Cargill Introduces E-Signatures for the 2008 Corn Harvest

We did a post just recently on why e-signatures are finally taking off, and this latest roll-out by Cargill is a perfect example.

If you are a step or two removed from agribusiness, it may not seem that the 2008 Corn Harvest is ripe for transitions to e-signatures. 

Nothing in fact in 2008 could be further than the truth.  Crops are tracked, traded, bought, hedged and sold the same way Pez is in on eBay - electronically in on-line marketplaces.  Farmers enter into real-time purchase and hedging contracts right on-line.  They can answer and make bids in real-time on on-line marketplaces.

In 2000, the transaction likely started in person, offline.  There, the benefits of e-signature are more modest.

But in 2008, business after business is doing business "in the cloud" -- farmers, eBay merchants, software companies -- everyone.  It just doesn't make sense to leave the digital world to close the deal.

E-signatures aren't replacing FedEx or fax per se.  Rather, they are connecting the dots in electronic commerce 2.0, ensuring that web services and e-businesses are just as efficient when it comes to closing the deal as they are when it comes to attracting, tracking and managing customers.