WE’RE all used to doing business on the move. Need to find the location of the meeting? There’s an app for that. Need to reach out to a client? There’s an app for that, too. But need to sign a contract – do you have a pen? And something to lean on?

If this sounds familiar, you should be asking yourself how you can make transacting easier for you and your customers. In fact, the ability to sign documents digitally from anywhere should be standard in today’s business environment where using paper can cost you dearly, in more ways than one.

Not convinced? Here are four ways it pays to go paperless.

Curbing costs

It goes without saying a paperless office will save you money on paper, printing, scanning and postage. But what about the hidden costs of paper, including lost productivity and the potential for paper to go missing or otherwise be destroyed?

The stats are sobering: a lost document is worth, on average, $350 USD ($430 AUD) and according to www.thepaperlessproject.com, more than 70 percent of today’s businesses would fail if they were to lose all their paper documents, in a catastrophic flood for example.

On the flip side, studies show that going paperless with DocuSign eSignatures delivers benefits of more than $36 USD per document, including hard dollar savings, productivity and revenue gains.

Multiplied by thousands or even millions of documents per year, the gains can be huge. Take Microsoft for example. By digitising its processes with DocuSign, it has realised the equivalent of $7.5 billion USD in hard-cost savings per year.

Accelerating business

We all know waiting for paper documents to be signed can take days. Time and effort is wasted in chasing contracts while customers have more opportunity to change their minds.

Using eSignatures can reduce this paperwork burden and help organisations close deals faster. It can also automate routine tasks and slash document errors.

Domain has experienced these benefits firsthand. By digitising its sales agreements, it has reduced contract handling time by 90% and witnessed labour and cost savings of up to $300,000 AUD per year. EzyAccounts has reduced the time to finalise each franchise agreement by up to four hours. And Salesforce, since moving to eSignatures with DocuSign, has witnessed a 30 percent year-on-year growth rate without adding to sales operations staff numbers.

Saving the Environment

Now more than ever, your company’s green credentials hold weight. Consumers value sustainability to the extent that they are willing to pay more for products and services if it means transacting with a company that has a positive environmental policy and record.

No-one is advocating so-called “green-washing”. Companies should and can do more to protect the environment and by going paperless, it’s easy. With the paper industry itself being the fifth largest consumer of energy across the globe, going paperless alone will have an impact on the carbon footprint of any organisation.

Satisfying customers

Satisfied customers mean repeat business and referrals, and the impact of going paperless can be huge when it comes to engaging customers and building competitive advantage.

AstraZeneca reported a 16 percent increase in customer satisfaction by going paperless with eSignatures, and many others have found the digital convenience of eSignatures welcomed by staff and customers alike.

Conclusion

In short, it pays to go paperless. And if time is money, can you continue to afford time spent producing, moving, waiting for, and filing paper?

With DocuSign, your business or organisation can embrace the paperless office (sign up for a free trial here). Its market-leading position in the empowerment of businesses with speedy, efficient, and cost-saving paperless environments mean that whatever your scale, the future’s digital.