Signing Off on Digital Experiences
How businesses can harness technology to create great experiences into 2018 and beyond.
Adobe Stock / canjoena
In recent years, we’ve been inundated with new opportunities presented to us through technology. Whether it’s transferring money at the touch of a button, connecting with friends or instructing a home hub, consumers have raised their expectations of what’s possible from these innovations.
For businesses, the challenge of meeting and, if possible, exceeding consumer expectations has become steeper due to these developments. Surprising and delighting consumers through positive experiences and interactions with brands while cultivating a sense of loyalty is now even tougher. Herein lie the opportunities of digital transformation, and businesses around the world must act now, rather than later, if they are to secure long-term success.
So where do signatures fit in and why are they an important part of a business’ digital transformation? While the prevalence of written signatures in everyday life has decreased, they are still extremely common, particularly for signing contracts in a huge variety of professions including HR, finance, and legal.
Electronic signatures are helping businesses with contract signing, closing the gaps left by digital transformation in other areas. Instead of the cumbersome printing off, signing, couriering, signing, sending back, and submitting process, businesses can save themselves and their customers and suppliers a week of lost time. By digitalizing one of the world’s most common business processes, brands can create a great, differentiating customer experience.
And it’s not just the technology that needs to live up to expectations: the law must also track to innovations. In 2016, the eIDAS standard came into effect, giving electronic and digital signatures equal legal standing to their physical equivalents across the EU region. Businesses welcomed this as a huge step forward in formalizing e-signatures in the region. eIDAS is an increasingly important topic of discussion for the legal, financial, and pharmaceutical sectors, who must have some level of standardization within sectors to continue forward with digital transformation.
So, whether technology has raised our expectations of what is possible, or our expectations of what technology can deliver, it’s important that businesses can keep ahead of the curve.
We’ll be examining the topics of digital transformation, the importance of good experiences and the benefits of electronic signatures further on January 31st at an event in central London. The agenda for “Make Experience your Business with Adobe Sign” includes expert speakers in the field from Adobe and Gartner as well as innovative customer stories from HSBC, Experian and TalkTalk.