Small businesses are rapidly adopting productivity tools like e-signature. Many small businesses spread their bandwidth thin and look to adopt alternate cost-effective productivity tools that automate business workflows. An e-sign tool brings significant benefits to a small business, including increased cost-savings and customer experience.
What is an e-signature tool?
E-signature is a critical tool to streamline business workflows. Users can sign, accept, and review legally binding contracts or agreements. This tool is used extensively by service professionals like accountants, legal firms, recruiting agencies, and marketing agencies. Business teams, HR, Finance, Revenue, Sales, and Operations departments also use this regularly. Why? They offer a fast and convenient way for professionals to sign documents, which is less hassle than the alternative. According to a National Small Business Association survey, 61% of small businesses reported using electronic signatures for contracts and other documents. It’s safe to assume that your peers use an electronic signature tool to improve efficiency, cost-savings, and customer experience.
What to consider when buying an e-signature tool?
Evaluating an e-sign tool before purchasing is an important step. However, to reap the significant benefits of this tool, it is essential to pick the right one for your business. Let’s go over different aspects you should consider.
Will your documents be legally protected?
Governments strictly regulate high-valued transactions across the globe to manage legal disputes. So make sure your e-sign tool is compliant with your region. Consider tools with document tracking options and a detailed log of time stamps of customers’ actions when signing the document.
Is your e-sign tool secure?
I’m sure the question, “Can my digital signature be tampered with?” Has it crossed your mind? In reality, wet signatures are prone to be tampered with or forged compared to electronic signatures. When you and your clients e-sign, you leave a trail of electronic records while opening, signing, and sending the document, which helps identify and audit any discrepancies.
Moreover, e-signature tools also have many layers of security and authentication built to secure your documents. So while choosing a vendor, ensure you onboard one who can readily give you audit trails and confirms the level of security that comes with the tool.
Cone’s Proposal-to-Payment software gives you a free in-built e-sign tool that is legally binding and secure. We aim to build software that focuses on streamlining the business workflow of proposal management, and that’s what you will get with Cone Proposals. Our modern software allows you to create proposals with templates, quote tools, e-sign capabilities, payment collection features, analytics, and more. If this sounds good to you, try Cone Proposal-to-Payment.
Is the tool user-friendly?
Famously known as productivity tools, their goal is to simplify tasks and ease processes and collaboration. When searching for the best e-signature tool, get a trial / freemium version to evaluate. Experience how the e-sign tool streamlines
- Collaborating with internal stakeholders
- Signing process for external stakeholders
- Integration to your CRM and books
- Across devices, mobile and desktop-friendly
Keep your books updated. Integrate your CRM and Financial software to Cone Proposal-to-Payment easily whenever you track a payment or proposal acceptance. Try Cone Proposal-to-Payment today, our software is free without limitations.
Is customization an option?
Customized documents are critical to making a good impression and building brand trust amongst your clients. Sometimes customization becomes a lifesaver. The ability to add multiple signatories comes to mind. Choose a provider who allows you to customize documents for the number of signatories you need.
Another use case that comes to mind is the custom branding feature. Look for a vendor who allows you to custom-brand your documents before sending them.
How to evaluate the cost of an e-sign tool that works for you?
To consider the tool's pricing and cost structure, review the spec sheet and compare features versus price. For example, some tools may charge per document or user, while others offer subscription-based pricing. Choose a pricing model that makes the most sense for your business. Keep in mind your shortlisted tool must have space to scale and expand. Flexible pricing would be a plus.
Should analytics be a focus?
The short answer is yes. E-sign tool analytics will only help a business to identify contracts signed for a given period, which can help you predict cash flow. Cone Proposal-to-Payment provides a dedicated analytics dashboard that tracks proposals sent, signed, payments collected, and overdue in one place.
Will it easily integrate with my existing tools?
You will need a tool to integrate with your CRM to update client details in real time. They should also be able to integrate with your finance, proposal, and project management software to invoice, track and collaborate across systems cutting down the manual process of updating manually.
That’s my final point. Do you feel confident to go out there and evaluate e-sign tools that are easy to use and cost-effective? I think you are. Happy prospecting!