My insurance company sends me a rebate on my premiums to reward me for having multiple policies with them. You may be surprised to know that I find it really annoying. 

The reason is: they send me a cheque! Despite the fact the insurance is issued by my bank and the premiums are debited from my bank account… they send me a cheque. I don’t go to the bank any more. Except that is when I need to bank the cheque posted to me by my insurance company. 

As the convenience of working electronically has become the new normal, the need to revert to paper for any process can be doubly frustrating. 

One of the most common examples is when a signature is required, which creates delays, adds cost and feels plain clumsy. As a result, many organisations are seeking ways to get documents signed electronically. 

Timeliness is a key motivation for moving beyond traditional signatures. The "air gap" created in an otherwise electronic process when something needs to be printed for signing, takes away the immediacy that people are now accustomed to. Signing electronically delivers to that expectation of immediacy. 

Kym Volp, Queensland State Manager for Evolve Scientific Recruitment, said, “We issue the links [email invitations to sign the document] and people get back to us overnight or even within the hour. We just set the deadline for each candidate and the system takes care of the reminders for us. This invaluable feature has reduced time and frustration for all concerned". 

As people start to consider their current signing process in detail, the issue of risk invariably arises. Many organisations acknowledge that their current legal documents register may not be comprehensive. The "fire safe" where these important documents are meant to reside may only contain documents with missing signatures. Especially if the originals have been retained in business areas and never submitted. Even if the fully signed original is in the fire safe, people tend to work off a readily available, unsigned electronic copy on faith that it represents the true content of the agreement as it is too hard to go and get access to the signed document. 

Legally binding 

Having a digitally signed, legally binding electronic record of contracts and other agreements allows these documents to be added directly to the corporate records system people use every day. This avoids the need for scanning and maintaining a separate hard copy legal documents register. It also ensures that everybody has direct access to the original signed document. 

Cost and paper reduction are usually what drives the business case for digital signature projects. Some research undertaken by AIIM recently found that close to 50% of document printing occurred purely to obtain a signature. 

For most organisations, reducing the cost of paper, printing consumables and postage by half would be a significant saving. Many organisations also have an ecologically driven mandate to meet paper reduction targets. 

There are also record-keeping benefits. Traditionally the implementation of an electronic file forced a decision between capturing outgoing mail as an electronic document without a signature or continuing to print a file copy, scan it and file it. A digitally signed electronic outgoing document provides the best of both approaches without any of the compromise. 

As people consider ways to avoid paper signing, they often initially experiment with placing images of signatures in documents but quickly realise this is quite risky as the signature can readily be applied to other documents. This often leads to a realisation that with the simplicity and affordability of high quality scanning and reproduction, traditional signatures have much less evidentiary value in a modern world than people imagine. 

Fortunately, highly secure methods for closing the signature gap are readily available, very simple and affordable. There are a range of electronic signatures options available, however PKI based digital signatures are the current gold standard for authenticity and reliability. 

Using the same internet standards that secure every online banking transaction, digital signatures provide objective authentication of identity and validation that the document has not been changed since signing. The signature cannot be forged or copied to another document. 

Digital signatures certainly meet the tests laid down in the Electronic Transactions Act (1999) for electronic signing. In keeping with recent technology trends, hosted or cloud based digital signature services are available. Hosted services provide an inexpensive and low risk way to get started with digital signing due to their demand based pricing models with little or no upfront expenditure. They also have durable value for signing workflows (like recruiting and contracting processes and customer forms) that include external parties. 

As with all hosted services you need to satisfy yourself about the reliability of the service, data sovereignty and privacy issues. On premise digital signature appliances enable digital signing directly within your usual desktop applications such as Microsoft Office; providing maximum convenience. Typically, these systems also provide batch automation to prevent writer's cramp when faced with large quantities of documents that require signing. 

As a hardware device that snaps into your network, they are a traditional capital purchase.

 The business case for an on premise solution is best suited to widespread adoption of digital signing across your organisation. Moving beyond traditional signing is something your organisation should be planning for. 

Digital signing will improve process, reduce wasted effort, improve governance and will generate demonstrable paper and cost savings.  

David Schulz is Market Manager Australia for Secured Signing for Documents, a division of TME Digital Signatures, the Australia/New Zealand reseller for CoSign digital signature solutions. Contact him at david@ securedsigning.com