How eSignatures save dollars and make sense for business

Have you ever tried to quantify the cost of getting your business agreements printed, posted and signed? Have you ever thought about how much you could save by changing the way you come to agreement with customers and suppliers?

Pinning a price on your systems of agreement – that is, the way you prepare, sign, act on and manage the agreements that keep your business ticking over – looks easy on paper. The cost of printing and postage is fairly black and white; they’re clear line items on your expense sheet. But how do you quantify the cost of all those administrative hours spent chasing up signatures or documents lost in the mail? How do you measure the gains in getting a contract back in minutes or hours instead of weeks?

Working out how much your manual systems of agreement are costing you is the first step towards realising just how much you could save if you switched over to digital system of agreement that includes eSignature technology.

This handy calculator does most of the maths for you. It shows you what you’d save if you switched from paper-based to digital systems of agreement. For example, a company that handles 1,000 agreements per month (average of 8 pages, 2 internal signatures, 2 sets of postage, 1.5 hours of admin time) could save $21.40 per agreement. This represents a massive 235% ROI.

Beyond these measurable dollar savings, there are less tangible but equally compelling benefits of using eSignatures to modernise your system of agreement – that soon translate into bottom line results, too.

Become a productivity powerhouse

Think of all the time your staff spends in preparing and chasing up documents, fixing broken printers, ordering new printer ink, mailing contracts and coordinating meetings between signatories. Reclaiming this wasted time by using an eSignature solution is a win for your team’s productivity.

In fact, a recent Forrester Consulting study commissioned on behalf of DocuSign, found that an eSignature solution can slash handling time from 90 minutes to just 9 minutes per agreement. Even if you’re only dealing with 10 agreements per month, that represents a huge time saving – it’s time that your team can spend elsewhere, growing the business.

Accelerate revenue-raising

In any sales industry, meeting monthly or quarterly targets can be a make-or-break proposition. Streamlining the revenue-raising process by eliminating roadblocks like paper-based contracts is key to hitting your targets faster.

Not only does faster turnaround time on sales contracts equate to more money in the bank this month, but it also frees up the sales team to target new customers and strengthen existing relationships. Sales conversion rates improve, the business grows some more.

Bask in a positive glow

Then there’s this intangible but oh-so-valuable metric: your reputation. What your customers think of you. If you’re still sending out contracts in the post and having to phone or email customers to remind them to sign a document (or, worse, to ask them to sign it again because they didn’t sign on the right dotted line last time), you risk being seen as a bit of a dinosaur.

Today’s time-poor customers crave convenience. They want to get things done fast, on-the-go, without hassle. If you deliver this – by using a modern system of agreement – then you score big points in the customer satisfaction stakes.

Download the DocuSign Forrester TEI study to learn more about the benefits of digitisation using eSignatures.

Forrester TEI Study

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DocuSign
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