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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For those customers who have taken the time to tryout our our new version on Preview On Demand, you have probably already experienced the new Workspace. Yes, we did it. We merged the SmartSign Web and Command Center user interfaces into a single application. The “new” Command Center user interface has undergone a significant update, making it much easier for you to locate, manage, and interact with your transactions and documents.

But our engineers were not just satisfied with a simple user interface refresh, they spent a lot of time “under the hood” optimizing the way you can search for documents and transaction, implementing (geek alert) Ajax to enable you to quickly page through large result sets, reorder lists, change the order of table rows in results, and introduced the new Snapshot view. The Snapshot “shows itself” anytime you click on a transaction, giving you a fast-yet-comprehensive view of the transaction. From the Snapshot, you can…

• View all the documents associated with the transaction,
• View the document histories on each document,
• Retrieve a copy of a document,
• Retrieve a Document Activity History Report (PDF),
• and much more…try it out

But one of my favorite features of the new Workspace is Collections. There are two types of collections; transaction and document. To create a collection, simply click Add from the Collections list on the left side of the page. Type in the name of your collection and a new collection is added to your list. Now all you have to do is search for transactions (or documents) using the search feature at the top of the page. Click on the transactions you want and drag them over to the collection. The selected transactions are automatically added as members of the collection.

Once you have created a collection, you can perform all kinds of batch actions on its members. Maybe you need to delete obsolete or incomplete transactions, or transfer control to a partner, or destroy signed Electronic Originals that have passed their retention period. All these actions (and more) are available to you by clicking on the little arrow to the right of the collection name. Of course, all available actions are limited to your permissions in the trusted repository.

So go ahead, log into Preview and create a collection.

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I have spent a considerable amount of time working with and speaking to Security Alarm companies, Industry Experts and Funders on the benefits, compliance and best practices of electronic signatures. For what is historically a paper-based industry when it comes to handling business processes, contracts, and internal documents, eOriginal has had the opportunity and pleasure to work with a few innovative Security Alarm Companies to help them to streamline their business processes using SmartSign, our electronic signature and life-cycle management solution.

Today, many other Security Alarm Companies have taken the initiative to begin looking into the benefits of electronic signatures. While more and more companies are looking into eSignatures, there seems to be a few common questions and concerns. While most perceived barriers can be easily overcome, security alarm companies and funders should take into consideration a few key points when evaluating and implementing electronic signatures such as:

• How to present FTC regulated Consumer Disclosures.
• Will your Funders (Banks) approve of the process?
• Will going electronic affect your RMR?
• Will other companies be able to purchase or acquire my contracts?

These are just a few areas of interest that need to be addressed. Now the benefits are apparent; other than saving time and money, your organization will have a few important advantages over your competition.

• Have contracts, lease agreements, installation forms, signed and processed in minutes
• Easily facilitate contract renewals, especially in states outlawing the evergreen clause
• Reduce labor and material costs associated with printing, faxing, scanning, shipping, and archiving

In just a few short days eOriginal, along with industry leaders, will be addressing the most common questions and concerns in a 60-minute educational webinar. What we hope to accomplish is to simply bring a better understanding to how electronic processes can replace aging paper-based systems. If you are interested, please don’t hesitate to register or contact us to learn more about the webinar or our experience with security alarm companies.

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As business are becoming more mobile and fluid, employees are relying on smart-phones to do more than coordinate their emails. Smart-phones are a life-line or  hub of information for most businesses today so it only makes sense for the use of SMS (Short Message Service) text message notifications as a means of signer authentication. With eOriginal SmartSign, SMS/text ID verification can be applied in two separate methods for an added level of security:

• sending the signer’s Security Code for login
• a secondary authentication generated by a one-time system generated PIN which provides an additional layer authentication for signers

SmartSign’s flexibility allows businesses to leverage smart-phones to take your business to the next level of efficiency by not only authenticating users but also following through and allowing users to sign agreement using those ever important iPhones, blackberrys, Android, etc.  Please take the time to view the following video which walks the SmartSign administrator through the setup process and how the signer interacts during the SMS text process.

SMS Authentication Process

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eOriginal clients have the ability to link their Google account to their eOriginal login in order to import Google documents during the transaction creation in SmartSign Web.

Tying these accounts allows you to add a Google document(s) when the document is not part of an existing document type or you don’t have excess to your network. For those times when you are away from the office and you need a document electronically signed,  this is the solution you have been waiting for.

Here are the steps to link your Google account to your eOriginal login (SmartSign Web)

• Login – Administration – User Settings – Google Account – use link to access and grant access
• Google – grant access and create document library

That’s it!  Now you have the choice of accessing those Google documents during the document creation process.

Please take the time to view this short video on granting access to your Google account and how to upload those documents in SmartSign Web.

Google_Docs

The process is seamless and the advantages are endless.

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eOriginal clients commonly use the Transaction ID or Status values to search for a transaction(s).  Transaction External References (1-3 ) are fields that can be customized to meet your organization’s business needs.

The benefit of customizing these labels allows your users yet another way to search for or batch processing needs.

Transaction Labels are the headings that appear above the Transaction list to the on the Command Center – Workspace page (see example below).

These same labels are also used to describe transactions in the SmartSign application.

Transaction Labels’ names can be updated in the Command Center Administration area.  (See Settings – Transaction Labels).

Smart Sign Web clients can coordinate the labels values by accessing the Setup Application tab under Administration – System Account.

After the values have been updated there is now an updated tool to meet your business needs.

Take some time to view a brief presentation on how eOriginal’s Transaction Labels can help your organization improve your management of Electronic Original transactions and documents.

Click_Here for Demo_on_Transaction_Labels_Video

After viewing the presentation use the Back Page Icon to return to eOriginal’s Blog Page.

For further information, please watch this quick tutorial or contact eOriginal Support (support@eoriginal.com).

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One of the benefits of using eOriginal is the ability for documents to be marked as eSigned and secured in the eCore vault. What about those signed paper documents?
Can those documents be converted from a signed paper original to a secure Electronic Original® Document?

eOriginal now introduces a Paper In process that allows our customers to accomplish this goal. Paper In is a controlled action that enables you to convert a paper original to an Electronic Original Document (Authoritative Copy). The document, once the process is complete, will contain the electronic signature of the user you designated to confirm the destruction of the paper original.

The Paper In process is an asynchronous process involving the following steps:

• the document is converted to an electronic document (typically through a scanning process)

• the electronic document is uploaded to the eCore vault in a locked status

• the source paper and its copies are destroyed

• the destruction is confirmed through the Paper In approval.

This process requires specific eCore configurations and your overall process should be reviewed with an eOriginal support representative prior to attempting any Paper In.

Take some time to view a presentation on how eOriginal’s Paper In process can help your organization convert paper originals to Electronic Original documents.

Click to view a brief presentation of eOriginal’s Paper In Process

After viewing the presentation use the Back Page Icon to return to eOriginal’s Blog Page.

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eOriginal is privileged to announce that SmartSign, our leading electronic signature and transaction management solution, is featured in “The Ultimate Toolkit for the Evolutionary Entrepreneur“.

The eBook is a comprehensive guide outlining tools and technologies that can help businesses to grow. This eBook highlights the most cutting edge online solutions to help you streamline your business, save time and money.

You can get in now by purchasing a copy. Or you can use the link above to learn more.

We are excited to be included with a number of other great companies in this valuable resource showcasing how online solutions will enable your business to be more flexible and successful.

What People Are Saying:

“This is the YellowPages for the productive entrepreneur of the 21st century. Even the best tools won’t help you if you don’t know they exist. Natalie ensures you ‘get in the know’ without wasting time and money.  If you want the location independence necessary to be your own suitcase entrepreneur, you must know about the tools in Natalie’s Ultimate Toolkit.”

Kent Healy, Author, entrepreneur, and blogger. www.TheUncommonLife.com, www.MaximsForMavericks.com

About the Author:

This toolkit has been designed by Natalie Sisson, a Suitcase Entrepreneur and adventurer, who runs her entire business online using these tools and technology.

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We all know how important it is to make every customer feel like they are your most important customer.  One great way to do this is to customize each signers experience so that each signer not only experiences exactly what they need to see and do, but they do and see it in the manor you want them to do it.

No matter how simple or complex your companies workflow (or each signers workflow) is eOriginal SmartSign can easily and effortlessly help you brand each workflow for you businesses’ needs. SmartSign Web has always allowed your organize to brand and customize the signing experience your signers see. Now SmartSign allows you to take it one step further. With eOriginal Transaction Types and eOriginal Role Based branding options, you may simply group like documents for your online repository into one grouping. This grouping allows you to set the default order each document will be shown to your signers, as well as which documents are required or optional by default.

SmartSign then takes this one step further to allow you to customize any and all branding and workflow options to that specific Transaction Type and even each specific signer.

• If you want one logo and set of colors for Transaction Type A and another logo and set of colors for Transaction Type B, that is easy as a click of the mouse.
• If you have a set of four documents and want to show documents 1 and 2 to Signer A, but documents 2 and 4 to Signer Two, just as easy.
• If you want notification emails to go to different distribution lists or want to use SmartSign’s push service to update different system based on the Transaction Type, even easier.
• If you want each set of customizable instructions to be different for each signer, because you just customized the documents each signer would see…you guessed it, simple as pie.

With SmartSign’s interactive dashboard you may quickly and easily create a transaction with any of your Transaction Types with just 1 click! If you would like to learn more about the use of SmartSign’s Transaction Types, Role Based Sort Order, and/or any other branding options please contact your customer support representative.

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