Electronic money

Why Should I Use Electronic Signatures?

This is a rational question with rational answers, but not
everyone has the time or the tenacity to sit down and read the
Electronic Signatures In Global and National Commerce Act
(“ESIGN”), Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (“UETA”) or the
stacks of other regulations and guidance that make this
technology not only legal, but also stress the vital importance
of adopting electronic signature technologies.

Today the average American office worker consumes (12,000)
pieces of paper a year, with an average annual printing expense
per employee ranging from ($600-$2000). Storing paper and
retrieving stored paper is also quite costly. The U.S.
government estimates that (1 Lbs) of paper costs ($19) a year to
store and manage. At that rate, assuming your business stores
only (60%) of the paper printed by your employees, your business
is spending ($1,500) annually per employee on paper storage
alone.

There are obvious other costs associated with paper, for
example the costs associated with faxing, shipping, receiving
and time factors such as waiting for a job to finish printing or
waiting on a package to arrive. In the end all businesses feel
these costs, but most look at it as a fixed cost of doing
business. In reality this is a variable cost of doing business
based on old fashioned processes, and the United States
government along with virtually every other developed country
has passed legislation and regulations encouraging businesses to
change the way they do business today, and take advantage of new
legal and secure alternatives.

All businesses are looking for a competitive edge, and
electronic signature technologies can and will play a vital role
in helping businesses find and achieve this competitive edge.
Look at the simple cost savings your business can achieve by
eliminating some of the hard and soft costs mentioned above. (1)
Gigabyte (“GB”) of hard drive space costs ($.50), and this (1)
GB of storage will store (100,000) pages of single spaced text.
This is the equivalent of ($19,000) of storage savings,
($11,000) of printing savings, and countless savings on time and
miscellaneous expenses. Using electronic signature technologies
will allow your business to send the previously printed
materials securely and immediately to anyone anywhere in the
world. Once they receive the file the recipient can legally
electronically sign the file, which allows your business to act
immediately, and never wait for a package to arrive from the
client or prospect again.

This simple process will have wide ranging effects on your
business, and the businesses you work with. Sales and production
cycles will be shortened, employees will be more efficient, and
complying with strict federal and state guidelines will become
increasingly easier as your business processes move toward
electronic communications and storage.

In the end the decision is not whether to move to an electronic
format, but which format is right for your business. Some may
feel that electronic signatures are too expensive or complex to
implement into their business, but this is no longer the case.
There are several pay-as-you-go services on the market today
that will allow you to send files and capture secure and legal
electronic signatures regardless of your budget. For larger
corporations these pay-as-you-go services offer fast, affordable
convenience, and in many cases these services offer better
options and are easier to use than large and complex in-house
solutions.