When your hand gets rough signing papers— an e-signature saves the day!
According to a study conducted by Revitas in 2015, e-Signature transactions have grown from 89 million to 754 million in just five years.
Ever wondered why many people grow to love using e-signature compared to the usual signing process where we use pens and paper?
The reason for this is because of the list of benefits they get from using it. Aside from verifying documents, e-signatures are also helpful in maintaining a smooth signing process for many companies and organizations. They even help teams save time and energy, enabling turnaround time for administrative tasks to be shorter.
On top of that, e-signatures are also helpful in signing documents for personal agendas, such as real estate and other leasing documents. It would be safe to say that they are beneficial for many of our document needs– from personal to professional ones.
What is an E-Signature?
Indeed, e-signatures are very helpful in most document verification processes today. But how do they exactly work? Where do people specifically use them?
E-signature, also known as electronic signature, is used to legally get approval or consent from someone online. Many use it as a substitute for handwritten signatures (they’re like improved handwritten signatures). Unlike written signatures, e-signatures are created and generated online— it doesn’t have to be on paper.
There are many ways you can incorporate your e-signatures into your online documents. And here are some of them:
- Upload your signature as an image
This option is best if you want to take a photo of your handwritten signature and use it as your e-signature on documents that you’ll sign.
- Draw your signature using the cursor
Drawing your e-signature using your mouse or touchpad is also doable if you don’t prefer using images.
- Draw your signature using a stylus or finger
This one’s the easiest way to still have a personal touch on your signature! This method is doable if you use a touchscreen gadget while creating your e-signature.
- Type your signature
If you don’t want much work on signing the documents, you can just type your name as your signature and choose a font style.
Today, e-signatures are widely used in many industries such as Real Estate, Legal, Retail, Insurance, Finance, and other industries that use contracts or certificates.
E-signatures vs. Digital Signatures
Many people are usually confused with e-signatures and digital signatures, but these two are different. When you say e-signature, it’s a general term for any signature transmitted electronically. It doesn’t matter if the signature is digitally written or generated through electronic signing software. On the other hand, a digital signature is an e-signature with a more secure feature. Since digital signatures provide specific encryption called PKI, some organizations prefer using it than the usual e-signature.
Read More: Your Guide to Using E-signatures: Things That You Need to Know!
Why Are E-Signatures Important?
If you think that’s all with e-signatures, well it’s not! To add, here are a few more reasons why e-signatures are essential for your organization:
Cost-efficient
The first thing that you shouldn’t miss about using e-signature is that it helps in reducing business costs. Aside from saving you from the cost of using paper forms and printing documents, they also help save travel expenses. Since e-signatures allow you to sign documents online, you won’t have to travel to sign documents–as well as deliver documents for signature.
To sum up, e-signatures help you maximize your budget for more important things, such as business utilities.
Saves time and effort
With e-signatures, the usual time-consuming process of printing and signing documents can now be done in minutes. E-signatures allow the digitalization of the document verification process, meaning there’s no need to print lots of documents and sign them manually.
You can now have time for things that matter the most.
Environment-friendly
According to the Global Forest Resource Assessment, 80,000 to 160,000 trees are cut down every day worldwide with a high percentage used in the paper industry. And this deforestation has a massive impact on global climate change.
E-signatures help organizations verify documents without printing them on paper. Through digital tools such as e-signature, massive statistics of tree cutting can change leading to a lower rate of deforestation.
That is the reason why e-signatures are contributing to the implementation of an environment-friendly cause.
Pro Tip: Paperless transactions help us fight global warming! If you want to go green through paperless transactions. Use PlatoForms online PDF tool to save, sign, and process your documents online.
Secured
You can guarantee that e-signatures are protected and sealed against hackers through Public Key Infrastructure (these are a set of roles and policies that governs the issuance of digital certificates). Aside from that, e-signatures are also safe from data tampering since it keeps records of changes made in the document. If you are using e-signatures, you can easily notice whether your documents were tampered with or not.
Faster turnaround time
One thing that makes e-signatures important for many organizations is that it makes the turnaround time faster. Faster turnaround time for organizations also means productivity. With e-signature, you can send documents and ask for a signature 24/7 wherever you are, saving travel and waiting time. It also helps in avoiding time-consuming tasks such as printing and filing documents. On top of that, the signee can easily submit the signed documents without going to your office, making the turnaround time shorter, leading to fewer pending tasks.
Are E-Signatures Safe?
The safety of your documents matters more than anything else, so it’s important to check if the tools that store your data are safe.
When it comes to security, e-signatures are safer than ink signatures.
Let’s say someone wants to copy and forge your handwritten signature, they can simply copy it by hand or using devices. It makes your data and signature more vulnerable and unsafe. While if you are using e-signatures and someone tries to forge or copy your it, they need to access your computer and sign a certificate. For instance, it would be difficult for hackers to forge without noticing it.
What makes using e-signature safer is the Public Key Infrastructure mentioned above. Public Key Infrastructure or PKI is a standard used to provide the highest levels of security for digital certificates. It manages the issuance of digital certificates to protect users' sensitive data and unique identities.
You can guarantee that e-signatures are safe from data breaches and identity theft through PKI.
Submit your e-signatures on PDF forms online with PlatoForms
Want to start using e-signatures? PlatoForms is the perfect e-signature app for you.
PlatoForms is an online PDF tool that allows users to edit, submit, and complete PDF forms online. It provides versatile PDF tool features including e-signature that could help you create, generate, and submit e-signatures for documents. PlatoForms gives users the option to use an e-signature certificate, a certificate included in the e-signature that we send through forms.
Using e-signatures with our software is a no-brainer and doesn’t require much training.
