(Originally published on Rocket Surgery)

An e-signature is a digital signature that can be used in various business transactions. E-signatures are already the standard in the tech industry, but they are increasingly the norm outside the digital world, and for the same reason that email took over from physical mail

If you’re not currently using e-signatures, you may be surprised to learn just how easy it is to upgrade

Here are the top five ways e-signatures can benefit your company.

1. E-signatures Save Money

E-signatures reduce costs by cutting down on the time and expense of printing and mailing or faxing. Outside of the direct costs of the paper, envelopes, postage, printer toner, notary public, etc., there’s also the staff time it takes to bring all of those together, track the document in transit—be it three floors up or across the country—and verify delivery and authenticity.

There are also numerous ancillary costs. Someone has to stock envelopes, for example, and printer ink. Printers and postage meters have to be purchased and maintained. And then there’s the space needed to store all that paper and the staff time necessary to index it for retrieval, or to find it and file it again at tax time.

And we haven’t even mentioned the cost of overnight delivery.

2. E-signatures Save Time & Reduce Paperwork

You had me at “reduce paperwork.”

One of the biggest challenges of handling paper documents is change management. Legal agreements in particular typically go through numerous rounds of edits. Most business people simply take it as a given that, during negotiations, every edit takes weeks to resolve, significantly slowing your time to market.

With e-signature, customers can sign and submit documents with a click or tap, wherever they are, on nearly any device. Since there are no physical documents to handle, you’re always certain that everyone is literally on the same page.

3. E-signatures Reduce Errors

One study found that a single error increased the cost of document management by a factor of four. Eliminating such errors not only eliminates the time necessary to resolve them, it reduces employee frustration and improves overall customer satisfaction.

With an e-signature platform, all the parties are working from the same central repository. Version control is a breeze. Changes can be viewed and approved in real time, eliminating the biggest source of error. And because the e-signature platform walks each signer through the document, there is much less chance for confusion or misinterpretation.

4. E-signatures are More Secure

A good e-signature platform will provide an auditable account of every step of the document execution process. Not only is there no question of whether a document was delivered, you know exactly when. You also when it was read.

Because information is encrypted, there’s little to no chance of your document being intercepted or viewed by unauthorized parties, which is definitely not true of paper. And with routing rules, you can also ensure that your document is read by the right parties in the right order.

Finally, because signatories have to prove their identity—such as by providing a password or other key—it’s actually much harder to forge an electronic signature than a “wet” one.

5. E-signatures Look Professional

It’s simply a fact that people judge based on appearances. That’s also true of your customers, suppliers, and partners. Moving off of paper and ink makes your business appear that much more savvy and professional.

If all of that is true, then why haven’t more companies switched? Many have. Those that remain are probably under the mistaken assumption that converting is hard. Call it inertia. On any given day, it seems more difficult to change, even to a process they know will be simpler in the long run.

Change doesn’t have to be hard.

It only takes two ingredients: the right solution and the right partner. Contact us today and let us show you just how easy it is to move your document management onto Zoho Sign.

Contact us today!