EchoSign Brings Multi-Language Support to e-Signatures
by Bill Ives
Last year I reported on how EchoSign provides e-signing to take out last analog vestige in business processes. Recently. I spoke with EchoSign CEO, Jason Lemkin to get an update. Jason said that signers using EchoSign can now electronically sign documents in their native language, despite what language the contract was sent in. The product supports a variety of European languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and others. Here is a sample screen with the directions in German.
Jason said this enhancement is primarily targeted at English-based countries doing global business. Seventy percent of EchoSign revenue comes from US based companies and those outside the US are primarily in the UK and AustraIia. However, many of these countries are increasingly doing business in non-English speaking countries. EchoSign how provides versions where all the directions, guidance, and disclosure information are in multiple languages. They also allow for the signature, itself, to be in the alphabet fonts of the signer as you can see below.
They are also providing capability of mobile devices such as iPad. This allows for virtual signatures but also provides the capability for in-person signatures in the field on on-line documents. He said about ten percent of their customers want e-signatures to occur in person.
What are the stats on e-signature? The Aberdeen Group recently published a report that reinforces the effectiveness of e-signatures as a sales tool. According to the report, users of e-signatures are more successful than other companies in reducing sales cycle times on a year-over-year basis. Aberdeen also found that companies who employ e-signatures for renewals have a 91% customer retention rate, compared with 78% for industry average.
Jason said that their own stats indicate that in the first six months of this year their 20,000 customers and 2,000,000 users achieved an average time from first click to signature on an order of 70 minutes. Typical times without an e-signature capability are measured in weeks as physical documents move back and forth.
Here is an idea that makes a lot of sense. As I wrote before it takes on the last vestige of the analog world in the digital economy. Here is a video demo.
