Better Together: Business Process Automation Tools and Digital Signatures

The adoption of secure digital signatures across industries like insurance, investments, staffing, and government drives business faster and makes life easier. It eliminates a lot of the frustration of chasing down people to sign off on legally-binding agreements.

There are a lot of stand-alone digital signature applications in the market, but many of them only solve part of the problem. Sure, they eliminate the hassle of having to print, sign, and scan a contract. But many sign-off requests still get stuck in people’s email inboxes or get overlooked or ignored.

When you use a business process automation (BPA) tool which can build smart, interactive forms, it makes it easy for approvers to sign off and approve. That means you’ll spend less time following up on business which should be closed, and more time generating new opportunities. Here are some ways you can build better digital forms which move the business forward and simplifies life for all involved.

Design Clear Forms Which Flow and Build Trust

Many contracts, invoices, and other agreements seem to be engineered as a defensive shield against liability, and not as the start of a beautiful relationship. There may be a signature block on the last page, and an initial field on each page, but the contracts get messy.

As contract terms are negotiated back and forth on a static contract, hand-written annotations and strike-throughs can make for messy paperwork. Smart form builders can help organizations to design forms based on existing, proven agreements. Mitigate the risk of version confusion and duplicating efforts and data.

Ensure the Integrity and Timeliness of Sign Offs

Although a wet ink signature was the de facto evidence of contracts for ages, a digital signature carries more safeguards that an agreement was approved by the authorized individual. Signing authorities can use their preferred laptop computer or mobile device to indicate their approval.

Do you remember those customers who often let your agreements sit on their desk or in their inbox for days or weeks on end? Schedule and trigger reminder notifications for sign-offs, without chasing down an end-of-the-quarter purchase or end-of-the-existing-contract renewal. If you are working with a B2B customer with multiple signing approvers, send out notifications to multiple individuals, or just those who are late to the party.

Simplify Contracts and Approvals

For companies in industries like technology, telecommunications, or staffing, there might be multiple agreements involved with customer engagement. In staffing in particular, organizations need to collect signatures before they contract work with a client, which includes terms and conditions as well as a worksite evaluation.

Staffing agencies have joint employment and co-employment opportunities, where their goal is to place people in temporary shifts to fill a client’s scheduling needs. This requires collaboration on sales contracts and timely completion of worksite evaluations. If terms and conditions are not centrally controlled, incorrect versions may be supplied to clients.
In addition, prospective clients become frustrated with time-consuming, manual back and forth on terms and conditions. Due to this reliance on manual processes, agencies also risk missing regular worksite evaluations, and have no way to consistently track completion across geographically dispersed teams.

BPA tools create efficiencies which free up your time and attention for other clients and opportunities. No more building each contract from scratch, doing redundant data entry, or watching your sales and renewals pursuits get stalled by communications bottlenecks. The right solution automates the generation, execution, and management of terms and conditions and worksite evaluations.

For more information about the advantages of integrated business process automation and secure digital signatures, try the demo here.