Telephony Magazine: "E-Signatures get SaaSy with EchoSign"

The January 2009 issue of Telephony magazine has a great profile of EchoSign and our success with global telecom powerhouse British Telecom (BT).  The online version is here and we're also profiled in the January print edition of "The Best and Worst of 2008". 

BT noted that they'd shaved 2 days off their book-to-bill process for tens of thousands of contracts a month using EchoSign.  That's simply a huge ROI:

"When it comes to electronic signatures, the biggest innovation isn't in the technology — which has been around for years — but in finding a way to use them.

Credit, then, BT's small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) division not only for figuring out how to use a Web-based electronic signature solution to speed up how it closes deals with customers, but for starting to market the same solution as a software as a service (SaaS).

The solution, from vendor EchoSign, takes much of the complexity out of e-signatures — which typically require users to install software behind a firewall, deal with certificate issuers and more — and turns them into an on-demand, Web-based offering. It integrates with e-mail and even Salesforce.com for back-and-forth workflow, making it easy for buyer and seller to manage the electronic signing process ....

BT's SMB division uses the EchoSign solution internally for signing service contracts of 500 pounds and above, which represents tens of thousands of contracts per month, said Chris Lindsay, general manager of business applications for BT. “We've definitely noticed a speeding up of getting business closed,” he said. “Our book-to-bill time has come down significantly, from about 48 hours previously to within 42 minutes.”

BT also sells EchoSign to its SMB customers as a service, under the name BT E-Signature. One of its biggest marketing channels is using the service to close a deal with a customer, who then becomes intrigued with the solution. “It's not typically something where customers wake up in the morning and say, ‘I need an electronic signature tool,’” Lindsay said. “But they experience our program and become intrigued and interested in how they can adopt the technology and use it themselves.”

BT resells EchoSign alongside a variety of SMB services, Lindsay said. They have had the most success selling the service to lawyers, who appreciate and understand the automation of the contract-signing process ....

“We're all about making signatures — and ultimately sales — as frictionless as possible.”