3 Surprising Ways Digitization Powers the Frictionless Economy
Today’s customers have raised their expectations of how a business transaction should be conducted. They want it to be easy, seamless, and — increasingly — paperless.
San Francisco-based DocuSign has worked since 2003 to provide its clients, who now number more than 85 million around the world, with trusted, efficient electronic signature and document maintenance services.
In a traditional environment, a transaction can encompass multiple paper documents and create a lengthy paper trail. A typical mortgage or business contract requires several signatures, and must be handed off from one signer to another, either in person or via fax or overnight delivery service. It may also need to be delivered between departments within the same organization.
DocuSign has created secure systems that make signing, sharing, and authenticating documents easy and efficient. DocuSign’s Digital Transaction Management (DTM) platform directs clients and their customers through each step of the signing process. And at each step, the DTM system makes sure that signatures are legally verifiable through state-of-the-art identity authentication processes.
One recent study found that customers will leave a company’s website if it is just a fraction of a second slower than a competitor’s. As more and more companies have discovered, the friction inherent in paper-based transactions can slow operations down to the point of losing customers. According to a report issued by United States officials, government staff members who are required to gather information in traditional paper-based environments use up more than 11 billion hours annually — and organizing the estimated 10,000 official forms associated with these transactions is a lengthy process in itself.
Problems such as these highlight the reasons why most business leaders would like to foster the development of a frictionless economy. Today’s concepts of a frictionless economy are ideals based on the insights of industry thought leaders such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
Economists note that no truly “frictionless” economy is possible, since market conditions can vary significantly over time and needed regulations themselves may create points of friction. Yet companies working to take full advantage of the digital revolution to build a better customer experience understand that 21st-century technologies can put an economy much closer to the ideal. Experts point out that the next half-decade or so should demonstrate the potential to integrate a customer’s physical and virtual environments to a far higher degree than what currently exists.
Within a frictionless economy, capital, labor, and data would move quickly, seamlessly, and in a cost-effective manner. In addition, the Internet and its capacities for secure digital storage in the cloud can contribute by enhancing equality of access to crucial information. A frictionless economy would provide buyers, sellers, and other stakeholders the ability to access all the information they would need to conduct a mutually satisfactory transaction.
Today’s digitized world has moved us toward a frictionless economy in a number of familiar ways. Now it’s easy for us to place a phone call across the world or purchase items online and have them delivered the same day.
DocuSign continues to offer innovations that reduce friction in document-based transactions, as well as advantages such as the following:
1. Speed
Shifting operations to a digital environment anchored in the cloud can enhance company-customer relationships, as a process that may have taken months to conclude can now be completed in minutes.
Case in point: In 2014, the devastation caused by Hurricane Norbert included flash flooding in Nevada and two other states. Fifty miles of interstate highway near the town of Moapa had to be closed due to the deluge, and quick road repair was crucial to restoring that major artery to and from Utah. The Nevada Department of Transportation, a DocuSign client, was able to get needed approvals and conclude new repair contracts with vendors entirely online.
2. Security
Digital signatures can offer as much security (and sometimes even more) as signatures on paper documents through the use of bank-quality encryption and secure identity verification devices.
The New York Stock Exchange places security at the top of its list of required deliverables, and for good reason. DocuSign’s multiple-data point identification protocols passed even the NYSE’s stringent criteria for security. Thanks to DocuSign’s paperless DTM system, the NYSE can now finalize a new license in less than one day, a process that had previously taken as long as a week.
3. Accessibility
Digital documents allow access from any service point almost anywhere on earth by anyone who has received the owner’s authorization. Customers who make use of DocuSign’s Digital Transaction Rooms can meet online, in real-time and in a secure environment, to view, discuss, modify, and sign documents common to them all.
