Posted on Fri, Jul 23, 2010
Does it seem like the cost of a postage stamp just went up? That’s because it did: Last year, the Postal Service last increased the price of a first-class stamp to 44 cents, up from 42 cents in 2009. Yesterday the Postal Service met to discuss a new rate increase and they have agreed that it’s time to increase rates once again. Technically, the law prohibits a price increase that’s greater than the rate of inflation, which for the last year has been 0.9 percent. But under “unusual circumstances,” the Postal Service can sidestep the law and increase postage rates by more, which is what they plan on doing.
Why is the post office increasing rates greater than the rate of inflation? “The Postal Service faces a serious risk of financial insolvency,” postal vice president Stephen M. Kearney said. The post office lost $3.8 billion last year, despite cutting 40,000 full-time positions and making other reductions, and Kearney said it is facing a $7 billion loss for this year and the same for fiscal 2011, which begins in October. The rate increase would bring in $2.5 billion, meaning there still would be a large loss for next year.
How Much and When Rates Will Increase
5% Increase. A first-class stamp will go up 2 cent from 44 to 46 cents. While your average letter will be going up a few cents, everything else is increasing as well. Priority mail, express mail, addtional first class postage, media mail, and so on. Across the board, most services will see about a 5% increase. One noticeable increase comes to the mailing of periodicals. Those mailings are slated to see a whopping 8% increase. The new rates still need to be approved, but with almost certainty they will be, and then the new rates will take effect on January 2, 2011.
How This Will Affect You
It effects you whether print or email! You don’t send letters and use email instead, you pay all of your bills online, and the increase won’t really matter to you. It’s true that an extra two cents for a stamp isn’t going to break the bank for most people who only mail a handful of items a year, but these postage increases don’t stop there and even if you don’t mail anything these days you may still feel the pinch.
Think about the companies that rely on the postal service to ship their products and communications to consumers. What does a 5% increase in postage mean to a company that already spends tens of millions of dollars a year on postage?
Just one example - Netflix. Their core business model resolves around sending you movies in the mail. In fact, media mail, which Netflix mailings fall under, is slated to get a 7% increase. This would end up costing Netflix upwards of $50 million more on shipping costs in 2011. That’s on top of the already hundreds of millions being spent on shipping.
- What About Less Service?
Five-day delivery. Despite lower mail volumes and reduced revenues, the USPS network must support an additional one to two million new addresses each year. In order to maintain universal mail delivery, the USPS would like to eliminate in-home delivery on Saturday (the lowest volume day). Such a move would require Congressional action.
How To Protect Your Company & Budget?
Digital signatures can help reduce 50% of your paper based, mailed contracts, forms and business communications. These signature required documents will move faster both internally and externally to speed the velocity of business!
Posted on Wed, Jul 21, 2010
Digital signatures are quickly replacing handwritten signatures in organizations from many different industries. Professionals in industries such as the health care, real estate, financial, insurance & government agencies understand that time is money and every minute spent waiting for a signature can cost valuable revenue. A manual process can add days to a transaction and require costly resources to complete.
There has been a great interest within several industries for utilizing digital signatures to improve efficiency all while reducing costs, saving time, eliminating delays and better serving customers.
There are many companies that provide electronic signature forms, but not all services are standardized. Below are 10 important factors to consider when choosing a Digital Signature
Solution (electronic signature) for your organization.
1. Hosted Digital Signature
2. 3 in 1 Registration, Certificate & Time Stamp Authority
3. Real Time Independent Identity Authentication
4. Broadly Trusted Signature by Adobe & Microsoft
5. Non-Repudiation
6. Portable
7. Independent
8. Hardware-Based Encryption - FIPS Level 3
9. Patented Protection of Signing Credentials
10. Enterprise Application Integration
SIGNiX has the XFactor solution which offers the security and comfort of superior non-repudiation – meaning that a party in a dispute cannot refute the integrity of a digitally signed document. Digital signatures are based on public key cryptography which allows you to know, without question, if a document has been modified.
Posted on Fri, Jul 16, 2010
When going paperless, the true commitment needs to come from the top. If the principals of the company aren't serious about wanting to become proficient in digital, it's not going to happen.
One point most businesses overlook when discussing digital signature solutions, is the reality of budgets and the understanding of how going paperless can really add to a businesses return on investment. Although we are seeing more and more of a shift these days businesses are typically only getting 1/4 of the budget they used to get. Going paperless can help add more money to other budget items while increasing efficiency.
From real estate offices to health care professionals, and insurance to education, all these industries can directly benefit from going digital. Digital signatures use a form of encryption technology called Public Key Infrastructure, or PKI. Each user has a pair of keys, one public and one private. When a person sends a document, a digital signature is generated from the private key. Then the recipient “authenticates” that signature by running a verification on the document, using the public key to ensure that the two pairs of keys click together to get validated. And when this is all completed the signature and document are forever all in one, not separated anytime, like other solutions.
Different industries have different needs as do different departments. Departmental solutions are available to address human resources, customer service, and many others. Discover how your organization can benefit from a digital signature solution, and how each department within the company can optimize business communications that require signatures.
 |
Free Report: Digital Signatures vs e-Signatures. Which is best for your company? Download it now.
|
Posted on Thu, Jul 15, 2010
The green businesses movement has certainly taken hold over the last decade. Until recently taking an operation wholly or partially paperless has met with varying degrees of success. many high By going paperless a business at least in part can join the going green effort and reduce costs.
A business can save massive amounts of paper through electronic documentation. Energy savings are just as important and can be found by minimizing the use of print and copy machines. Supporting the green movement helps the environment and shows clients that your business cares about affecting it in a positive way.
Traditionally businesses have spent countless dollars time and space maintaining paper business records. Recently more and more business owners have cut costs and improved their operational efficiency by going paperless. If this is something you've considered you may want to look into ways to incorporate digital signature technology to further reduce paper waste.
By using esignature software or digital signatures you can now know that the documents you electronically sign are trustworthy and are an authenticated paperless transaction. Digital signatures are inserted into the document and easily travel electronically to their destination assuring the sender the signee data integrity and overall trust. Digital signature solutions can be seamlessly integrated with any business application without needing to change the existing workflow.
Benefits
* Signer Authenticity
* Reduced Processing Time
* Reduced Operational Costs
* Security and Confidentiality for Documents and Data
* Enhanced Process Efficiency and Optimization
* Speedy Decision-making and Approval Process
* Non-repudiation and Integrity
Digital signature software can now meet the demands of large transaction-driven businesses that currently rely on manual or semi-automated financial and operational signing processes. Whether the signing processes are performed on a daily weekly monthly or yearly basis digital signatures can now be trusted.
Until now standard e-signature solutions have focused on low risk transactions and low volume applications. The next-generation solution delivers significant value to companies by allowing business critical applications involving important legal and financial transactions to be digitally signed as part of a fully automated electronic process.
Posted on Mon, Jun 28, 2010
Organizations are adopting tools that are affordable, and yet faster and simpler than traditional ones. This ‘cost-effective’ business approach is at the core of growing paperless environment. As we move ahead, paperless procedures will become much more broad in their scope.
Nearly all industries are adopting digital signatures in one way or the other. From external communications to internal communications, digitally signed electronic documents have changed the way communications take place. Faster, simpler, yet secure and confidential, these communications have ignited the competition amongst businesses like never before. Digital signature software providers are customizing their products to meet the various requirements of different industries to serve their customers more efficiently and effectively.
Digital signatures are a tool to garner customers' confidence and support. At the core of this is is the legal validity of digital signatures. From banking transactions to medial records, and from online loan applications to tendering, digital signatures have the the ability to transform hectic business processes into simpler, less wasteful ones.The legal validity of digital signatures and the tools for securing the integrity of the digitally signed documents is fueling the acceptance of digital signatures in various industries. This legal validity is helping not only the end users, but also organizations to reach out to larger customer bases with innovation and simplicity.
The legal validity to digital signatures has changed the landscape of e-commerce globally. Some of the more popular applications are: e-banking, e-tendering, and e-procurement, e-approvals, and many other applications. e-Commerce is reaching new milestones everyday with the help of legally valid digital signatures. While assuring authentication and non-repudiation, digital signature technology maintains integrity and confidentiality of digitally signed electronic documents.
Several countries have laws that assign legal validity to digital signatures. Along with the security aspects, digital signatures also help businesses go paperless and be more efficient while saving on expenses associated with a "wet-signature" operation.
Some of the digital/electronic signature laws and regulations across the world put in place to encourage e-transactions:
* ESIGN Act (Electronic Signature in Global and National Commerce Act)
* UETA (Uniform Electronic Commerce Act)
* GPEA (Government Paperwork Elimination Act)
* EU law (EU Directive for Electronic Signatures)
* US DoD JITC (Joint Interoperability Test Command)
* Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
* SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act)
* 21 CFR Part 11
* Indian IT Act 2000
Worldwide legislation regarding this technology has fueled it's acceptance in every possible business, from banking to insurance, and from health care to retail, the common consensus is moving towards digitally signed electronic documents, saving time, money, and paper.
Posted on Wed, Jun 16, 2010
For a limited time, SIGNiX is sponsoring access to the new Aberdeen Report: Optimizing Lead-To-Win: Shrinking the Sales Cycle and Focusing Closers on Sealing More Deals.
Below are a few statistics from the report:
- Best-in-Class companies report an average lead conversion rate of 44%, compared to 26% for Industry Average and 11% for Laggards.
- Sales cycles for Best-in-Class companies shrunk by more than 8%, year over year, while Average and Laggard firms saw their cycles lengthen by 1.3% and 6.7%
- Best-in-Class companies boast an average 9% year-over-year increase in proposal/RFP volume, as compared to a 7% decrease among Laggards.
Find out how you can achieve Best-in-Class results. Get Your Complimentary Copy Today.
(This $399 Value Offer Expires 7/30/2010)
Get Your Copy Here Now
Posted on Wed, Jun 16, 2010
SIGNiX is pleased to announce the launch of its new website at www.signix.com to serve the digital signature marketplace. The new look and feel now matches with the industry leading digital signature solutions offered by SIGNiX.
The new site offers the first of many educational resources such as:
A complimentary Aberdeen Report on Shrinking the Sales Cycle.
A whitepaper about Digital Signatures vs. Electronic Signatures and which is best for your company.
A Podcast with IBM about Digital Documents and Digital Signatures
And even some fun with a contest to win free music from Rhapsody.
Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to stay up to date on the latest news and resources.