Fight rising fuel surcharges with e-signatures

Pop quiz: How much does it cost to mail a half-pound envelope from Seattle to New York via FedEx Standard Overnight Delivery? Well, it starts at $23, plus another $2.30 if it’s going to a residence. But the real stunner might be the fuel surcharge: $8.73. That’s a whopping 38 percent surcharge, making the total damage around $34.03. UPS, meanwhile, would charge $57.57 for Next Day Air, thanks to a fuel surcharge of $14.77 — around 35 percent — atop the base rate of $42.80.

Indeed, shipping rates have soared in recent months and years, thanks to increasing gas prices, and they’re costing businesses — particularly those that rely on shipping out paper documents regularly — a lot of money. Sure, plenty of business can be accomplished via e-mail, fax, and digital documents — but it’s not that simple if you need to get one or more signatures to close a sale.

Actually, though, it can be that simple, thanks to e-signatures. More companies are becoming aware of this technology, even though it has been around for years. In fact just this week, financial services giant Fidelity announced that it was adopting e-signature technology from DocuSign, a decision already made by big-name companies including Wells Fargo and Expedia.

And who can blame them, given all the benefits? Yes, there are the green benefits of reducing paper waste, ink waste, and all that fuel needed to transport pieces of paper from Point A to Point B and back again. But there’s significant savings from cutting those aforementioned costs — not to mention that companies find e-sigs help them do business faster and thus close deals more reliably and efficiently.

[For more ways to save money and the environment by reducing paper and print waste, please read “Follow the paperless trail.” For other strategies to reduce fuel costs and carbon emissions, please read “Carbon-measuring software evolves.”]

The idea behind e-sigs is that end-users can digitally receive, initial, sign, and return documents in a secure and legally binding manner. So, for example, Fidelity is using the technology to help independent RIAs (registered investment advisors) automate the process of opening new accounts. First, the advisor collects new client data from his or her CRM application to pre-populate fields within all required forms. Those forms are then sent digitally to the new client for their e-signature.

After the client has signed all the forms, via a Web browser, the RIA forwards them to Fidelity for account opening and funding, generating and returning the account number in real time. Fidelity then sends an electronic notification to the advisor along with a status number, enabling the advisor to track progress and status of the transaction. And again, not a sheet of paper nor a drop of fuel or ink is wasted in this process — though if the customer or RIA wants a hard copy, he or she can certainly print one.

Another example of an application of e-signature, less complex than the former: A realtor can generate a contract, perhaps in PDF format, marking within where the recipient needs to sign and initial. The realtor sends the contract to all signers, who can access it via a Web browser. They peruse the digital papers, signing and initialing where instructed, then send it back. No fuss, no muss, no wasted paper, and no smeared ink.

According to Tom Gonser, vice president of product strategy and co-founder of DocuSign, e-signatures speed up the process considerably, because they eliminate the waiting time for contracts en route; plus it reduces errors.

“Our customers, when they compare the before and after, they will tell you what used to take ten days now happens inside one day,” Gonser says. “What used to have an 18 percent error rate doesn’t have any. The process doesn’t let you forget to initial or fill in a number.”

Attesting to that same observation is Great Lakes Educational Loan Services. The company reports that after implementing e-signature technology, it was able to process a remarkable 300 percent more loans than it had the previous week. The technology also has helped reduce customer service calls by as much as 40 percent, according to Bruce Rashke, chief administration and loan consolidation officer at the company.

One of the major concerns companies might have in regard to adopting e-signature technology is whether it’s sufficiently secure and binding. Well, a reputable system will offer full, court-admissible audit trails and technologies such as hashing algorithms, all to ensure that everything is on the up and up.

Given the rising costs of shipping documents, combined with the increasing endorsements for e-sigs from companies such as Fidelity, here’s hoping more organizations will embrace the technology as well. The prospect of saving millions of trees and reducing your company’s carbon footprint is but part of the incentive for exploring the technology; add in the benefits of getting business done faster and cheaper, and you’ve got a winning green technology indeed.

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.