E-signatures: The complete guide to paperless signing

April 26, 2013

Your best-laid plans of going paperless come to a screeching halt when you need to get someone's signature on a document. That process typically involves printing the document, signing it yourself, faxing it to the other party, and waiting for them to print, sign, and fax it back—where it's printed yet a third time and filed away in a cabinet forever. It's an antiquated regimen. It's busy work. But there is a better way. Electronic signature schemes have become big business. In fact, the e-signing sector is on track to grow north of $5 billion by the end of the decade, according to DocuSign CMO Dustin Grosse. E-signing tools represent a high-tech and much-needed response to the vast inefficiencies of dealing with physical signatures. While systems vary from provider to provider, the general idea behind them is the same. You upload a document—Word, PDF, or even an image file—to an online service, then tag it with special annotations where signatures eventually need to go. The service sends this marked-up file to your specified recipients, who then "sign" it with a few clicks, either with stock cursive fonts or with a scrawl they draw using their mouse (or a finger, using a tablet) on the fly. When finished, the signed file is sent back to you, mission accomplished. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2035744/e-signatures-the-complete-guide-to-paperless-signing.html#tk.rss_howto