Have you been wondering what a full and fervent embrace of digital documents and eSigning might mean for your business? The good news is this: the return vastly outweighs the initial investment in a variety of ways.
eSigning with Nitro Sign (part of the Nitro Productivity Platform) offers an all-in-one PDF and eSigning solution. It’s why 68% of the Fortune 500 choose Nitro.
So if you’re thinking like the CEO of one of those 68%, you’re wondering how electronic signature software would impact your bottom line. There are many ways, but we are sharing the top eight ROI opportunities with you in this article.
8 ways productive eSign software improves ROI
Consider these eight important questions when weighing your options to implement or upgrade an eSignature solution:
1. How much time do your teams spend chasing down ‘wet’ signatures and locating misplaced documents?
Time is money. With the right eSignature tool, skilled sales and customer service professionals can up their output by reducing administrative work and increasing time spent on revenue-driving activities, such as relationship-building and lead generation. And with Nitro Sign Premium, you only pay per completed eSignature, not per request or per user. You’ll never pay for what you don’t use or see surprise overage fees. This is a huge benefit for businesses.
2. How could you expand your sales online or simplify your current processes with eSignatures?
Take your business further. The ability to complete a 100% digital transaction can increase your reach into new markets. For example, giving customers the option to buy instantly via web and mobile channels, with eSign included, means more revenue and the modern experience they expect.
3. Would a more streamlined process improve your current conversion rate?
An electronic signature option helps convert customers faster, and earlier. Relying on paper to collect signatures is time consuming for you and your customer. Streamlining the process with eSign software could have an enormous impact on your conversion rate, and even spur early adoption of your service or product. And because it’s easier and faster, it provides a better experience for the customer and staff, resulting in a positive feeling about the purchase and onboarding process and ultimately lower churn rates.
4. If you could eliminate paperwork errors, how much savings would that represent in wage and opportunity costs?
See the error of your ways. By default, manually processing paperwork leads to errors that create inefficiencies and add costs. Not to mention, physical copies are less secure. Incomplete or incorrect documents need to be re-mailed, re-faxed or couriered back to the customers for updating. The workflow rules and automated processes built into digital documents and eSignatures significantly reduce document errors – and make it quick and easy to correct them.
5. What exposure does your business have to compliance regulators, and what kind of financial risk comes with a negative audit outcome?
No more risky business. Electronic signing allows secure workflow rules that ensure proper processes are followed for information completion and approval gathering. They also provide detailed audit trails with timestamps that can be extremely helpful in satisfying inquiring regulators. If you are doing business across borders, it’s even more important to choose an electronic signature solution that will help you stay compliant.
6. How much space do you need to archive your documents, and how much time is spent organizing them?
Retain your history, securely. Archiving paper documents takes a lot of space, and some industries require organizations to retain them for long periods of time – over 50 years in some cases! With large volumes of paper, manual archiving can quickly become disorganized. Digital document solutions and eSign tools offer a variety of easy archive options for both long-term and short-term use cases.
7. How can you reduce your paper and electricity consumption by eliminating photocopying and printing?
Less waste, more space. Eliminating paper from signing workflows can make a significant impact on an organization’s environmental and conservation efforts. Most companies have formal sustainability initiatives, and cutting out printing and physical filing with digitalization and eSigning can be a big win for the cause. Nitro Analytics automatically calculates your environmental impact, including energy and trees saved!
8. How will your budget be impacted?
Look at the big picture. Sure, an eSign tool requires an investment. But what is it costing you to have manual processes? Are your customers and staff frustrated by the signing process? Asses the total cost of the solution and the full scope of benefits it will bring to both the user experience and overhead costs associated with workflows.
How to measure ROI for an eSign tool
As we’ve pointed out, ROI takes many forms when it comes to a digital document journey. You can identify ROI through materials cost savings, stronger customer retention, and more. However, part of ROI is not always obvious or easily measured. It’s important to consider the total cost of ownership. Sometimes ROI can take the form of improved processes and happier employees, like Salem Media Group experienced with Nitro.
Our biggest success is with our sales and marketing teams. Each division already has their contracts in Nitro Sign, and they can collect signatures for ad spots with no waiting. We use Nitro across more than 35 markets.
When it comes to the actual process of measuring the impact of eSigning on your ROI, it doesn’t get much easier than using Nitro Analytics. Actually, it’s so easy we have an automatic ROI calculator built directly into the platform. It’s even custom-tailored to your industry, usage and more.
Our analytics tool offers clear visibility into usage data that helps identify bottlenecks, feature and product adoption concerns, and more. These insights allow you to provide solutions that will better enable your team to improve processes, furthering your ROI.
But not all ROI is built equally. Unlike other eSign tools, Nitro was built to scale with your organization so the impact of your savings will only increase as you grow. While we offer unlimited eSignatures and no hidden fees, others are not so generous, which may impact your bottom line. This is one of the many reasons we were named a 2023 eSignature leader by GigaOm for the second year in a row.
Start eSigning documents online with Nitro Sign
Want to learn more about electronic signatures and the potential ROI they provide? Do you need to prepare for the future of work? Watch an overview video about Nitro Sign for a comprehensive look at the smarter, faster and more secure way to get documents signed and schedule a demo to get started.
Editor's Note: This blog was originally published January 2021 and has been updated with new insights.