Six ways e-signatures improve productivity and streamline workflows

Investing in the tools that will help you and your employees do your best work is a no-brainer way to enhance the overall performance of your business. By removing roadblocks, smoothing processes and automating manual tasks, the right tools will streamline workflows, improve the employee and customer experience, and — since more work is getting done — boost revenue to boot.

Electronic signatures are one such tool that can help increase productivity across your organisation. Here are six ways they do it.

1. Creating and sending documents is quicker and easier

E-signature templates accelerate the preparation of common contracts and forms, such as:  

• Lease agreements
• Nondisclosure agreements
• Sales contracts
• Offer letters
• W-4 
• I-9 

If you often send the same form, you can save key pieces of information into templates for later use, while a “bulk send” option means you no longer have to create multiple versions of a document. 

Another nifty time-saving feature of e-signature software is that you can set it up to automatically request sign-off from people in a specific order. For example, with legal approvals or statements of work. 

To learn more as to why your business should choose eSignature, you can download DocuSign’s whitepaper here.

2. Faster turnaround times

Capturing signatures in a timely manner is the top challenge organisations face when trying to complete agreements, according to a 2021 report by DocuSign. 

E-signatures cut out the need for recipients to go through the palaver of downloading, printing, signing and returning hard copies of contracts and forms, so you’ll likely get them back a lot faster. In fact, DocuSign reports an average 80% reduction in turnaround time, with 82% of agreements signed in one day and 44% in less than 15 minutes. 

If someone is taking their time to sign something, customisable notifications can help speed things along by sending out automated reminders that an action is required.

3. Fewer errors, hiccups and hold-ups

Having to re-work agreements due to errors is the top challenge for organisations with a manual agreements process, Forrester research commissioned by DocuSign has found. And then there’s the time-wasting hurdle of having to chase missing information when contracts and forms aren’t filled out properly.

E-signatures reduce the risk of error via templates and auto-fill functions, and eliminate the possibility of missing information by walking people through the fields you need completed. 

4. See who needs a nudge

E-signatures give you real-time visibility over the status of your document, so you can see who’s signed and who hasn’t. 

Knowing who to nudge (and when) will help you and your team keep the process on schedule. 

5. Sign forms on the go

You no longer have to be chained to your desk to get work done, and a lot of tasks these days are completed on the go. This is especially so in the era of remote and hybrid working, which allows employees much more flexibility around when and where they work.

E-signature mobile apps provide a simple and convenient way to send, sign and return documents using virtually any handheld device, while real-time push notifications help ensure they’re signed on time.

This handy feature makes it so much easier to complete important contracts and forms, including: 

• Healthcare patient onboarding forms
• Rental applications 
• Sales agreements.

6. System-to-system integration

Integrating e-signatures with your favourite productivity tools – such as Zoom, Salesforce, Quickbooks, and Microsoft Teams and Outlook – makes for seriously streamlined work. 

Talk through and sign contracts in video meetings, collaborate and get sign-off with ease, and automatically populate forms with existing data from other platforms to minimise errors. All of this is possible, thanks to clever connectivity between different apps and systems.  

The core purpose of any good tech solution is to liberate users from tedious manual tasks and to empower us to work faster and smarter. Having the right tools in place makes life a lot easier, and that spells better outcomes for your employees, your customers and your business. 

Read now: Four benefits of integrating e-signature with the tools you use every day