Identity verification and the ability to produce strong evidentiary support of user authentication are cornerstones for any electronic transaction, particularly transactions that include remote signers or in-person signature sessions. Consumers are increasingly using popular video chat and voice over IP (VOIP) technologies to communicate with family and friends. So why not leverage those capabilities to strengthen the evidentiary capabilities and enforceability of your on-line transactions? With SmartSign Web you can do just that.

Most consumer computers, laptops and tablets are equipped with a microphone, webcam, fingerprint reader and/or camera. These built-in technologies can easily be utilized to capture the voice statements or a photograph of the signer interacting with the application. This biometric data is transmitted back to the SmartSign Web processing server, where it is secured to the documents being executed by the signer and becomes part of the transaction package. Adding a biometric element to the transaction augments other methods of identity verification, such as an email with embedded link, security codes, out-of-band authentication with one time PIN (OTP) or a comprehensive identity screening using various levels of “out of wallet” questions, all of which are enabled by SmartSign Web. These features compliment the strength of the eOriginal secure audit trail and chain of evidence tracking the actions taken within a transaction.

The documents, electronic signatures and biometric evidence are all safely managed within the eOriginal trusted repository or eVault. The eOriginal Command Center user administration application allows authorized users to easily retrieve all the documents and this additional related evidentiary data, whether it is for submission into court in support of the enforceability of the agreements or simply to help mediate a contract obligation dispute. Frequently, just being able to demonstrate the ability to produce such a depth of transactional evidence is enough to avoid the time and effort needed to respond to unfounded or frivolous contract challenges and lawsuits.

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SmartSign Web enables you to allow signers to choose their preference for creating an electronic signature.  By default, SmartSign Web requests participants sign only with your organizationally defined signature capture method.  A simple click on our Signature Appearance administration page will open up a variety of options for your customers.  Signers can then elect to capture their electronic signature as typed text, drawn with a stylus, finger or mouse, or uploaded as a scanned image of their hand written signature. Empowering your signers to take increased ownership of the signing experience helps foster adoption and acceptance across your entire customer community.

SmartSign Web also provides the ability to dynamically optimize the signature capture method on SmartPhones and tablets – without any effort by the signer. On the same Signature Appearance administration page just check the ‘optimize for mobile collection’ option and SmartSign Web will dynamically switch to a Draw It mode allowing signers to sign their documents by drawing their signature with either their finger or a stylus.

Both of these features are available today, with a simple click of the mouse.

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Tracking a package and making sure it arrives on time can make all the difference in customer service. Just the other day, I ordered a few parts to get my motorcycle back in riding shape after I put it away for the winter. Nothing major, just an oil filter and some custom parts to make it a little more mine. After I submitted my order, I was emailed with date and time of arrival. A few days later, my package arrived followed by a simple yet effective customer service email making sure everything was OK.

That was great, but after I thought about it, they really had no idea when I changed my oil or if I needed any assistance with the installation of my air filter. And then I thought about it from a sales perspective; once a sales contract is delivered, do you, as a salesman, really know where the contract is?

Has it been reviewed?

Who has signed it?

Did they even take a look at it yet?

There are about a thousand possible scenarios that probably go running through anyone’s head. But what if you could track some of those more important actions? What if you could see who has reviewed the document or even signed the document in real time? What advantages do you think that would bring your sales team?  Imagine if they could call the next person in line or call after someone has reviewed the document to make sure they are still comfortable with all the terms and conditions.

With SmartSign that is a very real feature. Our system lets you set up automatic alerts based on important actions taken against your document. For example, if your Director of sales wants to know when a new client is brought on, you can designate an alert. Your account management team could also be alerted, helping you to get the ball rolling and improve customer service.

Tracking the arrival of a document is important, but think of all the possibilities and improvements your sales team and organization as a whole can make by knowing that much more.

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I just returned from The 2012 ESI Forum and ESA Leadership Summit in Irving, TX, which was a wonderful event on many different levels. The networking opportunities, meetings and sessions all contributed to make this a great way to kick off the New Year.  I attended this event with an open mind, my focus was to participate in meetings and sessions that reflect on what happened in the industry in 2011 and discover some of the key trends, and obstacles coming into 2012. Not to my surprise, there was a strong vibe on implementing new technology across the board.

My particular interest was centered around optimizing business process and workflows by implementing new technology. Some of the contributing factors for a need to utilize emerging technologies include:

• the growth of the competitive landscape in the electronic security industry
• the time consumed by inefficient processes for techs out in the field
• further demand for more personal and fast customer service
• equipping the sales/retention teams with the right tools to get the job done quicker and more intuitively.

Forefront in the technology discussions was the use of mobile applications and tablets- I’ll give the iPad a shout-out since it was most frequently discussed. Utilizing tablets (iPads) for techs in the field, or sales representatives to further streamline their processes. Removing the old paper trail by digitizing much of the documentation. As you could imagine, I was delighted to see that eContracting was mentioned during one of the sessions that I attended. Although I was happy to hear all of the excitement and ideas floating around the conference, now it’s time to actually execute on the ideas. I think 2012 is going to be a great year for eContracting in the industry, as further optimizing the customer contracting, installation, and on-boarding process is going to assist many alarm companies in recognizing their goals, and increasing their RMR.

With these ideas and more, I think the security alarm industry is poised to grow over the next few years. With many of these advancements, we are all merely scratching the surface of what’s to come.

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The path of electronic signatures and security alarm companies came to a head this past year. Both industries seemed to discover each other’s unique position, services and needs at the same time which led to a very interesting period of discovery. A few security alarm companies who were “early adopters” really set the tone and were able to see some great benefits and improvements from implementing electronic signatures.

Raising the level of comfort with new processes is always a bit of a challenge. It wasn’t smooth all the time, but after diligently working with funding sources, business and technical teams, we were able to help our clients put some really cool applications in place. So in turn I’d like to underscore two recent examples that led to some really awesome results.

Example 1: A leading company’s electronic adoption rate was held up due to major funding source only accepting 10% of documents to be signed electronically.

eO Assistance: Stepping in to assist our client with this particular funding source we helped to provide all information and access to vet our processes and system, they became extremely comfortable with the level of control SmarSign provides.

Result: They are now having over 50% of their contracts signed electronically and have plans to move toward a complete paperless process. This is not only helping them to increase revenues to become more profitable, but it is also saving them money on shipping, re-contracting, and storage costs.

Example 2: Paper contracts everywhere. Keeping track of all your paper documents is resource intensive. Referencing, finding, and filing all those docs cost employees valuable time.

eO Assistance: Paper-In is a process that allows you to convert signed paper documents to Electronic Originals that still keep their value. Also our Trusted Repository’s transaction management solutions allow you to search by date range, status, or a variety of other unique identifiers.

With all signs pointing to more companies implementing solutions in the cloud in 2012 to support company goals, it’s a sure fire bet that electronic signatures are going to play a major role.

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Keeping up with your outstanding orders and agreements is one of the key benefits of an electronic signature solution. Using the SmartSign Tracker feature allows our customers to rapidly identify sticking points in their business. The Tracker allows you to search by date range, status, or a variety of other unique identifiers. Search results are displayed by Transaction Identifier, Status, or Creation Date.

Once you’ve located the correct transaction, the Tracker allows you to drill down to see exactly where the transaction is in the workflow.

• The Tracker shows the status of each participant within the transaction.
• If you required a participant to go through additional identification screening – the Tracker shows a pass or fail indicator for each participant.
• If one of your signers is slowing down the process – quickly send a gentle reminder invitation to him.
• If the terms of the agreement have changed – the Tracker allows you to rescind the transaction or upload a new version of any document to the transaction and send out an updated invitation.
• What about those pesky customer support calls? Maybe your signer “misplaced” her security code – use the Tracker to look up the code for her.

As you can see, the Tracker helps keep all your deals “on track”.

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Access to up-to-date information is rapidly becoming the standard for users armed with the latest Smart Phone technology. Most of us have an “app” for getting the latest news, weather, sports scores, whatever we want to know when we want to know it. Business users are no different, in fact for those of us that travel a lot or have the benefit of working remotely, access to information we need to get the job done is critical. And a big part of getting the job done often involves getting signatures on documents from your customers, partners, or employees. Whether it is a new contract, a mutual non-disclosure, a real estate agreement or a beneficiary form – having the ability to track where it is in the process is crucial to your business.

With the latest version of eOriginal Command Center we enable you to satisfy your need for “information when I want it, where I want it.” Command Center automatically detects when you are on a mobile device and adapts the user experience to the capabilities of the device. Once you have logged into the application, you can quickly search for outstanding transactions by date sent, status or both. The results are displayed back in seconds and allow you to drill down to see all the details about the transaction. Is one of your deals “stuck” waiting on someone to sign a contract? Simply send out an email reminder to the customer, or all participants, right from your phone. So now, wherever you are you can keep up with your business and keep information moving as fast as you are!

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With the ESRA annual conference next week, I have been thinking a lot about how eSignatures and electronic records have changed business. Or even better yet, how the efficiency, business savings, and customer service benefits of using e-signatures has added pressure to those organizations that still use, “the same old paper processes” to move to adopt electronic processes.

Electronic signatures have grown within companies that are already leveraging these technologies in other areas of business (sales → HR→ Legal → and beyond), there is really no arguing that point. But ESRA and its members are also leading the expansion efforts to reach new businesses, departments of government, and even across boarders in international efforts.

In just a few short days at the ESRA Fall Conference leading industry and business experts are going to be tackling these issue and more with session tracks that include.

• International Adoption and Cross Jurisdiction Issues in eSignatures and eRecords

• Enabling eSignatures and eRecords for eFiling and eTitling with Motor Vechicle Registration Offices.

• IRS eSignatures Programs and Initiatives

• …and more!

This will be an outstanding event, demonstrating the growing utilization of eSignature and electronic record implementations across a wide variety of industries in a global arena. For more details, please see the ESRA web site: http://www.esignrecords.org

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For all of you lucky enough to attend the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association’s 50^th Annual Conference this year please don’t miss out on the breakout session “Don’t Be Left Behind! Cost Effective Technologies that are Impacting Business”, on Oct. 25 at 11:00AM. eOriginal’s CTO Bryan Caporlette along with LeaseTeam and a few other great companies are going to be presenting how leveraging technology can improve business operations throughout your entire company!

The objective of this session is to educate attendees on technologies that are having a positive impact on businesses: electronic signatures, mobile applications and cloud computing are a few of the topics that will be addressed.  We will also profile real-world applications, the processes behind them, and how equipment finance companies are benefiting from the technology.

And please feel free to reach out to Bryan he’d be happy to answer any questions while he’s there.

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I often speak with security alarm companies on the benefits of eOrignal’s SmartSign- electronic signature solutions. You may or may not be surprised by the various departments, processes and workflows where SmartSigning has proven to be beneficial in the Alarm industry; including contracting new clients through inside and outside sales, HR/ employee onboarding, and customer retention/ renewals, just to name a few.

One particular area that I have found to require a large amount of company resources and focus has been client retention and customer renewals. Which in most cases bring with it a cumbersome paper process, customer inconvenience and unfortunately customer drop off. How you re-contract today will have direct influence on your companies RMR tomorrow- whether it be negative or positive; of course the goal would be the later.

As old contracts begin to expire, eOriginal’s SmartSign provides Alarm companies the advantage of re-contracting with only the click of a button. Most importantly, it provides a faster, friendlier and more convenient customer experience. Some of the immediate benefits include,

• Increased employee productivity- now sales and retention departments can complete these tasks in half the time.

• Decreased mailing, paper, shipping, and postage cost

• Improved customer experience and relations

• Ability to have same day, even same hour client renewals

How this works:

eOriginal can tie into your existing CRM; with the click of a button we will automatically pull client information from your CRM, add it to the new contract in the appropriate fields, and send your customer an invitation to sign. Your customer then is guided through an easy and intuitive eSigning contract renewal process by eOriginal’s SmartSign.

You can see how this process works by going to eOriginal’s Security Alarm demonstration page by clicking here.

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