9 Ways eSignature Drives ROI

Electronic signature lets organizations create, customize, send and sign agreements digitally and securely. With hundreds of millions of signatures sent digitally, we know that businesses love the speed and ease of e-signature, and so do their customers.

E-signature drives value for every stakeholder in the agreement process, including customers and employees across sales, HR, legal, and procurement teams. The ease and convenience of e-signature gives customers the connected, digital experiences they crave, while sales teams appreciate efficiency that accelerates the sales process. Compliance teams appreciate the unified, standardized processes that reduce the risk of lost or wrongly executed agreements.

Here are nine ways Docusign eSignature drives ROI and creates value for your business and customers.

1. Employee productivity

Agreements are everywhere, including sales contracts, offer letters, account openings, invoices and more. Docusign eSignature automates the manual steps involved in preparing contracts, chasing approvals and routing for signatures, creating a better experience for employees.

Docusign customers have experienced an average of 15 days faster contract turnaround time and 37 percent improvement in productivity with eSignature.  Sales teams can spend more time closing deals while contract professionals have more time to work on strategic projects.

Before implementing Docusign eSignature, executives at FineMark National Bank & Trust were seeking ways to simplify document generation, enable electronic signatures and offer a flexible way for clients to interact with the bank.

“We took onboarding new clients into our systems from a 12-hour process down to the click of a button,” said vice president Kim Wargo. “When you’re looking at 200 to 300 accounts per month, that’s a pretty high volume.”

2. Cost reduction

Docusign eSignature eliminates the costs associated with printing, sending and storing agreements, which adds up to an average $36 saved per agreement. It also eliminates hidden costs associated with human error and NIGO (not in good order) documents, which can cost up to 4X as much to process as contracts submitted correctly the first time.

One G2 Crowd reviewer said Docusign is saving his logistics and supply chain company $50,000 a year on courier costs alone.

“We operate in 95 countries. A simple intercompany agreement is a nightmare to track and costs say $100 per country to send and receive,” the customer said. “[Docusign] is a mega cost saver in any business and increases speed to conclude contracts.”

Organizations across a variety of industries are unlocking savings with eSignature. Industrial and environmental machinery supplier Flowserve, has saved $2,000 per contract and reduced legal fees by 40%. The South Carolina Department of Health has saved $4 million and eliminated 2.85 million paper documents per year by transitioning to eSignature, while the University of Texas saved $2.4 million by deploying the technology.

3. Revenue acceleration

Docusign eSignature removes the mistakes and frustrating manual experiences that can slow down sales. Closing contracts faster means recognizing revenue faster. With eSignature, up to 80% of agreements are completed in less than a day, and 44% in less than 15 minutes.

Choosing an e-signature solution that also includes the ability to collect payment during the signing process helps any organization move from contract to revenue faster.

Before adopting Docusign, San Francisco-based solar energy provider Sunrun asked a lot from its sales teams, who were tasked with checking off a number of boxes during contract completion.This complex process–which  included price quotes, service contract terms, financing options, installation approvals and more–became increasingly time consuming as Sunrun scaled.

The company chose Docusign eSignature to enable a more streamlined contracting process that was transparent to the customer and saved time getting contracts executed. 

“We want to be the guide to take the customer through a 25-year relationship,” says Suriya Gurumurthy, Sr. Director of CRM Engineering at Sunrun. “Docusign plays a critical role in that process.”

4. Customer experience  

If paperwork and contracts are too complicated or too time-intensive, people may not complete them. Any friction in the singing process is an opportunity for abandonment. This is true for potential customers, existing customers (retention/upsell/cross-sell), partners and vendors. According to commissioned research by Forrester, 32% of organizations report reduced completion rates and abandoned deals as a consequence of inefficient agreement processes. By reducing friction with eSignature, companies can increase document completion rate. For example, T-Mobile improved mobile signing completion rates by up to 20% with Docusign. An improvement of just a few percentage points in completion rate could translate to a significant increase in revenue, particularly in high-volume cases. 

Docusign eSignature allows your customers, employees and partners to complete agreements at any time, from practically anywhere on a wide variety of devices. Responsive signing functionality adapts document formatting to any device’s size and orientation, so customers don’t no need to pinch and zoom around a shrunken-down PDF to access documents.

5. Efficiency 

Stop wasting time asking for status updates and next steps on an agreement. Docusign eSignature allows anyone to track real-time updates about who has (and hasn’t) completed their part of the signing process.

If you’re sending the same document to a large number of recipients, you can save time and error associated with manually creating and sending separate documents to multiple recipients with bulk send functionality. Simply import a list of signers and each will receive a unique copy of the same form to sign.

By approving (or terminating) agreements faster, teams and organizations improve global visibility into business processes. That means less waiting and more time to act. By reducing the assets tied up in outstanding sales, payments and inventory negotiations, organizations can recognize revenue faster than ever.

6. Innovation speed

Adopting Docusign eSignature accelerates the rate of digital transformation across an entire organization. By moving away from manual signatures, teams are building the infrastructure necessary to assemble a cutting-edge technology stack. eSignature does more than just accelerate signature collection, it also integrates to hundreds of popular business tools and automates painstaking duplicative work. Digital processes increase connectivity among parts of an organization and give IT better control over the entire system of technology. By committing to this digital transformation, organizations reduce internal and external development cost as well as the opportunity cost of unrealized innovations.

7. Risk reduction

Data breaches are costly and email is one of the most vulnerable platforms for cyber attacks, yet 73% of employees have sent a contract via email. Digitally sending and signing agreements significantly reduces cyber risk and also reduces operational and supplier risk. Storing contracts digitally also reduces disaster recovery risk.  

Docusign eSignature meets some of the most stringent security certifications, is authorized at the FedRAMP Moderate Impact Level and has been granted a provisional Department of Defense (DoD) Impact Level 4 (IL4) authorization. For instance, eSignature offers multiple ways to verify a signer’s identity, like email addresses, SMS authentication, ID verification, one-time access codes and more. After a signature is completed, digital audit trails that follow Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) protocols are used to confirm a signature’s validity.

8. Compliance

Industry and government regulations put controls around commercial activities. Compliance with these guidelines has a significant impact on an organization’s bottom line and longevity. While compliance efforts can be costly, the risks of noncompliance are even more expensive. 

Executing documents and contracts with eSignature creates an automatic record of all actions taken on the document including time received, opened and signed. The identifying information of each signee is recorded at the time of signing, along with a confirmation that each signee agreed to provide an electronic signature. This documentation gives your organization a complete audit trail for compliance purposes. Maintaining compliance can take up hours of employee time across the company. By leveraging eSignature, and automating documentation, you can make the most of limited legal and compliance resources.

9. Environmental sustainability

Businesses that rely on manual, paper-based steps to complete agreements are needlessly wasting time, money and paper. Without eSignature, documents need to be printed, signed and scanned back. Completed documents either need to be stored or shredded. Signing electronically eliminates the need for printing, reducing paper usage and waste. The environmental impact adds up. Since 2003, Docusign and our customers together have saved:

• An estimated 66 billion sheets of paper.

• More than seven million trees

• More than 7 billion gallons of water

• More than 5.6 billion pounds of carbon dioxide.

Ready to start saving time, money and trees? Start your free 30 day free trial of Docusign eSignature.