Digital Signatures: The Solution for the Paperless Office
Posted on Fri, Jul 30, 2010
With budget reductions affecting most businesses, there is an urgent need to improve efficiency and reduce costs. One of the easiest areas to reduce costs is those associated with printing countless documents that usually have to be scanned at a later date.
The slow rollout of digital signatures—despite laws clearly establishing their parity with wet signatures—exemplifies the inefficiencies still plaguing the digital world. E-signatures are a key step in executing a document management strategy. "With an e-signature, a document can be turned around in minutes not days." No matter how good the rest of the online experience is, “anytime you need an ink signature you trip yourself up by falling into the paper mode.” Nicole Kealey, Adobe
When people think of a paperless office, they usually focus on how to store documents in a digital form. This is important, but it misses the real point of going paperless. The real benefit comes from creating documents in way that they are digital for the entire lifetime. Once a document gets printed out, you’ve broken the paperless life cycle.
THE GREEN BOTTOM LINE
Going green is almost synonymous with going paperless. By shedding paper a business can reduce the enormous environmental and business costs associated with paper’s creation, transport and disposal. However, kicking the paper habit will not be easy. Consumers’ hearts are in the right place, but if the paperless process is inconvenient or confusing most are not going to switch. It’s up to businesses to create a digital environment that consumers want to join because it is superior to their current paper-based environment. Some institutions are already working toward this goal by more fully automating back-end processes and making better use of digital signatures.
Despite the myriad challenges faced by large institutions in today’s economic climate, it might just prove to be a perfect time for small- and medium-sized institutions to focus on green initiatives and grab market share from their competitors who have put these inniatives on the back burner. It’s an opportunity to innovate and help the environment.