We think it’s about time to drop that ‘necessary’ word people use when it comes to describing the ‘necessary evil’ that is paperwork. It’s getting easier and easier to banish paperwork from the workplace and send it back to the nether regions from whence it came.
Here’s where organisations should start using eSignatures software to effectively onboard awesome hires and rapidly close new deals – all while keeping it legal and secure.
eSignatures help scale employee onboarding
Drafting, printing, faxing, scanning, filing, correcting errors... for ages, these tasks have been considered necessary evils for most business departments. And there is no one who know the horror more intimately than those in HR who handle hiring and onboarding new employees.
But in the age of digital transformation, when you can literally visit your doctor digitally, isn't it about time we banished the dark art of paperwork?
We think so.
The benefits of eSignatures in employee onboarding
There are plenty of benefits awaiting the HR department that integrates a paperless eSignature platform into its employee onboarding process.
Seamless onboarding for all
The Dropbox Sign API allows HR to take information provided during an applicant’s sign-up process and use it to automatically populate all the necessary paperwork, generate a set of personalised (and easy-to-read) PDFs and send out the finished documents for the person to electronically sign directly from their desktop or mobile device. This doesn’t just eliminate redundancy for the HR team, it reduces some of the friction that can cause applicants to churn – which is vital if your business needs to scale hiring with any kind of quickness.
A third-party to handle technical hassles
Digital transformation is hardly attainable if you have to hire a whole new administrative staff just to set up and manage all the tools! That’s a major reason HR departments love the Dropbox Sign model. The Dropbox Sign eSignature platform comes with a developer-led support team that will get you set up in under a week and manage all that tech stuff you don’t have the time or desire to.
How Instacart grew rapidly thanks to eSignature software
Dropbox Sign and Dropbox Forms empowered on-demand grocery delivery service Instacart to improve Shopper contractor application completion by 270% and save over 50 hours per week on onboarding tasks.
At any given time, Instacart contracts with over ten thousand ‘Shoppers’ who select, pack and deliver groceries to customers.
At that volume, their pen-and-paper process was causing considerable friction. In-office staff had to physically manage the paperwork and onboarding of every single Shopper. As they looked to scale into 80% of US households, this time-consuming process wasn’t cutting it for their internal staff, nor the qualified people they were having trouble onboarding and retaining.
With the help of our developer-led API support team, Instacart embedded legally binding eSignatures for Shoppers and HR document creation and management directly into their app. That’s right, they didn’t stop at digitising – they went fully mobile to meet their on-to-go workforce where they live.
Now Shoppers are able to receive all their vital employment and onboarding documentation – and legally sign it! – directly from their phones.
In addition, with the Dropbox Sign template feature, Instacart’s HR team can create, format and store important onboarding templates to prevent repetitive re-work on their end.
eSignatures make sales simpler
It’s easy to see why the traditional process of sending a load of important documents via email and asking the receiving client to print, sign and return them doesn’t cut it in the modern world.
A digitised sending and signing workflow doesn’t just make sales simpler – it actually gets your company to revenue faster while cutting down overhead costs!
The benefits of using eSignatures for sales
If your sales department is actually trying to make your company money instead of spending all of it on manual, time-sucking processes; we think you’re really going to like these benefits that eSignatures provide.
Get to revenue faster
With thoughtful business-class features like CCing, templates and status notifications; sales teams are never stuck waiting for someone to notice that pile of paperwork sitting on their desk or in their inbox just waiting to be signed and returned so that the engagement can finally begin.
Two ways to save
Aside from the major operational cost savings that come with an eSignature platform, Dropbox Sign also offers actual monetary savings in the form of affordable annual and monthly packages. With a free trial, transparent pricing and no hidden fees – sales teams in start-ups and enterprises alike are empowered to find the plan that fits their budget.
For those teams who want the power and customisation that our Dropbox Sign API provides, our API pricing is just as easy and you don’t have to wade through a bunch of customer support to get started (even though they’re pretty awesome people, even if we do say so ourselves).
How Vendini used eSignatures to close sales in record time
Vendini’s sales department needed to expedite the sales process to ensure a smoother experience for both their team and their fast-paced clients.
‘We found that closing deals wasn’t the hard part of our sales cycle’, Kathryn Hunt, a member of Vendini's product marketing department, said. ‘It was the administrative processes that were really slowing things down. It was a headache when people were ready to sign that day and were thrown into a lengthy paperwork cycle.’
In all honesty, the solution for Vendini’s sales hold-ups was pretty simple – and we think it could be for your sales department, too.
Surprise, its eSignatures!
More specifically, it’s a smart eSignature platform that makes your workflow better without costing a ton of money to set up or man-hours to manage.
Vendini used the Dropbox Sign Google Drive integration to create and format their MSAs before sending them to clients, who were then able to sign and return the documents with just a few clicks. The documents and signatures remained secure throughout the entire process and were stored in both Drive and Vendini’s Dropbox Sign account for easy recall.
Thanks to that single integration, Vendini’s sales team was suddenly able to send agreements at lightning speed – sometimes closing deals while the sales rep was still on the phone with the prospect!
Sales reps also used the Dropbox Sign ‘CC’ feature to make sure the CFO, managers and anyone else who needed to be involved received email alerts on the progress of important sales documents. Vendini even put the Dropbox Sign for Slack integration to good use. Their salespeople were able to see in real time when a document was signed so they could celebrate accordingly.
eSignatures empower the legal department
While your legal department might not need to litigate a case anytime soon, it likely has several of the same administrative pain points that all legal organisations face – security and legality concerns, burdensome workflows and costly overhead.
How any legal department can benefit from eSignatures
Here are some of the ways in which legal departments can benefit by adopting a simple, efficient eSignature service – without losing the security and legality that are so important.
Accurate, secure documentation
When dealing with sensitive documents and high-level clients or high-powered executives, legal departments need an eSignature solution that’s not just accurate but extremely safe.
That’s why Dropbox Sign comes with best-in-class security such as SSL encryption during file transit and secure server infrastructure hosted at a state-of-the-art Tier III, SSAE-16 certified data centre with ISO 27001 certification.
Simplified technology integration and automation
With an API that is constantly being updated and supported by our in-house engineering team, Dropbox Sign integrates pretty smoothly into most existing workflows.
Whether you’re using Google Drive, Dropbox, Salesforce, Microsoft OneDrive or pretty much any of today’s best business applications, you can bet that Dropbox Sign will perform well.
Increased efficiency and service
The paperwork problem has long had too much control over the speed and cost of legal situations. Instead of cutting down on expenses by sacrificing service, legal departments can use modern technology like eSignatures to slash their overhead costs.
The business-focused Dropbox Sign platform helps digitise your most important legal documents to create a sharing and signing workflow that’s fast and secure, whether there are 2 or 20 parties involved.
Audit trails
From the moment you request a signature, Dropbox Sign affixes an audit trail page to the document itself. The resulting non-editable audit trail ensures that actions on your documents are thoroughly tracked and time-stamped to provide proof of access, review and signature.
Dropbox Sign: the number one eSignature solution
G2 Crowd ranked HelloSign (now Dropbox Sign) the number one eSignature solution for small businesses. We also came in third as the overall best software product for small businesses. Not too shabby!
Whether you’re a small business that doesn’t have the funds to employ an army of paperwork administrators or an enterprise that hasn’t got time for that, a smart eSignature platform like Dropbox Sign can save you tonnes of time in legal, help your sales team close more deals and get new hires on your team faster than you can say ‘I hate paperwork!’ If you’re working with digital or paper documents, Dropbox Sign has you covered.
