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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Recently SDM Magazine published a great article “ESIGN and Go (& Grow Your Business)” on what electronic signatures can do for your security alarm business. The article features some great insight from industry leaders including NorthStar Alarm Services, a client of eOriginal’s.

Electronic signatures can really make an impact on productivity. In the article Nick Nelson, an inside sales agent and customer retention specialist at NorthStar, notes “I personally can do five to ten of these every day rather than handwriting out and mailing each one”.  He says “It cuts my time at least in half and allows me to work with other customers or take phone calls. When it comes back, it notifies me it’s been done. They’re then forwarded on to billing, tech support, service technicians, etc.”

Although the front-end productivity benefits are apparent and relevant, the back-end benefits of eOriginal’s system frequently prove to be just as important and, in many cases, even more so.  eOriginal’s SmartSign not only protects the value of your eSigned agreements, it improves your control of contracts, allows your company to utilize these electronic assets as collateral in an automated, secure environment, increasing your lenders’ comfortability.  SmartSign also improves back-office processes by removing the need to manually scan, file and search for paper documents.

To view the entire article, please follow the link above.  SDM Magazine is filled with great resources and will benefit any security alarm professional.

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Electronic signatures have many benefits in assisting companies improve their contract signing and workflow processes. From an ROI perspective, one of the most important features is speeding time to money – that is speeding the process by which a customer may securely receive, review, sign and return a set of documents in order to complete a transaction.

It’s been proven that removing paper from business processes has saved a lot of money over traditional costs associated with physically printing, shipping, filing, scanning and manual data entry.  This not only has saved companies money and resources on administrative costs, but has also shortened a company’s Quote to Cash Process, and allowed the electronic signature solution to pay for itself quickly.

But what happens when your documents aren’t signed right away? Is SmartSign still of value?  Is it possible for SmartSign to also be used to improve your internal business processes, help ensure better customer service, and provide your company with tools to manage and monitor change?  You may be surprised to find that the answer is yes.

Better management starts with better insight.  Executives and management are provided visibility over the entire signing process, so you’ll always know where a document is in the workflow process.  As an example, let’s assume that an agreement needs to be signed and or reviewed by 5 people (Sales Rep., Mr. Signer, Mrs. Signer, Department Manager and Service Manager).  If this was a paper process, it would be very difficult for you to accurately track and monitor who had or had not signed the agreement, and on whose desk it currently sits.  In a paper world, when asked for a status update, the sales executive would typically answer “I’m trying to track it down; I’ve left multiple voice mail messages with everyone associated with this transaction and have not heard back from anyone yet.”

Sound familiar?  What a frustrating waste of time and energy!  With eOriginal SmartSign Web®, the system provides complete visibility to the entire signing experience.  Reps know the status of agreements, and management has an accurate view over all transactions that are in-process or completed.

Automated notifications can be set up in SmartSign to proactively alert pertinent parties of significant events in the transaction process.  Examples of notification events can include your customer logging into the SmartSign signing room, signer number 3 of 5 completing the signing process or that a transaction is fully reviewed and signed by all parties.  In addition, how much better would your team’s closing rate improve if they knew when a prospect enters a signing room by a real time notification?  With this information, a rep may choose to call and assure a completed transaction.

Expirations and reminders may also be set to assure deadlines will be met.  From a Sales perspective, the rep now does not need to spend time worrying about remembering to remind someone of a deadline. Reminders would also let customers know how long they have to take advantage of an agreement or of favorable terms.

Insightful reports round out the oversight and provide your sales team, managers, and executives with real-time reporting of business metrics (closed deal, contracts out for signing, etc.)  Reports can be used to help build more complete forecasting and revenue analysis.  They can also be used to measure activity of sales reps, quantities sent, turn-around times for different types of transactions, success or drop-off rates of prospects, and much more.

SmartSign’s key focus is to help businesses grow, and shortening the “time to money”, is just one major benefit of our complete end-to-end solution.  Helping you improve your business is another.  Remember, if it can’t be measured, it can’t be improved.   SmartSign makes monitoring and measuring easy.

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As more businesses leverage online tools and cloud computing capabilities as a means to improve operational efficiencies and reduce or eliminate dependency on paper, there is one overlooked piece of the puzzle…Electronic Signatures. More often than not contracts or agreements are created in a digital format, however once terms or conditions are agreed upon, many businesses rely on resource intensive paper-based processes. The process of printing, shipping, faxing and filing, is resource intensive, expensive and slow.

If most of your operations are already taken online, why not close the loop with electronic signatures. By utilizing an end-to-end electronic signature solution like eOriginal’s SmartSign Web, businesses are able to compliment existing applications to create a completely streamlined process from origination → to signing → to storing and managing documents throughout their entire lifecycle. Electronic signatures really are designed to simplify business operations. Documents are sent out for signature via email, the ID of signers can be validated through multiple layers of verification (if necessary), and documents can be signed through any number of ways including text signatures, signature pads, and using mobile devices (Smart phones, iPads, tablets, etc) for access anytime anywhere.

A few key benefits include:

• Reduce sales-cycles closing more deals faster having documents signed in minutes, not days or weeks.
• Track user activity throughout the entire document management process with automated alerts. Alerts can notify key members of your team for newly closed deals, contract extensions, and who has and hasn’t signed.
• Eliminate errors and missing or incomplete documents. The signing process can not be completed without all proper information being provided.
• Reduce costs associated with printing, faxing, and filing paper documents.
• Go Green — eliminating paper based systems minimizes your organizations impact on the environment.

Electronic signatures may not fit the bill for every organization or for every process and each provider offers a few different options and solutions, so it is important to take a look at what your business is doing. But, if you are looking to close the gap and eliminate the “paper-chase”, electronic signatures are probably your best bet to grow and go paperless.

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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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As a direct auto lender, operational and business goals are typically clear; identify more prospects, qualify more candidates, and close more loans. Meeting these goals brings positive returns, including increased revenue and profitability. A critical element in accomplishing these goals is making the entire lending process easy and fast for the consumer.

Technology has assisted in streamlining the direct lending process. For years, direct lenders have had the ability to qualify consumers in minutes, sometimes within seconds. Origination of the lending package has also been automated through the use of proprietary or third party loan origination systems, or completed through web-based applications. These capabilities have greatly assisted in creating a more efficient lending process, but what is still left is a lengthy, tedious and costly paper trail.

eOriginal’s SmartSign electronic signature and lifecycle management solutions have allowed direct lenders to close this loop, completely streamlining the lending process – from qualification to closing, all in one quick session. SmartSign enables these accelerated processes without compromising the legal or negotiable value of the documents being signed.

• Tightly integrate into existing loan origination systems and web-based applications
• Close more loans, faster, with increased adoption rates
• Reduce operating costs
• Process loans faster while eliminating costly errors
• Maintain legal compliance and secondary market requirements, enabling the ability to electronically sell, collateralize, and securitize your negotiable instruments

eOriginal is the leading technology provider for eContracts securitized in the secondary markets and accepted by rating agencies in the automotive industry for the fulfillment of UCC 9-105 requirements on e-chattel and transferable records. eOriginal’s technology has allowed lenders to electronically originate, sign, and securitize billions of dollars in direct auto loans, removing process and compliance barriers for financial institutions.

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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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Recently, a friend was looking to purchase a new vehicle. So like many other purchases in today’s world, his search began online. With instant access to manufactures websites, vehicle reviews, and dealership websites with local inventory his search was narrowed down in no time at all. After comparing a few different models and local dealers he found the vehicle he was looking for to fit his need and budget.

Now all he needed to do was get approved for a car loan. With all his other research and comparisons completed online, he wanted the same convenience to apply for a loan. Again he jumped online to compare a few websites, lending options, and interest rates. What he found was that his current bank provided the best option, and since his bank integrated eOriginal’s SmartSign Web directly into their consumer lending portal, he was able apply for and electronically sign loan agreements online in a familiar and secure environment.

SmartSign Web allowed my friend and the bank to:

• Instantly sign loan agreements;
• Reduce costs and save time with no need to fax, ship, or physically travel to complete the process;
• Review, underwrite, and fund the loan instantly to get him on the road faster;
• Create and participate in a completely streamlined electronic process without excess paperwork, travel, or complications.

The best part was he was able to walk into the dealership the same day with an approved loan and drive out with the car he wanted. The process was quick and easy for both parties. With more and more consumers researching and making purchase decisions online, it only makes sense for businesses to implement online tools and electronic processes to meet the needs of their consumers.

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