For the last eighteen months, we've all been affected by the pandemic, both personally and professionally. One of the biggest effects is that small businesses have struggled to operate as usual while competing with well-established enterprises. This, in turn, has affected their bottom line and led to the closure of millions of small businesses across the globe. On the other hand, a considerable section of small and medium-sized businesses are taking digital transformation seriously, as a way to keep their operations up and running.
The first step in operating as usual is to move all manual paperwork to a digital space with assisted workflows. The unavailability of physical workspaces to print, scan, and sign documents has forced many business owners to find an alternative solution. That's exactly where e-signatures come into the picture.
Hello, e-signatures!
E-signatures are an alternative to the traditional pen and paper way of signing documents. E-signature technology makes it easy to sign documents digitally or collect signatures from anyone, at any time. From closing sales deals to initiating real estate agreements, e-signatures play an important role in every business. The ease of electronic signatures results in faster document turnarounds and cuts down on printing, scanning, and mailing costs.
Where small businesses are adopting e-signatures:
Sales processes can directly determine the profit of a small business. Converting a lead into a customer involves not just time, but also paperwork such as quotes, invoices, proposals, and any other agreements. A sales team should be focused on following up with leads, rather than managing paperwork. E-signatures have been hugely beneficial for this reason.
Vendor agreements play a major role when a business owner is hiring a person for a specific service, delivery of goods, or installation. These agreements require proper documentation of basic details of both parties, roles, defined responsibilities, any warranties, and any other necessary details. Now, with the help of e-signatures, business owners can easily complete all of this paperwork remotely.
Real estate agreements are legal documents that contain both the parties physical signatures and seals made with ink. Buying a property involves an excess of paperwork, such as the sale deed, sales and purchase agreement, the building approval plan, and so on. It became difficult for both sellers and buyers to keep the agreement process on track during the pandemic. E-signatures make it so that real estate agreements can be done from anywhere, without any hassles.
HR processes usually take an enormous amount of time and involve signing many documents, including the call letter, offer letter, social media policy, and so on. Due to the pandemic, hiring someone to fill a vacant role has become much more difficult. On top of that, onboarding a candidate after hiring them involves a lot of steps. From sending the offer letter to the candidate to sending the employee agreement and policy documents, small firms have started leveraging e-signatures to streamline their processes.
In our interactions with customers in the last twelve months, we see that the above-mentioned use-cases have broadened the adoption of e-signatures by small businesses all over the world. Due to the ambiguous trajectory of COVID-19, electronic signatures have become the new normal for small businesses.
In our last two blogs, we shared our insights on how to choose an e-signature app for your business and why Zoho Sign is the best option.
Using Zoho Sign, you can now create templates and contracts, and have them signed from anywhere, at any time. You can sign up for a 14-day enterprise free trial here.
Want to learn more about the product? Reach out to us at support@zohosign.com.
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