Digitize your enterprise

We live in the age of the consumer. Whether you like it or not, consumers are driving a radical overhaul of your business processes. They want immediate access to the products and services that they’re buying. The new normal in today’s digital world means giving consumers the ability to apply for life insurance, close a mortgage loan, open a new bank account and sign a sales contract or agreement on their terms. This adds a lot of pressure on traditional companies that aren’t necessarily set up to meet the demanding needs of today’s consumer.

Digitization involves getting rid of physical paper and pen-and-ink signatures. Digital-enabling technologies like e-signatures are helping organizations of all sizes automate their business processes and develop all-digital workflows to help satisfy rising consumer expectations. If you’re skeptical, a non-believer or a digital wannabe within a company that continues to hesitate, read on to learn how you can build a business case for going digital.

An all-digital process is quicker

Financial services firms historically led the digital charge to meet compliance-driven initiatives. But today, going digital means so much more. A recent article in the American Banker points to the example of U.S. Bank that introduced e-signature-assisted consumer loans and account openings. Going digital has benefited U.S. Bank’s customers by enabling them to apply for and access banking services much more quickly than via traditional, paper-based onboarding processes. Across U.S. Bank’s branches, digitally-led processes reduce errors (i.e., bank staff no longer have to manually key in data from paper-based documents) and free up staff so that they can focus more on customers and prospects.

Think mobile first

The move to a digital world is due in large part to the rising use of mobile devices. Harnessing the power of digital requires optimizing transactions for mobile devices. In the age of the consumer, the customer experience needs to revolve around how your customers interact with you. Therefore when digitizing your business processes, it’s important that you design and implement best practices for mobile signing and provide an optimal user experience across mobile platforms and devices. Ensure that the e-signature solution that you choose supports your mobile strategy – whether you’re looking to build a web, hybrid or native application using a mobile SDK.

Keep it personal

Going digital has many benefits – it can help your company achieve huge cost savings and create happier and more loyal customers. But going digital inherently removes you from the equation, resulting in fewer customer touch points. The challenge therefore is to derive the benefits of digitizing your business without losing the personal touch. By leveraging e-signature technology, you can make digital transactions personal to serve your clients anywhere, anytime and on any device. Choose an e-signature solution that enables you to keep your brand front and center and customize the user interface and workflow of the e-signing environment to achieve extremely high adoption rates.

Is your business truly digital?

While many organizations have started to digitize their internal business processes with the help of document management tools like Microsoft SharePoint, their processes aren’t fully digital because they fall to paper when a signature or approval is required. This breaks the straight-through electronic transaction, letting error-prone and unsecure processes back in. By adding e-signatures to the enterprise applications that your employees already use every day (e.g., CRM, ECM, BPM, etc.), you can help eliminate costs related to paper, boost the productivity of your workers and help on board customers faster than ever before.

So, what’s holding you back?

Digitization and paperless processing are now starting to become a reality in formerly paper-intensive environments. Digitizing your business means truly embracing end-to-end digital workflows and empowering your customers to do business with you on their terms. The good news is that going digital isn’t as difficult as it may sound. You need not go the whole hog as you digitize your business, you can do it one piece at a time.