court-admissible audit trail, they are ideal for signing legal documents.
5. Distributor Agreements
Businesses that deal in partnerships with dealers, distributors or other sales channels can utilize eSigning and paperless office solutions like emSigner to get cross-department approvals through digital signing and streamlined workflows, which can make it easy and more attractive to do business with you.
6. Employee Onboarding
Whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, employee onboarding is one of the major challenges an organization faces with a ton of paperwork including contact forms, benefits, enrollment, automatic deposit for paychecks, the list goes on. You can save time and resources and get all those documents signed digitally, securely, and with ease using electronic signatures.
7. NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)
Signing an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) is often a crucial requisite for SMEs to ensure confidentiality and security, enabling you to do business more freely with third parties. However, using wet signatures is inconvenient and customer unfriendly whereas, eSignature provides an easy and fast alternative to traditional wet signatures while also maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of digitally signed documents.
8. Parental Consent and Age Verification
This use case is more restricted to gaming companies, photographers, and entertainment firms that often target an under-18 audience. If you are a business owner that requires age verification of employees or working with kids integrating ID verification with electronic signatures can make it easy. With smart e-Signing and workflow automation solutions, you can create your template for the authorization of customers.
These were some of the top use cases for an eSignature solution, there are endless use cases for an eSignature solution, both across and within industries. Increased turnaround time, efficiency, and sales are some of the major perks of moving away from paperwork-focused processes and digitizing the front end.
eMudhra emSigner: Best Digital Signature/eSignature Software Solution for SMEs for Quick and Secure Way of Digitizing Workflows
If you are a small or medium-sized business owner, looking for an eSignature and workflow automation solution to digitize your workspace, look no further! As a business owner in the cutthroat competitive landscape, you might have already begun brainstorming how to incorporate electronic signature solutions within your business. This is a great start to discovering the potential of an eSigning solution and maximizing the benefits of eSignatures within your organization.
eMudhra’s emSigner is a highly sophisticated, one-stop solution for digitally signing documents and streamlining your enterprise workflows in minutes! emSigner is more than just an easy-to-use, fast, and efficient alternative to the traditional wet signature. With emSigner can move your data and documents digitally with support for complex workflows, digital signatures, OCR, KYC (Know Your Customers), and Artificial Intelligence.
Start your digital transformation journey with eMudhra’s emSigner!
Contact us now for the Best Digital Signature Software for Small Businesses
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Are e-Signatures legally binding?
Yes, electronic signatures or digital signatures are legally valid and non-repudiated.
2. What are the four requirements for an electronic signature to be valid?
The following are the four requirements to be considered legally valid.
- E-signatures must be uniquely linked to the person signing the document.
- Alternation to the digitally signed document must be detectable. In simpler words, the digital signature must ensure the integrity of the document.
- There should be an audit trail that details steps taken during the signing process.
- The digital signature certificate must be issued by a Certifying Authority (CA) recognized by the Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA) appointed under the IT Act.
3. What are some benefits of using eSignature Solutions for SMEs?
The following are some of the benefits of eSignature solutions for SMEs in your business strategy.
- Enhanced Security
- Faster TAT
- Increased Revenue
- Ease of doing business
- Enhanced customer experience