Even before the pandemic hit the world, the rationale and openness toward e-signatures were getting intense. 

• In 2020 the global e-Signing market had reached between $2.3 and $2.8 billion, and many estimates point to a $4.5-5 billion market by 2023 and $14 billion by 2026. 
• Fortune Business Insights, for instance, reckoned that the global digital signature market would grow from $4.05 billion in 2022 to $35.03 billion in 2029. 
• Allied Market Research puts this market size at $61.91 billion by 2030. 

Further- with increased impetus from the government in various forms- this space will rise exponentially shortly. Especially with the government pushing on e-verification, smart ID/ card readers, smooth pass, biometric signatures, and a one-time password KYC possibility for many contracts. 

Why Should Enterprises Embrace Electronic Signatures Now? What are the Opportunities and Challenges Here?

India and China have already passed regulations for legal frameworks for e-signatures. There is also a regulation in Europe for electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions. Deloitte has also argued that the advent of highly secure solutions and adapting regulation should drive adoption across most sectors of the Financial Services industry, incidentally, an industry that will be the fastest-growing over the 2023-2026 period.

Additionally, there is a significant shift towards decentralization and digitalization in many businesses, making it crucial for contract lifecycle management or  CLM to fall in step soon. If contract lifecycle management (CLM) does not match the speed, workflow efficiency, and transparency that e-signatures enable, there is no point in digitizing contract lifecycle management (CLM). And with the capability to allow electronic signatures, the impact of contract lifecycle management (CLM) rises manifold.

It is becoming more accessible and easier to move towards digital signatures. Today, there are solutions for everything in the spectrum of electronic signatures – from Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and trust services to digital identities, signing capabilities, and validation services. 

How do electronic signatures help documents and contracts?

Whenever an enterprise makes a pivot towards e-signatures, it embraces a lot of advantages:

• Better and faster authentication 
• Control for security-sensitive industries like BFSI and manufacturing
• A secure way of storing and tracking documents – which helps CLM in a significant way
• Assurance of non-repudiation of data
• High acceptance of digital signatures in internal processes or communication in enterprises 
• Enhanced operational efficiency – and, thus, reduction in cost
• Better contract productivity and efficiency
• Less spend on paper, printing, and postage costs
• Ability to integrate workflow in a hybrid and remote workplace format
• Lesser processing, recording, archiving, and reduced resource expenses in CLM
• Enhanced ability to avoid data breach 
• Improvement of reliability of communications with business partners as well as internal processes for verticals like BFSI, retail, and SMEs
• Advanced workflow management, identity verification, or document management functionalities
• Swifter- yet secure- validation of communication between both parties
• Reduced incidence of fraud in transactions and conversations
• Blockchain-led transferability, integrity, and non-tampering of data
• Faster client onboarding or user authentication- thanks to higher levels of trust in the identification 
• Common standards trusted by parties outside the organization (such as suppliers and customers).

How to make sure e-signatures help you?

All these advantages listed above transpire only when the right solution is chosen and implemented in a way that understands on-ground realities. Many considerations are vital to ensure that e-signatures accelerate and amp-up contract lifecycle management (CLM). It all boils down to the solution that an enterprise picks. It’s better to choose something with the following:

• Strong rigor on compliance
• Fast auditing of CLM results and workflows
• Sharp reporting of CLM aberrations
• Easy but solid documentation
• Intuitive and simple interfaces 
• Support for broader contract lifecycle requirements
• Strong integration capabilities
• Capabilities for specialist business applications
• Adequate functional coverage and integration tools

When you have the best possible partner to help you, you can create wonders by marrying contract lifecycle management (CLM) and e-signatures. These leaps will make handling documents easy, fast, and simple, adding security, control, transparency, and contract agility to your complete contract lifecycle management (CLM) process.

With the rise in cyber-attacks, data thefts, and storage costs of documents today- e-signatures are more than a back-burner choice now. They have come to the forefront. Use them smartly to get a front foot in contract lifecycle management (CLM).

Learn more about managing risks, enforcing contractual rights, improving compliances, and drive performance with world-class CLM consulting services. Talk to our experts today.