Building a Business Case for Digital Signatures: 7 things Influencing the Move to Digital

As a digital signature cloud-based technology platform, we’ve noticed an increased amount of enquiries into how organisations can begin digitally transforming their business. Organisation’s we speak to are all on a journey to become a paper free office. They want to be 100% digital across the value chain.

One of the key questions we get asked is “how can I communicate the benefits of digital signatures and digital transformation internally at my organization to those approving new technology”.

This one question is a catch all for:

• • What is the cost of the digital solution to the business?

• • Does it save us money, time, resources?

• • How will I train team members?

• • How will I get buy-in from team members to use the digital platform once trained?

• • How long does it take to implement the digital platform?

The list of questions that stem from “how can I communicate the benefits” is long and as you read on, we’ll let you in on what many organizations are now thinking. 

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7 things Influencing the Move to Digital.

So, let’s give a little context as to why organizations are approaching us to assist with digital transformation, the types of scenarios to keep in mind before choosing and implementing a digital solution, and what you can use to build your business case.

With organizations at various stages of their digital transformation journey, we have seen common trends and ideas influencing their decisions to go digital.

Moving to the Cloud 

There has been a lot of grunt work around improving robustness of core systems and moving these systems to the cloud. Resources have been set toward this improvement. 

Hybrid Working Models 

COVID has accelerated the adoption of a hybrid work model, with organizations having to give thought to their policies and procedures. Employees could be located anywhere, and so organizations have begun to think about how they empower these employees and give them the right tools to work from anywhere, at any time. 

Office Footprints being Reviewed 

On the back of hybrid working models, we know that office leasing, and the size of the office, is a huge factor (and cost) in today’s organizational thinking. Staff are not necessarily going to be in the office all the time, and the allocation of spending for storage of records, space for printers, desks, computers, is at the top of the list when reviewing costs.

Digitization strategies – moving from paper and files 

Self-explanatory, but many organizations have started to move their paper files and records into a digital space. The shift coming from an urgency to continue to get back to business-as-usual while being able to uphold a successful work from home/hybrid work strategy. 

Reviewing End-to-End Processes 

Recently, we’ve seen organizations step back and look at their digital transformation strategy, and how their end-to-end processes can be adapted and linked back to their digital strategy. A question we like to ask is “if you are going to implement digital signatures, how can this be used across the organization, and what problems do digital signatures solve”. Digital signatures unlock document workflow across value chains being completed electronic. The signature is the key part but consider what that enables across the process.

Security, Compliance and Avoiding Fraudulent Activity

Post COVID many organizations we talk to have been using electronic signatures to get business done. In brief, that is dropping an electronic version of their or managements signature on a document to sign. Unfortunately, signing this way can mean the document can be altered after the signature. This can lead to altered documents or fraudulent activity. Having a secure Digital Signature provider increases security in the signing process and protects the organization from a legal and compliance perspective.

Corporate Social Responsibility Goals 

Lastly, organizations have increasingly grown in their awareness of their carbon footprint and have been looking for ways to reduce this. Digital signatures play a huge role in getting rid of paper, reducing travel and storage costs, which contributes to the sustainability goals of the org. 

What Does It All Mean?

It is one thing to understand what is driving the change to “go digital”, it is another to get the benefits across to internal stakeholders. 

Digital transformation is a big change and what we’ve seen works in getting internal stakeholders on board can be broken down into two things: efficiency gains and cost-savings. 

Efficiency Gains  

Digital signatures enable you to streamline your process through: 

• • Automating and integrating your document flow so the right forms are sent at the right time. 

• • Removing the need to print, scan, sign, save, email, save to a document management system. 

• • Two-way data flow means you can save documents in the right place, all the time. 

• • Having confidence in the accuracy of documents by recreating re-usable templates. 

• • Improving user and customer experience. 

A recruitment agency that chose Secured Signing as their digital signature provider, was faced with the age old challenge of dealing with too many documents with not enough staff to process them. 

Their processes were essentially manual, involving stacks of paper, which was “hardly environmentally friendly”, and involved more of their staff, taking up resources that could be better utilized elsewhere in the business.  

With their digital transformation, they were able to keep on top of high-volume numbers, with time-savings of around 1250 hours, per month. 

Cost Savings 

We could talk at length about this but for simplicity’s sake this means: 

• • Removing money spent on paper, printers & ink. 

• • Reduction in staff time wasted by handling paper documents. 

• • Office space saved by not having to file & store paper records. 

• • Reduction in money spent on couriers, or fuel, moving documents around. 

A real-life example of digital signatures implemented across an organization is how a local council in New Zealand reduced its operating costs (p.a.) by NZD$26,276 by simply reducing paper, courier and postage, and the time spent preparing, sending, and signing paper files.  

What Have We Learnt? 

When it comes to building your business case for digital signatures and digital transformation within your organization, the numbers speak for themselves, and the benefits are obvious. Save time & money by changing your existing physical processes to digital.  

Once organizations have chosen their digital service provider, and implementation kicks in, there’s no going back to the way things used to be. Digital transformation is a must for any organization wanting to succeed and the sooner you decide to take that first step, the sooner you realize that moment of “why didn’t we do this earlier”.

For more information visit:
www.securedsigning.com