According to statistics, it is estimated that the average worker in a company uses about ten thousand sheets of paper per year. The cost of usage, filing, and storing these papers is significantly higher than the actual price of purchasing the paper. What does this mean? It is simple; it means organizations are spending a lot of money on paper consumption every year.
As a fact, organizations spend over $8 billion per annum in the management of papers. Now, this is significantly huge! So, how are these sheets of paper used? Studies show that over 51% of documents that office workers print on paper are for signature purposes.
This means that if organizations invest in a digital signature technology, there will be a saving of over $4 billion in papers per year. Looking at this figure, it may be time for organizations to start thinking seriously about paper usage and consider moving digital to save significantly on their expenses.
Without a doubt, cutting down on unnecessary costs is one of the best ways of improving business efficiency. Swapping traditional pen and paper signatures for eSign are one of the effective ways to cut these costs. eSign works on any kind of documents, including Word, Excel, PDF, PowerPoint, and more. You can learn more on how to eSign PDF.
Overview of a Paper-based Organization
Organizations run on paper. With so much to print and share; from quarterly reports to contracts and faxes, paper documentation is the lifeline of any work environment from time immemorial. However, with advancements in technology, things have significantly changed.
To remain competitive in any industry, an organization must change with the trends and implement more productive ways of doing things by embracing technologies. To start with, a paper-based environment makes the workplace inefficient. Studies show that an average worker spends about four hours weekly on paper-related tasks.
Apart from the waste of time, a paper-based workplace is also more expensive to sustain. Organizations spend money on reams of paper, ink, filing cabinets, maintenance, and many more. Additionally, it costs a lot to track down lost documents, and in the end; you may have to replace them, which requires another set of printing.
This means that the paper-based work environment is expensive to operate, environmentally destructive, and very inefficient. To improve on these, organizations need to embrace the digital way of doing things. This is where eSign technology comes very effective.
Advantages of eSign Technology
The advantages of eSign technology are very obvious. Organization saves money and time, provides customer satisfaction and peace of mind, and improves data security. These are the obvious benefits but there are more. Here are some other benefits of eSign technology that make it the best method for getting things done.
- Streamline Projects and Tasks
Rather than have to dig around for a document from a stack of papers in your cabinet, you can easily access documents when you embrace a paperless solution. You can develop a document online and get it signed without any delay. The fact that you can easily repeat and replicate the process within minutes also makes it a preferred option for effective business operations.
For instance, instead of printing and sending invoices to clients, you can create the invoice online and send it to the client to be digitally signed. This means you can get the documents within minutes or a few hours and the implication of this is faster sales.
- Significant Reduction in the Cost of Paper, Ink, Toner, and Maintenance
The maintenance of a paper-based organization is very expensive and this ultimately affects productivity and revenue due to inefficiencies. So, instead of printing documents to be signed, you can send them electronically to be signed and when they are sent back, you can store them in the cloud. This streamlines the filing processes and saves money and time.
- Improves Accountability and Security
According to the survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute, about 71% of professionals in the field of IT reported different incidents of misplaced or loss of confidential or sensitive paper documents. About 53% reported that the loss or misplacement is due to employees leaving the documents in meeting rooms, communal printers, and outside of the office.
With the growth in data breach potential, organizations must pay attention to how they securely file and store confidential documents. With eSign technology, the printing of paper documents is eliminated, thereby removing the possibility of leaving sensitive documents lying around.
- Easy to Track and Share
One of the most important components of running an enterprise is information sharing. With the use of a paperless solution, it becomes easier for stakeholders to share and access documents whenever and wherever. You can share documents with anybody from any part of the world to eSign and you can receive documents from anywhere in the world.
There is no need for a convergence of executives to sign a document. All that is required is to develop and share the same electronically and everyone can access, append their signature digitally, and resend the document to the owner. eSign makes it easy to audit documents.
- Improves Customer Confidence
Without incidences of data breaches, customers develop more confidence in a business and would want to repeat transactions with such. Reports show that organizations lose customers due to data breaches and this often results in loss of revenue. With a paperless eSign solution, consumers’ confidence is boosted, knowing that their data is safe, secure, and easily accessible.
Conclusion
Electronic signatures are changing the way businesses function daily. Businesses that use eSignature technology make their operations more cost-effective, time-efficient, and agile, which makes it easier to create a seamless customer experience. Any organization in any industry, irrespective of the size can switch to the paperless eSignature solution. If your business use documents, contracts, agreements, and forms, you can save a ton of money when you ditch the paper-based work environment for a more effective paperless technology.
