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.
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