Need to get that contract executed today, but your VP is sitting in the airport heading to a conference?
The popularity of mobile devices like Apple’s iPad and iPhone make it easy to share contract documents anywhere, anytime so why not take it to the next step and use SmartSign Web to sign and close the deal?
The iPad holds the particular promise to accelerate the mass adoption of electronic signatures because it has the screen real estate to view the entire document. Imagine walking into your local bank to open an account and the bank employee hands you an iPad to affix your signature to the account application or the check signature card. Or when you are returning a vehicle off lease at the dealership, quickly go through the vehicle inspection and sign off right there with the iPad.
Contract modifications are another excellent opportunity to leverage mobile signing. Typically any change to an agreement or contract requires senior management approval and sign-off. These executives travel often, so why not allow them to access, review and execute documents in the airport, at the conference or in the hotel? With an iPad and SmartSign Web they can.
And going paperless isn’t just doing business faster at less cost, it can also have a big impact on your corporate image from both the environmental impact and heightened customer experience when they complete a transaction in a single process.
Best of all, SmartSign Web puts all this flexibility and power in your hands while protecting your business by ensuring compliance with the ESIGN electronic signature requirements. SmartSign Web’s secure and comprehensive audit trail maintains legal admissibility and enforceability of all your important business records. Now that is the best of both worlds.
The latest release of our premier electronic signature process management system, SmartSign Web, includes the ability to sign commonly used business documents created in popular Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint. This new capability also enables users to add scanned images and IBM Lotus Notes documents into SmartSign for electronic signature capture. New documents uploaded into the system are quickly converted into Adobe PDF for review and signature capture.
This new feature allows users to create custom documents and quickly add them to a transaction for signature. The SmartSign template designer’s easy to use drag-and-drop interface can still be utilized to mark up the documents for data collection and signature capture. These custom documents are automatically integrated with standard forms already managed by SmartSign and eCore, allowing more flexibility for complex business transactions that often require unique documents based on business rules.
This capability is not limited to the creation and send process, downstream participants of a transaction can also upload documents such as attachments in any of the new supported formats. These documents will also be dynamically converted to PDF and added to the transaction. For example, if a user must upload a scanned image of his drivers license. The scanned TIFF or GIF image can be uploaded directly into SmartSign. The user does not have to learn how to convert the scanned documents into PDF or perform any post-scanning process on the image.
Benefits
Leverage existing investment in familiar document creation tools
Quickly send out custom documents for signature
Increase employee productivity by eliminating document conversion and processing tasks
Speed time to close business transactions with streamlined business processes that eliminate paper distribution and handling
Improve security with tamper-evident seals on documents and the detailed audit trail
This is only one of the hundreds of new capabilities featured in the latest release of SmartSign and eCore. Check back here over the next few days as we share more of the features available; such as advanced configuration options, workflow automation tools, tighter integration with internal applications, and more!
It’s hard to believe that 10 years have already passed since President Clinton symbolically eSigned the E-SIGN Act. In that time the electronic signature industry has certainly grown and progressed a long way. The software and processes have greatly improved, mobile devices have evolved and changed the way business is done, and everyday more businesses are realizing the benefits of online automated processes. Without the E-SIGN Act who knows what direction the industry and e-commerce as a whole would have gone.
The E-SIGN Act not only made electronic signatures legal, it instilled confidence in businesses, and more importantly their general council, to leverage new and emerging technologies to help their businesses grow. In 2000 businesses were still struggling with the idea of how to handle online business transactions, e-commerce was still a somewhat new idea without much supportive legislation.
Over the past decade it’s become hard to imagine not having the ability to jump online to complete a transaction, purchase insurance, sign leasing agreements, etc. without the confidence that your documents will be correctly signed, secured, and managed. eOriginal is not only a proud pioneer of these technologies but we continue to forge ahead by enabling businesses to utilize other technologies such as multimedia signatures with voice authentication, bio-metric data, and hand-written signatures captured on pads to complete their online transactions. The value of electronic signatures and the E-SIGN Act and is proven by the success of our clients who have adopted our technologies to improve their processes such as:
A major leasing company that in several months shortened their customer acquisition from 5 days to 10 minutes.
One of the largest auto financers surpassed their target of 44% adoption and reached an 80% adoption rate within the first 12 months and can now complete a transaction in as little as 20 minutes.
An insurance provider that uses our patent-pending voice signature technology to not only complete a contract but also initiate payment in a single transaction.
Several of our clients have securitized more than $5 billion in econtracts using our systems for the secondary market
As impressive as these achievements have been in the last 10 years, the next decade has even more promise as business drive down costs, become greener, speed their processes and incorporate additional technology such as the latest generation Smart Phones and the iPad™ to create a better customer experience. So big thanks to the E-SIGN Act for kick-starting our industry.
In the upcoming June Aberdeen Research report that surveyed 441 firms, the research looked at the effect of using electronic signatures to shorten sales cycles. Higher performing companies that used electronic signatures in their sales and contracting process saw improvements implementing tools like those provided by eOriginal.
The year-over-year sales performance survey demonstrated that a significant percentage of respondents using electronic signatures to automate their processes had improved their customer renewal rate, reduced errors in the proposal process, and have shortened their sales cycles. The study shows what many of eOriginal’s clients have been experiencing since implementing our electronic signature software. As noted in the report, “sales teams adopting electronic signature technologies recognize this relatively straight-forward premise and as are yielding better business results as a consequence of their investment”.
For more information and reports provided by the Aberdeen Group, please visit their website www.aberdeen.com or call 617.854.5200
Wells Fargo Funding has approved eOriginal as an Authorized eSignature and eDelivery Vendor. eOriginal’s SmartSign Web can be used by brokers, real estate companies and correspondent lenders to manage borrower’s electronic disclosure statements. Using eOriginal’s eCore® platform, lenders can have borrowers electronically review, sign and return disclosure documents from the eOriginal hosted signature service or from eCore embedded within their own website. SmartSign Web® can be integrated with existing loan origination systems to automate the eDisclosure process. This ESIGN and UETA compliant delivery capability not only eliminates paper from the process, it speeds the closing cycle while eliminating costly rework and improving regulatory compliance.
Transitioning your document-centric business processes from paper to fully electronic is not ‘one size fits all’, which is why we chose to focus on providing more configuration options and work flow flexibility in our latest release. Based on feedback from the inaugural meeting of our User Group, the product team went to work adding new features requested by the users. The majority of requests centered on adding more configuration options for signers and dealing with ancillary documents within SmartSign Web. Below I’ve written about just a few of the 85 new features and enhancements available in the 6.6 release coming this May!
Wet-Ink Signed Documents – Many of our customer’s transactions contain multiple documents that require signature, and sometimes there are regulatory, risk, or government agency requirements to submit a paper document with written signatures on one or more of those documents. SmartSign Web now allows you to flag a document or documents for wet-ink signature in the electronic transaction. The signer will be prompted to print and sign the document and you can provide additional instructions on where to send the paper signed documents. All other documents will be electronically signed and protected in the Trusted Repository. Additionally, SmartSign Web will record the user’s print action in the audit trail of each wet-ink signed document.
Signer Attached Documents – Many times there are ancillary, or supplementary documents needed from the signer in order to continue a business process – beyond simply the capture of signatures. Now you can configure SmartSign Web to prompt your signers to upload scanned documents into the package. Uploaded documents may be flagged as required or optional, depending on your business process. Uploaded documents are automatically added to the electronic transaction and stored in the Trusted Repository alongside the electronically signed documents.
New Signature Collection Modes – SmartSign Web now offers you the ability to configure the method in which signers enter their signatures in the signing room. The familiar all-in-one mode allows the signer to enter multiple signatures in a single collection form, which is great for internal or repeat signers that want to quickly complete the process. The new interactive collection mode requires your signer to click on “sign here” blocks within each document to enter their signature. The interactive collection mode also enables you to turn on (or off) a quick navigation feature that allows the signers to easily navigate between signature blocks and initial areas. SmartSign Web remembers the signers typed signature, uploaded image signature, or written signature from a signing pad as the user navigates between the signature areas.
Contact our support team or a sales representative to learn more about these exciting features or for a personalized demonstration.
Saving time, automating processes, and shortening sales cycles have always been a key component of competitive business. Everyone is always looking for another way streamline the lead to win process, and technology has and will always be instrumental to the process. eOriginal SmartSign Web® is designed to fill the gap allowing businesses to complete straight-through single session processing that allows you to close more deals faster by shortening the time and limiting the resources it takes to get your contracts signed.
Here are 5 benefits created by eOriginal’s SmartSign Web integration and workflow improvement capabilities.
Multiple Integration Options – SmartSign Web is designed to be flexible and integrate with your current systems. Multiple integration capabilities from a zero integration out-of-the-box solution to a fully embedded option with automated workflows allow SmartSign Web® to conform to your business needs and processes, not the other way around.
Data Gather and Data Merge – information (address, birth date, customer ID, etc.) can be collected at the beginning of a signing session and mapped throughout multiple forms, saving you and your customers’ valuable time when executing contacts.
Document Template Library – commonly used documents are set up once with signature block and data fields mapped and saved within our system. No longer will your sales reps need to re-create the same transaction over and over. Just pull up your transaction type in the template library to send and get eSigned.
Fast Delivery – all that needs to be sent is a quick email providing a link to access the documents and log-in information inviting your customers to digitally sign your contracts.
Extensive Suite Of APIs – eOriginal offers the most complete package of web service calls to help streamline everything from document set-up and upload to email notifications. Our previously mentioned integration options and APIs can complement your current systems (LOS, CRM, CMS, etc) to streamline your operations, saving time and generating more revenue with fewer resources.
Additional information can be found on eOriginal’s website. For more information about how SmartSign Web® can help your business, contact us or call 410-625-7699.
Most people think a digital signature is the application of an electronic representation of a signature to a document. In fact, a digital signature involves a formal process of utilizing a digital certificate issued by a Certificate Authority (e.g. VeriSign, GoDaddy, Comodo) that uses public key cryptography to create a unique representation of a message or document. SmartSign incorporates both electronic signatures and digital signatures to simplify the capture across multiple channels such as web, mobile, point of sale, and others.
While capturing and applying a digital signature to a document is an important aspect of approvals, authorizations, and originations, it is just the start of your electronic document’s life cycle. The entire business workflow for the signature process, including prepping your documents for signature, sending them out to your signer(s), and capturing the required signatures and data is the crux of eOriginal SmartSign®. SmartSign ensures your organization can easily and rapidly conform to the UETA and ESIGN legislation to make all of your electronic signing processes legal and secure.
Using SmartSign your documents are encrypted and tamper sealed within the trusted repository to maintain, legal admissibility and enforceability throughout the documents lifecycle.
Signing Using Adobe® Signature Format
Documents signed with SmartSign – whether using the web interface or submitted via our web services – are guaranteed to conform to the signature format supported by Adobe Acrobat®. Signatures are inserted into the exact location within the PDF document and bound to the content using a digital signature. The digital signature is generated using a certificate unique to your organization. The documents are automatically encrypted and deposited in the trusted repository.
Signing Using Multimedia Signatures
eOriginal SmartSign® extends the Adobe Signature Format to include the use of multimedia signatures. Now you can extend the signature capture experience beyond the web, to capture a users’ approval or consent using a fingerprint device or voice recording. SmartSign securely binds the multimedia signature to the content of any agreement, and can automatically detect any change to the source document or multimedia file.
Multimedia signature support is actually an extension of our current visual signature representations and can be used together with any other signature appearance supported by SmartSign. The multimedia signature information is also securely stored and encrypted within the integrated trusted repository.
Retrieving And Verifying Signature Information
eOriginal allows your authorized users to obtain detailed information about each signature applied to a document without retrieving the document itself, from any location at any time. Signature information can be retrieved through the published web services, using the eCore Command Center web application, or attached to an automated email notification.
The available digital signature information includes: the name of the exact signature location, the time the signature was applied, the signer’s reason for signing, location/IP address of the signer, the Certificate Authority that issued the signature’s certificate, along with any raw multimedia data stored with the signature.
Business System Digitial Signature Checking
All documents signed using the SmartSign signature process are passed through a rigorous verification process prior to deposit in the trusted repository. When a document is presented to the repository it must pass through our multi-step signature verification and validation process. This process includes the following steps:
There must be at least one digital signature present within the document.
The digital signature is verified against the content of the document, to ensure none of the content has been altered since the signature was applied.
If there are multiple signatures applied to the document, the most recent signature much match the content of the previously stored document revision.
The digital certificate used to sign the document must be within the certificate’s validity period at the time of acceptance within the trusted repository.
The certificate will be verified as valid against the issuing Certificate Authority’s revocation list.
Only after passing this verification process, will the document be tamper sealed and deposited into the trusted repository.
The steps and processes outlined above make eOriginal’s end-to-end electronic signature solution the most robust and secure solution on the market, customizable to fit almost any business need and workflow process. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or leave a few comments.
eOriginal SmartSign® has the most comprehensive digital signing process on the market however there is a great deal more to securing your digitally signed business agreements.
A digital signature can be legally binding but that is only the first component of creating a digital asset whose value must be protected in accordance with business practices and compliance with legal and regulatory statutes appropriate to the industry in which the asset will reside.
The total digital asset consists of the digital signature, the digital document to which it is associated, and how they are bound in combination to certify them as a “unique” electronic original document. Life cycle management processes that dictate their access permission, transfer rights, and a legally admissible audit trail that tracks these processes are all also included in creating a digital asset.
These “back-end” processes have important legal, business continuity and regulatory implications that become critical if the digital asset is to retain its commercial value as an electronic transaction. This is of even greater importance when it will serve as chattel or likely to be transferred on a rights basis or by location.
This is why lightweight offerings, particularly pure-play signing tools, don’t provide the full set of features such as a unique authoritative copy or the back-end functionality for life cycle management and audit trails needed to create a true digital asset. So, the obligations for development, integration, compliance and liability are placed on the client.
This is why eOriginal has placed equal emphasis on perfecting and integrating both the front-end signature process and the back-end life cycle management process. The architectural requirements to seamlessly execute these components, while meeting every regulatory statute that governs these processes, is significant and the basis for many of our patents in this field.
So by its nature, eOriginal’s SmartSign has to be more robust than even comprehensive electronic content management or document management offerings while playing nicely with them by complementing their functionality and compliance to provide a better overall system for digital assets.
eOriginal is the only esignature provider that has been certified by top ratings agencies for securitization. And, while this securitization capability is not necessary for every electronic transaction, the underlying functionality that earned such a rating is very relevant to serious businesses.
Accompanying the recent feature updates we have made to SmartSign we have also added a few really great improvements to eCore. The eOriginal eCore® platform is already the most complete and secure document repository in the industry. eCore is the hub of our electronic signing solution. It allows our customers to control and track access, status, and retention policies of eSigned documents providing the most protection and complying with most strict regulatory standards.
Along with the recent enhancements we made to SmartSign our electronic signature solution, the updates we have made to eCore are all part of continued effort to provide our customers the most complete end to end eSigning solution. So to provide you with a better picture of how we are doing this, we wanted to provide you with a list of a few new changes.
Enhanced document watermark options to allow you to apply blackout settings to text fields, change the color of signature and text obscure blocks, and add custom text/labels to obscure blocks.
Extended document retention policies to allow multiple retention rules based on status.
Extended the document versioning policies to allow you to retain all versions, signature versions, executable and signature versions, executable and last signature version, or only the latest version.
Added new Document Library, which enables you to upload source documents and signature templates to auto-load and prepare documents for signature when adding a document profile to a transaction.
Added new Transaction Types. Enables you to define a template for transactions. All transactions created from this template will inherit the same initial set of documents, status values and permission sets. When combined with our new Document Library feature, Transaction Types enable you to create a transaction, auto-load documents and prepare them for signature in a single step.
These updates only highlight a few of the changes we have made over the last few weeks to make eCore even more robust and user friendly. We are dedicated to continually developing solutions that will easily integrate and complement your existing business processes and systems, so keep an eye out for even more developments in the coming new year and please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask any questions about how we may be able to help your business.
Nissan Motor Acceptance Corporation (NMAC), including its Infiniti Financial Services (IFS) division, is the automotive... Read Our Featured Success Stories ›
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