EchoBlog - The Latest From EchoSign

Andrew Flusche, Esq.: "E-Signatures Are Quick, Legal and Easy"

Almost everyone approaching e-signatures for the first time has the same basic question: "are they legal?"

The simple answer, as most of the small but dedicated cadre of readers of EchoBlog well know, is "absolutely".  Electronic contracting broadly speaking has been done since the 19th century and the days of the telegraph.  Fast forward to today, where the majority of taxpayers file with an e-signature.  And for businesses, things got more interesting when the U.S. passed the Federal E-Sign Act of 2000 (along with similar laws in many other countries), which gave e-signatures for business transactions the exact same legal force as written signatures.  Gartner wrote in a recent comment that the legal status of e-signatures is a "non-issue".

And EchoSign is the only leading e-signature service actually founded by corporate attorneys!

But sometimes, it still feels better to hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak.  Attorney Andrew Flusche had a great piece we recently noticed:

"Aside from personal liability, another popular contract topic is e-signing. It’s a quick, legal way to execute your business and personal contracts.

E-signature law

The basic law of contracts is that a contract is binding if the parties agree to its terms. Signatures signal that the parties agreed. But you don’t have to sign your full name in ink on paper.

The federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Acts solidified the validity of e-signing your contracts. This Act basically says that electronic signatures are valid in the form that the contracting parties agree to. But the Act also allows you to opt out of electronic signatures.

Notably, some states have also passed laws regarding e-signing. But electronic signatures are essentially valid in all 50 states.

Echo-Sign

For my contracts, I love using Echo-Sign. With Echo-Sign’s software, I can send out a contract and have it fully signed by all parties in 5 minutes. It’s a great way to get e-signatures fast.

To use Echo-Sign, you just upload a document that you want signed. Then you input the email addresses for the people that need to sign it. When you’re ready, you simply click “send.”

Echo-Sign will email each person, asking for his/her signature on the document. Once each party has e-signed, Echo-Sign automatically emails a final copy to everyone.

If this isn’t cool enough, you can even review and sign contracts from a mobile device, like an iPhone, Palm, or Windows Mobile phone. If a client signs a contract while I am on-the-go, I get a message from Echo-Sign on my Motorola Q. I can quickly sign the contract myself without needing access to a regular computer.

Speeding up business

As you can see, electronic signatures are just one way to speed up routine business. They facilitate quicker contracts, which means you can get more agreements done in less time.

For a busy attorney like myself, e-signatures save crucial time which lets me focus on serving clients even better. Whatever your occupation, I highly recommend trying the free version of Echo-Sign. You’ll be glad you did."

SharedSpaces Integrates EchoSign

We're pleased to note that EchoSign partner Sharemethods launched today SharedSpaces -- private, interactive workspaces for creating, managing and sharing content and files with individuals and partners throughout an organization's ecosystem in a controlled and secure environment. Sharemethods' customers include BusinessWeek, C|Net/CBS, and many other leaders in technology.

EchoSign is natively integrated into SharedSpaces, so any collaborative document a SharedSpace can be instantly sent for electronic review, signature, and archive.

67.4% of the Fortune 500 Use EchoSign

There's nothing like a spurious yet still accurate statistic to stir some thinking.

Based on a quick analysis across our userbase, 67.4% of the Fortune 500 (or at least the Fortune 500 as of 1/31 - some change there of late) have used EchoSign.

What does this mean?  Given how easy it is to use web services like EchoSign, it does not -- of course -- mean we've completely conquered corporate America.  While we're extremely proud of our Fortune 500 customers like Dell, GE, Time Warner, SAP, HP, etc. etc., the reality is e-signatures are just beginning to enter the mainstream of corporate contracting processes.

But what it does speak to is the trend, which is really just beginning to take off in 2009, of making your contracting and signature processes just as simple, just as easy and, most importantly, just as web-based, as your other business processes.

It's starting.  2009 will be the year web-based signatures begin to go mainstream.  2010 will be the year the momentum really grows.  And by 2016, people will wonder, and even laugh at, the notion that in the old days, people used to have to use fax, snail mail, or a fedex to sign things.  Not tomorrow.  But it's coming, and happening, and accelerating, now.

Fix the Paper Hole

One of the most gratifying things about being in our fourth year of taking the pain out of paperwork is that our customers can pretty much explain everything about our vision, mission, value proposition and goals better than we can.

We missed this recent post on Chris Brogan's widely-followed blog, but it really nailed what we are about.  Interestingly, 7 of the commenters on the post turned out to be our customers and recommended us as the solution to the Paper Hole:

"I’ve got a problem. As a professional speaker and someone running an online marketing agency, I am often in a situation where someone sends me a contract to sign. Makes sense. LOTS of businesses run on contracts. Here’s the thing: I’m a digital nomad. I rarely visit the office. I don’t have printers and fax machines. Think about it.

The Process

1. Someone sends me something to sign in email.
2. I look at the email for days.
3. I plead to just send an email signature.
4. Seven reminder emails later, I find my way to Staples (or *.placewithprintersandfaxes)
5. I print the form/contract.
6. I sign the form/contract.
7. I dig into my iPhone email to find the fax number, can’t.
8. I email the person to remind me of their fax number.
9. I listen to bad in-store music and make small talk with the Copy Center person, who hates everyone.
10. I get the email.
11. I dial the fax number.
12. It takes four tries.
13. The fax goes through.
14. Weeks later, the process is complete.

It’s 2009

Can we please stop the paper thing? Isn’t there another way?

I know there’s not, but if nothing else, I feel better for explaining why you’re still waiting for me to sign whatever it is"

LOL.  This is about 10x better than our "ugh with the fax" video from early 2006 - thank you Chris.

It also shows we have to continue to get the word out as he'd never heard of us.  But fortunately, 7 of our customers reached out in the comments and singled EchoSign out as the solution to this mess.  To Chris -- thank you for the great 2009 update of our value prop.  To our customers -- thank you for the support.

Reflections on the Pacific Crest On-Demand Conference

Our CEO (second from the right) was part of a spirited panel last week on "SaaS in Difficult Times" together with SaaS leaders NetSuite, Opsource, Cornerstone OnDemand, Xactly and Eloqua.

It was a candid session where leading CEOs were very frank about the impact of the economy on their companies.  The challenges in the global economy -- and thus with our customers -- were contrasted with Salesforce.com having officially crossed $1,000,000,000 in annualized revenue that day.

A few themes emerged:

• SaaS leaders were not seeing much of an impact on "net adds", or the rate at which they added new customers, generally speaking.  Customers are still flocking to SaaS over more expensive and complicated on-premise solutions.
• Larger, enterprise deals were seen as a sweet spot, with many leaders buying more and taking advantage of the downturn to lock in longer-term, discounted deals with SaaS vendors
• The mid-market was seen as the tough spot at least for seat-based business models, where customers may be happy, but downsizing simply leads to buying less seats
• Sales cycles are much longer
• Every SaaS company was planning for slower growth in 2009+, which interestingly, is leading to greater profitability.  Without so much expense for sales and marketing front-loaded to fuel maximum growth, it's much easier for recurring-revenue models to grow their cash bases by growing more moderately. 

It was a terrific discussion.  As a highly related reminder, if you are an EchoSign Enterprise customer -- try our anonymous, opt-in benchmarking.  You'll be able to track in real-time, and over time, just how the sales cycles and close rates are of your peer group.  Our SaaS group's sales cycles have grown 64% since November 2008, for example.  Interested to track this type of data over time?  Just join a peer group on the Admin tab of your account.

Two Years of 100% 24x7x365 Transparent Uptime Data

We just noticed that March 2009 marks our 2 year anniversary of providing an industry-first 100% transparent uptime system at http://trust.echosign.com

In those 2 years, we've learned a lot.  Our initial inspiration was Salesforce.com, which launched trust.salesforce.com to show uptime about 2 years ago.  Though in fact, the tracking there is actually somewhat limited, with outages less than 15 minutes, and scheduled downtime, not tracked.  Google for example only just followed with Gmail and Apps uptime status in the past few weeks.

We've gone to the extreme since early 2007, with 2 years of full data, including scheduled downtime.

Why?  The simple answer is because we had to be.  Closing deals, signing contracts, is a mission-critical business process. 

You have the right, and should demand, full transparency from all SaaS and web services vendors for the applications you depend on.  Almost no web-based application can truly deliver 100% uptime, 24x7x365.  But you deserve to know in real-time if there are issues, and historically, what the issues have been, why they occurred, and how they were addressed.

"Success is built on trust. And trust starts with transparency."

American Lung Association: "We Love EchoSign Electronic Signature"