Go Digital: Usher in a Paperless Society

Mar 27, 2015

Sogeti Labs

The technology to establish and maintain a paperless society does exist today, yet the leading external vendors in this area have only a bit more than 200,000 customers worldwide. It sounds like a lot, but if we consider the total number of companies in the entire world, the figure is indeed miniscule (In the United States alone, there are more than 1.3 million companies).

Regardless of what technology you use today, there is a digital solution for each one of you. Email, Microsoft Office and Cloud based solutions have gone a long way to reduce the number of letters and papers. The last step in this process involves digitalizing the legally binding information, exchanged between two parties – this can either be between the customer and the supplier or between two internal departments that need a legally binding signature by an employee. So, the technology is there.

Courts around the world have deemed that digitally signed documents are legally binding – and often easier to prosecute in case of disputes. Instead of having simply a physical signature, now, you can capture the signer name, email, IP address, geo-location and a variety of other information, depending on the solution.

The most simplistic way to digitally sign a document is by pressing a specific “Sign” button. This initiates a sequence of activities by the e-signing software that stores your email, IP address, date and time and potentially other parameters. These are appended to the document, which via the provider, constitutes a legally binding signature. The most complex method involves downloading an app or software, prompting you to authenticate yourself, and then signing documents from within the software.

There are so many reasons for going 100% digital. The 3 most important ones are:

1. Efficiency Gains – save time, automatic storing, activate business logic, etc.
2. Financial Savings –save $8,000 for every 100 office workers (based on US numbers)
3. Sustainability – save 1.2 trees per office worker per year

As per this calculation, US will be able to save 1.5 billion US dollars and 90 million trees – if all their companies go digital. As every company is working to produce more with less, going paperless is the next natural step, as we already have the technology for it.

About the author

Sogeti Labs

SogetiLabs gathers distinguished technology leaders from around the Sogeti world. It is an initiative explaining not how IT works, but what IT means for business.

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