EchoBlog - Electronic Signature Solutions

EchoSign Powering IronBrides.TV

2008-11-17T16:27:51-08:00

At EchoBlog, we are big fans of Lost (or at least we were until they wrote off Mr. Echo), Star Trek (paperless office circa 23rd century), and The Office (because, no joke, this is really why we started EchoSign in the first place).

But we have to admit we come up a bit short in reality TV. We haven't caught up with Survivor since season 1, and we haven't even seen Dancing with the Stars yet.

So we wanted to thank IronBrides for re-introducing us to the unbridled joys of the genre.

It turns out IronBrides is using EchoSign to power all the waivers for its contestants for Season 2. Which strikes us as a rather important contract, given that you're putting your life history out for millions to watch. One could imagine a small potential for regrets.

Our favorite IronBrides contestant is Emily Larson - you can see her audition and about a dozen others here. After watching this video, we do feel like we know her quite well. But frankly, all the brides-to-be are great.

IronBrides - thank you for choosing EchoSign!

EchoSign 4.0 Launches: Close More. Worry Less.

2008-11-17T13:23:54-08:00

It is with great pride and pleasure we announce the launch of EchoSign 4.0 -- probably the greatest upgrade to EchoSign since our launch in 2005. The release encompasses over 600 new features, the vast majority driven by you. Three feature though will jump out at you -- Benchmarking, Real-Time Deal Alerts, and Team Reports.

A video tour is below, and after the jump, more detail.

TechDirt: "EchoSign Sparks Sales"

2008-11-10T17:27:15-08:00

TechDirt and SocialMedia Today just put out a very interesting study and survey on how businesses are using Sales 2.0 tools to spark sales.

The top categories of tools, were of course, CRM/SFA (e.g.., Salesforce.com) and Web Conferencing (e.g., WebEx).

Knowledgment Management (e.g., wikis), Prosecting and Lead Generation tools came next, as one might expect.

The #6 category though was a new one - ours. "Document and Signature Management".

The eight most used social applications for Sales 2.0 were then listed -- leaders (and EchoSign customers) including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Jigsaw ... and your very own EchoSign. We're very pleased to be included since the applications were all self-reported by the respondents. Given that our reach is still not quite the equal of Facebook, it shows we are beginning to deeply penetrate the Sales 2.0 community,

While EchoSign is not a collaboration tool traditionally defined, it clearly shortens sales cycle times -- one of the key areas of interest of the respondents.

The change is coming. You are on the vanguard, and we thank you. In 5 years, the majority of deals will be closed electronically.

Fortune 500 First American: "With EchoSign, Our Days of faxing contracts back and forth are over"

2008-11-05T15:10:14-08:00

On the heels of this year's annual Dreamforce conference (more here in another post), It was terrific to that see Salesforce.com is now prominently featuring EchoSign in its corporate democenter, as the showcase partner app for salesteams.

Featured by Salesforce.com at the left is Fortune 500 First American: "With EchoSign for AppExchange, our days of faxing contracts back and forth for signature are over."

Which brings up an interesting question: do electronic signatures replace fax? The answer turns out to be "yes -- and also clearly no."

First American's quote is telling when they talk about faxing contracts back and forth.

Fax, broadly, speaking is used for two things:

1. A quiescent service that receives unstructured documents. Here, an electronic signature clearly does not replace a fax. Even in 2008, most every business card has a fax number (mostly likely an electronic fax) printed on it. Why? Because that number can wait, like a phone number or email address, and receive a document any time, anywhere. The bottom line is, electronic signatures are in no way a replacement for a fax number that quietly waits to receive documents, 24x7x365.

2. A technology to exchange documents. Here, by contrast, fax's limitations are showing their age in this on-demand world. Faxing back and forth requires at least one party typically to have, and find, a traditional POTS fax machine (a large pain). It also introduces anxiety into the sales process, because the process lacks visiblity. Was the fax sent? Did it go through? Did the customer get it? If they got it, was it mangled? Hence, the classic sales rep calling the customer again and again: "Bob, it's Dan. Did you get the fax?"

So back to First American's quote: their days of faxing back-and-forth (emphasis added) are over. Used as a one-way, passive service to transmit an analog document from one party to another, an electronic fax cannot be beat, even by email. But as a way to close a deal quickly, in hours or even minutes, between two parties, faxing contracts back and forth is clearly an exercise in frustration in our web-focused world.

So the reality is that most businesses can dramatically benefit from having both services.

An electronic signature will not replace the fax number on your business card.

But it can bring your contracting time down from weeks to minutes, and by making it easier for your customers to sign, increase your sign rates. And thus quite clearly your revenue.

This is one reason we've intergrated the market leader in electronic fax into our service. It's also why we offer an option for fax signatures if your signer prefers that over an e-signature.

So we challenge those who claims electronic signature are truly a wholesale replacement for fax (or FedEx). But for "faxing contracts back-and-forth" ... bank on that being done primarily by e-signatures by the middle of this decade.

RightScale: "EchoSign is Our Favorite Cloud Service -- Besides Our Own"

2008-10-28T16:47:22-07:00

It's difficult these days to click anywhere on the web without running into some discussion of the Cloud. It's always nice when someone takes a somewhat complex notion (applications and technology run entirely on someone else's platform, servers and services) and simplifies it into a catchphrase.

It was great to see EchoSign Team customer and cloud management pioneer RightScale's CEO and Founder Michael Crandell highlight us on this week's Cloud Computing Show as their favorite cloud service ... besides their own:

"Beyond us, let me throw out a shout out to EchoSign - a SaaS-based cloud service that automates agreements and the electronic signing of agreements. It eliminates a lot of the hassle around faxing agreements back and forth or emailing scanned signatures ... Check it out - it's a great service!"

Thank you again to RightScale for picking EchoSign.

Contracts in the Cloud. You'll see a lot more on this theme from us in 2009.

Electronic Signatures and E-Contracting: Like Digital Photography in 2001

2008-10-20T14:43:45-07:00

Perhaps the #1 question we get from analysts and the press is "Why Now?" Electronic signatures have been deemed equivalent to written signatures since 2000 under the Federal E-Sign Act, and over 50% of tax returns for example, are now electronically signed. But the revolution, for the most part, hasn't yet come to most average businesses (EchoSign's 8,000 customers and 500,000 users ... and our competitors ... aside) -- yet.

Our answer (and it took us some time to figure this obvious point out): "Because We're Finally Ready".

The legal framework was adopted in 2000, but the business framework wasn't there yet. On-demand e-signatures require, at the end of the day, on-demand businesses to use them. In 2001, very few business were run on the web. Today, the majority of business are. Doubt e-signatures at your peril, as it is natural and probably even obvious to expect that over the coming 4-5 years, substantially all contracts will be signed over the web as well.

The analogy that we are now seeing is to digital photography. The adoption of the .JPG and .TIFF and similar formats were helpful. But it took all the way until 2001 and the advent of cost-effective 2mp and 3mp digital cameras until digital photography began to first take off, achieving a 10% market share. Today, seven years later, far more than 95% of photographs are digital -- and the entire world of photos has changed along with the market share. Indeed, now the vast majority of photos are never printed. 100% digital Facebook and Flickr have surpassed Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly, Snapfish and the other photo sites originally based on printing to become the #1 and #2 sites measured by photos uploaded -- without any connection to the analog photo world.

Something similar is starting to happen in the contract world. The PDF format started it for documents in general. But there's no easy way for two parties to legally sign a PDF document. Now, services like EchoSign finally enable any on-demand business to close any deal on the web, in minutes.

Much like other macro-trends, this one can be hard to see except with hindsight. It was unclear in 2001 if a 2mp $450 digital camera could really replace a $90 film-based camera, especially when Costco and Walmart could develop 24 or 36 shot rolls for as little as $10. But that 2001 view was too static, and missed the point. The ability to store, view, search, touch-up, take unlimited shots at no costs ... and most importantly, email and share photos ... destroyed the 2001 view of photography and made digital photography far more than 10x better than film-based photography for almost every user.

At EchoSign, we are seeing a similar pattern. Our customers in 2005 and 2006 were mostly early adopters, those that also went for a digital camera in 2001. Our customers in 2007 and 2008 are dominated by a combination of leaders in on-demand and established enterprises that could invest the time to understand the business benefits of electronic signatures and a 100% digital contracting process. And into 2009 and 2010, we'll see the 10% tipping point for digital contracts that we saw in digital photography in 2001, with the rise of the bread-and-butter web-focused SMB as the core user.

By 2013, we will look back and be amazed that in 2008 people were willing to wait days or weeks to get a contract signed (and revenue in the bank). We'll be amazed that people used to lose contracts months or years down the road because they weren't automatically archived the moment they were signed. We'll be amazed -- simply amazed -- that people thought in 2008 they could afford to risk losing a customer by waiting for that fax or FedEx to come back. And we'll scratch our heads in disbelief that people ever even thought that an analog contracting process was even worth the trouble -- like taking a trip to Walmart today to process a roll of film.

It won't happen for every business overnight. But the interesting thing is that it is happening now. The days when 95% of contracts are signed electronically will take longer than we'd like (as the web's #1 e-signature solution, we'd like to accelerate the timeframe here) ... but will come faster than most expect ...

Fortune 1000 Dun & Bradstreet: "Our Reps Love, Love, Love EchoSign"

2008-10-16T15:01:00-07:00

We wanted to highlight and thank Dun & Bradstreet for a terrific review of EchoSign.

Our favorite part (as you can see from above) is how much the sales reps love it.

There's no point in buying a fancy solution if the end users don't take to it.

Our goal is improve the contracting experience 10x for every user of EchoSign -- senders; signers; and managers.

5.0 out of 5

One of the best App experiences ever!
10/16/08 by Sahar @ D&B Canada

Three words: Fast, Effective, Inexpensive! We had been looking for a reliable contract management tool for a while & after talking to a few potential vendors, we were firm in our decision to go with EchoSign for multiple reasons; They offer a very competitive price, the tool is fantastic & time-saving AND the representatives at EchoSign are by far one of the best group of people that I have had the pleasure of working with! We had regular touch points, they were very proactive and followed up on a regular basis and our reps Love, Love, LOVE the tool! They love the fact that they can send reminders, keep track on the status of their contracts and best of all --> Save time. I'm very happy we went with this solution and recommend it to anyone out there looking to launch this as part of their total Contract Management package within SalesForce!

Come See TimeWarner Cable on EchoSign at Dreamforce 2008

2008-10-16T11:04:00-07:00

If you are attending Dreamforce 2008, please come join TimeWarner Cable in the Oh-Zone Customer Success Theatre.

Fortune 500 TimeWarner will be speaking on EchoSign, Salesforce.com, and the results they've demonstrated using us.

This will be our third Dreamforce (thank you to Bluewolf for sponsoring us there), and we especially look forward to it as a time to connect with existing customers like TimeWarner in person, and share learnings and best practices. Please come by and join us in the Expo Hall if you are attending.

EchoSign Customers Come up Big in IACCM's 'Most Admired Global Companies' In Contract Management

2008-10-09T10:21:49-07:00

The IACCM - the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management - just published its list of the "'Most Admired Global Companies In Contract Management. The IACCM is the leading nonprofit association dedicated to improving the contract management process, with over 1,600 corporate members.

EchoSign customers made a very strong showing in the Global 25, with EchoSign Enterprise customers British Telecom, Hewlett Packard, and Qualcomm all making the Top 10.

We are proud to be a part of dramatically improving the contracting process of so many global leaders. And we are especially proud to bring those same benefits to you - no matter what the size of your business.

Fortune 500 Qualcomm Joins EchoSign's Weekly Webinar

2008-10-04T20:12:29-07:00

We're extremely pleased that Mark Silber of Qualcomm recently joined our weekly webinar. You can hear from Mark himself by pressing "Play" on the Google Video below.

This webinar follows on the heels of Qualcomm winning CRM Magazine's 2008 CRM Elite Award for its implementation of Salesforce.com and EchoSign.

We're extremely appreciative of Mark and Qualcomm joining our family of global leaders in the communications sector, including customers BT, XO, Comcast, TimeWarner, Alltel, ACS, and dozens of others.

"5 Ways eSignatures Transforms Your Sales Teams

Join us to hear about how eSignatures changed Qualcomm Technology - a leading wireless technology and service provider – by boosting revenue and accelerating the sales cycle. Addressing companies of all sizes, join us to get 5 strategies on how eSignatures can transform your business by:

Substantially increasing sales productivity by automating contract management between Legal, Sales and Customer Service
Real-time visibility into all contracts
Decreasing costs by easily integrating with your CRM, like Salesforce.com
Eliminating clerical errors and cycle times with automated data filing, storage, and management
Foolproof roll-out and immediate company-wide adoption

Featured Presenters:

Mark Silber had over 10 years of experience as a consultant working with customer service applications at large companies before joining the IT department at Qualcomm in 2004. Prior to his current role as IT Systems Architect, Mark was an IT Manager at Qualcomm responsible for the sustainment of numerous on-premise deployments of CRM. He has since led the successful replacement of the original on-premise CRM applications with Salesforce.com and now drives the ongoing success and expansion of Salesforce at Qualcomm across various business units. Mark has a very deep understanding of the Salesforce application and platform and has spoken at various events, including Dreamforce, Salesforce City Tours and a SSPA sponsored webinar."

Q3 Ends With Huge EchoSign Activity

2008-10-01T10:43:49-07:00

For the moment, your guess on where the economy will go is as good as ours. Most likely better, in fact, given that EchoSign is somewhat unrepresentative of the country as a technology company based in Silicon Valley.

However, all across the globe, we saw a dramatic uptick in activity yesterday as the quarter closed. Volume on EchoSign always increases toward the end of each quarter, but previously, rather gradually.

This time, however, the quarter ended in a record bang, with almost 20% more contracts sent out on Sept 30 than Sept 29.

The trend repeated itself across the country and the globe -- with approximately the same uptick in Australia and the U.K. as in the U.S., both East Coast (broader industries) and West Coast (more technology), and in between.

In our soon-to-launch Winter Release, the power of much of this data will be exposed to EchoSign customers via optional, opt-in benchmarking. If you want, you will be able to anonymously join benchmarking groups such as SaaS, Recruiting, Telecom, and Telesales and track how you well you are closing as compared to your anonymized peers. More here to follow ... but it will be pretty unique.

Our Commitment to You: Getting it Right

2008-09-25T17:37:16-07:00

When we launched EchoSign almost 3 years ago, we got just about everything wrong -- except the uber-vision. We thought as many of our users would use our fax signatures as our e-signatures. We thought we'd be adopted first by internet-focused professionals looking for next generation web tools. We thought one of our early power users might be assistants, who would be in charge of collecting signatures for an organization.

The bottom line is we got all that quite wrong -- at least in terms of timing. We had very limited early traction with the TechCrunch crowd (though the PR there was great) despite our launch on TechCrunch. Instead, EchoSign first began to spread among sales professionals at organizations of a broad range of sizes. Many of our first users were not cutting edge web developers looking for the next cool app, but businesspeople like our founders looking to solve an important business problem -- the end of the quarter contracting disaster: the misplaced faxes, the "closed" deals that were never signed.

And our "Echo", our automated contract tracking and management piece, turned out not to be used so much by direct reports such as assistants who wanted to share their contracts with their clients or bosses -- but by managers who wanted to track their teams. I.e., in the beginning, our power users used the Echo "down" the org chart to track, not "up" to share.

And we're not sure we had a single assistant using us the first year.

7,500 customers and 450,000 users later, it's gratifying to know we weren't completely wrong. It just took time.

Virtual Assistant Kimberly LeRiche wrote a great piece calling EchoSign one of the 7 great web apps for assistants (after the link / jump below)

"Echo Sign rocks. It will help you get a signature on a contract or other document in a matter of minutes and remain paperless all at the same time. You upload your document into your account and type in the email address of where it’s going. You will then have the option of asking for a written signature or an electronic signature. If you opt for an e-signature, then the other person will be prompted to type in their name and initials and an e-signature with date and time will be added to the document. If you want a written signature, the receiver will be prompted to print the document, sign it, and then fax it to Echo Sign. For both options, the “signed” documents are converted to PDF files and sent to both you and your client ... I used it recently with a client and had a signed contract within a half hour.http://www.echosign.com"

We then noted another group of EchoSigners over at the Virtual Assistant forum:

Sue Caufield at AwesomeAssistant.info: "I've recently started using Echo Sign which allows for an e-signature. It's all virtual, no paperwork to be printed, mailed, or faxed. You can sign up for a limited free account and an e-signature is as binding as a physical one. Check it out!"

Julie Johns at Administrative Data Services: "I agree with Sue, I use Echosign also. It works and it's great!

Maria at Quick Link Virtual Assistant Services: "I also recommend Echo sign. I just started using it. Its quick & easy."

And the list goes on there.

So the uber point on the uber-vision is this: We are 100% committed to doing what it takes to make your contracting process at least 1000% better. For businesses of every size. It turns out, that when we get it right for BT, GE, Dell -- and for Kimberly LeRiche -- then that's something pretty special. And we never quit. The majority of every release of EchoSign is driven by our customers' and users' feedback and requests. If there are places we can improve and you haven't told us -- tell us at ideas at echosign.com.

And look for our Winter release coming soon. It's full of some of your very best and cleverest ideas, and will be the most substantial evolution of EchoSign since launch. Large, medium or small. We're committed to being the easiest-to-use, most convenient electronic signature solution for enterprises of every size.

EchoSign at BigIdeas 2008

2008-09-22T12:52:52-07:00

EchoSign continues to consolidate its role as the dominant electronic signature and signature automation solution for sales teams in general and on the Salesforce AppExchange in particular. We are very proud that all of the leaders in the Salesforce contracting space have integrated EchoSign - CongaMerge, Drawloop, SpringCM, ShareMethods - or partnered with us - DreamFactory and BigMachines. On that note, we're pleased to be participating in BigMachines' annual "Big Ideas" Conference in Chicago October 5-7:

"BigIdeas 2008 provides a forum for customers, partners, industry experts, and interested companies to discuss innovative business strategies and best practices to increase revenues, improve sales efficiency and reduce costs."

That's us.

BT Bundles up EchoSign and SaaS for SMBs

2008-09-18T12:41:02-07:00

ZD|Net had another nice piece highlighting EchoSign as part of BT's efforts to bring SaaS leaders to its millions of SMB customers in the UK and Europe. The piece points out EchoSign as BT's first critical partner in this initiative, along with new partner (and EchoSign customer Genius), and Ribbit voice services (BT's recent acquisition and also an EchoSigner -- see Ribbit's latest five-star review on EchoSign here):

“What we’re looking to do is to fill out solutions around CRM to provide an integrated suite as we move forwards — to allow you to optimize your end-to-end sales process.”

We're proud both to have BT as one of our marquee customers, with over 4,000 sales reps using us there and over $200m in contracts a month signed on EchoSign -- and also as a key partner in their SaaS strategy.

And look for even more innovative combinations from BT and EchoSign in the near future ...

ZD|Net: "EchoSign Takes E-Signatures into the Mainstream"

2008-09-05T19:37:12-07:00

It was our distinct pleasure to participate this week in the third annual Office 2.0 conference.

There was some great coverage. ZD|Net for example highlighted us: "Office (2.0)? No paper. No Problem."

"EchoSign takes e-signatures into the mainstream with behind-the-scenes technology that makes signing a document as easy as typing your name and email address. Literally. We’re talking about documents that range from contracts to loan documents. The demo showed how accommodating the product can be - especially for those who are still leery about the whole digital signature thing. You can add in a password, to ensure that the person signing is the person who should be signing. You can allow people to print, sign and fax in a traditional way - except that the fax goes through EchoSign’s digitization process when it’s sent back, allowing the recipient to track and monitor it online the same as an e-signed document. And if the document has places where it needs multiple signatures or initials, EchoSign takes that into consideration, as well. I can’t imagine doing something like this for the big stacks of paperwork it takes to buy or sell a house, but there are plenty of other scenarios where e-signatures just make sense."

_______________________________________

SparkMinute highlighted us: "Cool - EchoSign - Web application for getting contracts signed quickly. Get them signed digitally, or via fax. I am going to be their next customer. For me, the delay on getting contracts signed is extremely irritating. The conference producer used them to sign contracts with all the sponsors and he said on average all contracts were signed within three hours of receipt. That sold me."

EchoSign Featured in RBC Capital Markets' "Leading On Demand (SaaS) Providers"

2008-08-27T14:39:25-07:00

We were very pleased to be profiled in RBC Capital Markets' second annual "Insights and Best Practices at Leading On Demand (SaaS) Providers".

The report is an in-depth and thoughtful one on the drivers in the SaaS market in the wake of Salesforce pushing through $1 billion in annual revenue and the recent IPO successes of NetSuite and EchoSign customer Successfactors, among others.

One statistic we found particularly interesting was a longitudinal survery about the barriers to SaaS adoption. In quarterly surverys over the past 12 months, the number of RBC contacts and customers who have "No Major Concern" re: SaaS has grown dramatically -- from 26% to 44%. That's a pretty rapid change in the market.

This is 100% consistent with what we are seeing across our customer base. There are fewer and fewer reasons to say "no" to web services that are cheaper, simpler, more flexible and far easier to use and adopt than traditional software solutions.

We thank EchoSign SaaS customers such as Salesforce.com, Successfactors, Taleo, LinkedIn, Bluewolf, Facebook, VerticalResponse, Intacct, Eloqua, and so many others for blazing the path to highly secure, best-of-breed SaaS and web applications.

We're proud to be part of the leaders profiled by RBC.

U.C. Berkeley and EchoSign-for-Nonprofits: "It Helps Us Think Outside the Box"

2008-08-26T10:11:03-07:00

Broadly speaking, we look to Salesforce.com as a model for how to build a best-of-breed SaaS company. One of the many things Salesforce has done so well is provide qualified discounts to nonprofits and not-for-profits.

We're pleased to be in a position to do the same thing. The American Lung Association, for example, recently signed up for EchoSign Enterprise edition and did a terrific write up of how we've turbocharged their contracting process.

Another we are proud of is the University of California . The HR department uses EchoSign to automate its time sheets. Prior to EchoSign, it was taking a week or more before there was any notification that time sheets had been completed. Now, "In 1-2 days, the time sheet process is either complete, or I know who is holding up approval.”

We're pleased they are leveraging not only the "Sign" half of EchoSign (instant e-signatures), but also the "Echo" half -- being able to track and manage the status of all their timesheets in real-time.

More here.

Qualcomm Wins 2008 CRM Elite Award for Deployment of EchoSign and Salesforce.com

2008-08-20T14:37:04-07:00

Congratulations to Qualcomm for winning today The 2008 Elite award from CRM maganize for its "Swifter Connections and Speedier Results with EchoSign and Salesforce.com".

The full award and overview of Qualcomm's success is here.

A quick excerpt: "The process of signing contracts often took longer than a week. The technology team knew there had to be an easier way ..."

Read on for the full story ...

Our ROI Calculator: Instant or You Pay Nothing

2008-08-15T16:49:53-07:00

EchoSign recently crossed 7,000 paying customers and 450,000 users. Enterprises range from the very large, such as the thousands of sales reps using us at British Telecom. To the somewhat smaller, such as the 12-person Real Content Group, LLC, whose EchoSign usage was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal.

One thing we're particularly proud of is that a not a single one of them has asked for an ROI calculator.

Several months back, we did a webinar with two of our customers, SaaS leaders Vertical Response and InsideView. The moderator asked them both how they calculated their ROI from EchoSign. Both gave the same answer. It was instant.

The bottom line is our average customer has brought their "send-to-sign" time down from over 8 days to 42 minutes.

Our commitment is to doing the same or better for you. You should see the ROI on that very first signed contract. Period.

That's why we offer a 100% no cost 30-day trial for our Team and Enterprise editions. And even a limited-use 100% Free edition for low volume users that want to get their feet wet with an electronic signature.

Calculator image courtesy of the Vintage Computer Museum http://www.vintagecalculators.com

EchoSign Comes to South Africa

2008-08-08T14:49:39-07:00

While customs, traditions, and cuisine all change as you cross the globe, there's one headache every nation has in common.

Paperwork.

On that note, we're proud to announce we've added EchoSign fax signatures for South Africa (Cape Town's paperfull IT Department pictured left). S.A. joins our worldwide fax number gateway that includes the U.K., Australia, India, France, The Netherlands, and many others.

EchoSign electronic signatures are fast, slick and by the very nature of the internet, already work globally (though check your local regulations). But for users who use our fax signature option in whole or in part, local fax numbers are often desired.

For our South African users, now go to your Account tab and just change your area code for fax signed documents to South Africa.

EchoSign Named to Official Office 2.0 Setup

2008-08-06T21:03:45-07:00

EchoSign is very pleased to be a charter participant in the 3rd annual Office 2.0 conference, Sep 3-5 at the St. Regis in San Francisco. At the first conference, EchoSign won "Best in Show" and it is one of our favorite events of the year. Please join us there.

Office 2.0 has named its five official applications of its Official Office 2.0 Setup: Salesforce.com, Google/Gmail, Etelos, Veodia -- and EchoSign electronic signature. Good company to keep!

"The Office 2.0 Conference's organization is a paperless enterprise. Here are the tools we are using ....

When including sponsorship agreements signed with sponsors and statements of work signed with service providers, about 100 contracts have to be signed by the multiple parties involved in the Conference's organization. In order to make it paper free and reduce time-to-close, we are using the unrivaled EchoSign, and will be improved this year in order to support the automated generation of documents from templates and the merging of data pulled from Salesforce.com. Earlier this year, the Conference's organizer (Monolab) was inducted into EchoSign's Hall of Fame when signing up as 1,000th paying customer."

We do like the sound of "unrivaled", we must say ...

Triggering Workflows off EchoSign

2008-08-03T14:53:29-07:00

Getting a contract signed is often the most painful part of a business process, and almost always the least automated piece. But it's rarely the final step.

Why not take advantage of the fact that EchoSign automates this previously analog process, and create automated workflows once the deal is signed?

In EchoSign for Salesforce, it's extremely easy -- Salesforce is designed to make it very easy to set up rules upon an event.

But how to do this in the standalone version of EchoSign ... Outlook is one good tool that actually can create nice mini- workflows.

For example, Design for Users here set up a neat workflow whereby once an NDA is signed on EchoSign, a link to a confidential portfolio is automatically sent by email. Outlook can do this because, unlike an electronic fax, EchoSign intelligently titles and labels each signed agreement, e.g. "The NDA with Party A is Signed and Filed."

Outlook in just a couple of clicks can be configured to take a multitude of actions upon receiving an email with "The NDA with ... Sign and Filed" in the title ... including sending back an automated email with a link to another application, such as a VisualCV here.

"Faster Than a Speeding Bullet"

2008-07-28T17:16:41-07:00

We recently completed a detailed customer survey (many in person) and a big thank you to all who participated. It spanned small, medium and large customers across the country and globe, from industries as varied as telecom, real estate development, franchise sales, and software services. We learned a lot which we'll incorporate into our Winter and Spring releases in particular.

But there was one common denominator -- and probably not conincidentally, it also appeared in each of our most recent five-star reviews on AppExchange:

Speed.

We're committed to adding more and more features, workflows, options, analytics and more (a lot more in our Fall release - stay tuned). But no matter how many requests we get, we promise one thing: a 110% commitment to industry-leading ease-of-use, which translates into signing in minutes or even seconds.

Turns out our customers simplify it further. They call it speed.

photo courtesy of Top Gear -- that's the Ariel Atom, 0-60 in 2.4 seconds ... fastest accelerating car on the planet. It has no windshield.

InsideCRM: EchoSign is One of Top 6 Technologies That Complement CRM

2008-07-16T14:29:06-07:00

It was terrific to see InsideCRM, one of the industry's leading sales & marketing properties, highlight EchoSign as "One of 6 Technologies That Complement CRM" [sic]:

"On its most basic level, CRM is a customer database that provides insight into clients and helps you manage relationships with them. Though the abilities of CRM are certainly advantageous, the tool is just one part of the enterprise application picture. There are many available technologies that compliment CRM and boost its capabilities. Some are large enterprise-software packages, while others are smaller tools that can provide an effective way to use CRM ...

6. Electronic Contract Signing: Once a salesperson is ready to close a deal, you don’t want the contract-signing process to take too long and risk the customer having a change of heart. EchoSign Inc. is one company that helps sales reps close deals faster by providing the means to sign documents electronically. What’s more, EchoSign's tool is seamlessly integrated with Salesforce.com, enabling sales to send contracts directly from their Salesforce application."

How We Onboard Our New Hires in 10 Minutes Flat

2008-07-15T12:13:41-07:00

One of our favorite customer questions is "Ok, that's great. But, do you use EchoSign yourself?"

Actually, at this point, we can't survive without it. At EchoSign we've been going through a growth spurt of late, which taxes smaller companies even more than larger ones.

There are 7 documents to be filled out and signed by each new hire, which go to 4 different places to be processed, most of which are electronically signed, but some of which need to be fax signed. And we have no full-time HR manager.

No problem. We can on-board a new hire using EchoSign in about 10 clicks in less than 3 minutes. You can too.

Here's our new hire pack:

* W-4: electronic form - already included for all users on EchoSign
* I-9: electronic form - already included for all users on EchoSign
* Employee Resource Guide: e-signed on EchoSign (stored as form on EchoSign)
* Direct Deposit Form: requires copy of cancelled check, so fax signed on EchoSign, autorouted via a cc to our payroll service (stored as form on EchoSign)
* Medical and Dental Benefits: EchoSigned, then autorouted via a cc on EchoSign to eHealthinsurance (stored as form on EchoSign)
* Confidentiality Agreement: electronically signed on EchoSign (stored as form on EchoSign)
* 401k enrollment: EchoSign and autorouted via a cc to our outside 401k administrator (stored as form on EchoSign).

Best of all, signed copies are automatically stored in EchoSign HR's EchoSign account and the employee's EchoSign account for future reference. No need for employee files or filing.

EchoSign Highlighted on Salesforce.com's Tour de Force

2008-07-14T09:32:39-07:00

We're pleased to note that EchoSign was the featured company in "Insider Tips for SaaS Entrepeneurs" at Salesforce.com's Tour de Force:

"More than 3,000 developers, entrepreneurs, and technologists have attended Tour de Force events in Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Boston in April 2008 and experienced the inspiring keynotes, deep technical breakout sessions, hands-on lab activities and had the chance to meet and learn from the top Force.com experts in the world.

The April cities were just the beginning as we're taking the Tour de Force roadshow across the globe to a city near you. You can track the schedule and latest details on the Tour de Fource microsite."

American Lung Association: "Prior to EchoSign, We Had a System -- But it was Too Cumbersome to Use"

2008-07-09T08:26:02-07:00

We're about to cross 400,000 EchoSigners -- and we still learn something new every day in our dialogues with our customers. Today the American Lung Association put out a nice release on using EchoSign. A portion is reproduced below.

The interesting part is how they explicitly called out switching to EchoSign from an existing online approval system. The ease of use of EchoSign finally enabled them to finally automate 100+ P.O.s a week -- which they couldn't do with their too-difficult-to-use, existing system. We often think of e-signatures as something new, but in fact, one way or another, all EchoSigners are switching from an existing system (be it paper, or fax, or an overly complex online system) to a new one. That's actually asking a lot and we know that -- so we are dedicated to making sure EchoSign signatures and approvals are at least a 10x better, easier, and faster process than what you have today.

The American Lung Association of New England covers six states in the northeast and processes between 100-150 purchase orders per week. The need for electronic signatures was born out of a bottle necked paper-based system that, prior to EchoSign, was bogged down in lengthy approval cycles, and late vendor payments and penalties. Prior to EchoSign there was an online approval system but it required a separate login and was cumbersome to use. Now, using EchoSign, purchase orders can be approved directly from the user's email and can be processed in minutes. In addition, approvers can sign orders remotely so the process runs smoothly even when approvers are offsite.

"As a proponent of clean, healthy air, it just made sense for us to leverage an e-signauture solution to manage our procurement process," said Cathie Arnold, Vice President of Finance & Operations. "EchoSign is easy to use and fit into our existing procurement processes seamlessly. We're always looking for additional ways to use EchoSign and we are planning to use EchoSign for our employee on boarding processes. We're excited to introduce EchoSign to other regional chapters of the American Lung Association."

Cargill Introduces E-Signatures for the 2008 Corn Harvest

2008-06-27T20:28:59-07:00

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.

"With EchoSign, our ROI went from Good to Great!"

2008-06-27T15:29:09-07:00

We appreciate the terrific support we've gotten from Salesforce.com users from AppExchange. Three of our latest 43+ five-star reviews below:

EchoSign Summer '08 Launches

2008-06-24T19:53:22-07:00

We're pleased this evening to have rolled out our Summer '08 release simultaneously to all our 370,000 EchoSigners worldwide.

A lot of the improvements are focused on customizations and enterprise accounts.

A partial summary:

1. One-Click Custom Workflows: See one we use at the left to sign our medical enrollment forms. Now the Send interface can be completely customized for "one click" custom workflows. This feature is limited to 30+ seat accounts - contact your account rep.

2. More Recent Events. Now you can track up to the 30 last events (sending, signing, viewing) of your team -- and even more via our RSS feed.

3. Dynamic Redundant Fax Numbers. At EchoSign we are 110% committed to making sure it always gets signed. Now, if you use our fax signature option (instead of, or combined with, e-sign), we dynamically add a second fax number to the fax cover sheet. The can help with international faxing, and guarantees that no matter what, it gets signed.

4. Fully Customizable Emails. Now, Enterprise customers can upload their own custom header and footer images, as well as footer text, to all EchoSign emails.

And much more. Look for additional updates, and you can see more new features here on our pricing page.

Sosius Integrates EchoSign, Enhances Collaboration

2008-06-24T14:05:15-07:00

We're extremely proud to add Sosius to our list of integration partners and solutions that include the best-of-the-best on the web such as Salesforce.com, WebEx, eFax, Zoho, HR Block Rocketlawyer, and Box.net to name just a few.

Sosius is a team/workgroup product that enables companies to collaborate and work together online. Sosius then becomes the "homepage" for the entire company.

The product does quite a bit in the collaboration space, but from an EchoSign perspective, it adds an interesting enhancement to the document landscape -- permissions-based collaboration. In the example illustrated above, imagine an Employee Handbook that several individuals need to work on together -- and then the whole company needs to sign.

The Handbook can be stored and managed at Sosius for reference in an HR "workspace"; edited via Zoho Writer; and then sent out for signature via EchoSign, all within a Sosius workspace.

The bottom line is our strategy hasn't changed since we launched 2.5 years ago: we want to work the way you work. Work in Word or Excel? Use our standalone web app. Moved to the cloud already with Zoho? Work there. Work in Salesforce? EchoSign-for-Salesforce. Create your contracts in Drawloop, CongaMerge, Sharemethods, or SpringCM? We've got you covered.

CitiGroup Features EchoSign

2008-06-18T10:42:10-07:00

This Friday Citigroup is putting on an "insiders" presentation on Salesforce.com and its platform/ecosystem. EchoSign is featured, along with our customer Intacct, our friends at Appirio, and Cast Iron.

If you're on the Citi mailing list, please join us in this dialogue on how EchoSign helps make Salesforce a competitive differentiator:

"We are hosting a conference call with senior executives from four of Salesforce.com’s partners. We will discuss
Salesforce.com’s AppExchange and the Force.com platform, why the platform
is effective for both partners and CRM, and why it is an important competitive
differentiator. In addition, we will discuss each partner’s success with the SaaS
model and their relationship with Salesforce.com."

The Cloud and the Paperless Office: It Just took 33 Years

2008-06-11T11:35:31-07:00

It's tough to think of a more trite concept than "the paperless office". According to Wikipedia, the term may have been coined in 1975 in a Businessweek article entitled "The Office of the Future".

The failure of the paperless office has been due to one obvious factor -- too much work to get the benefits. In 1975 perhaps it was mimeographing and microficheing. Until very recently, it was scanning, PDF'ing, inputting, tagging, storing, archiving. Too much pain when business works OK today.

But we can tell you that 33 years later, something is finally and truly changing now with our 350,000 EchoSigners, and the reason is a term and concept that may also be trite already, but is just as powerful - "the cloud" and the concept of doing all your computing on the internet.

The traction we are seeing with now thousands of customers and salesteams is based on what's changed on the "front end" of the paperless office - the apps we use to create contracts and track customers. Whether it's using Salesforce.com, Zoho, Gmail, or just plain Windows XP and Internet Explorer ... everyone is working "in the cloud" now, whether they think about it or not. And they don't want to leave.

And by far the clunkiest and most painful part of the document and contract process is execution. It's not that fax and FedEx are bad. I's just that you once you've moved to the PC and the web to create; track (e.g., Salesforce); interact (e.g., WebEx) and manage your customers and business on the web and on your PC -- it's too painful to leave.

The paperless office in 1975 was about analog [create] -> analog [sign] -> digital [store]. But today it's digital -> analog -> digital. Switch the middle to digital with EchoSign. And the entire customer and contracting process can be done in clicks, from the web, anywhere, anytime.

Wall Street Journal: "EchoSign Gets Customers to Say YES!"

2008-05-29T09:27:11-07:00

It was terrific to open up the Wall Street Journal print edition this morning and see EchoSign on page B6. The online version is here.

The Journal did a great piece on three key strategies to get customers to "say yes", and profiled EchoSign and EchoSign customer Real Content Group as one of the 3 key strategies:

"Sales teams at small companies often are outmanned and outspent by larger competitors. Whether it's perks like box seats at a professional sporting event or simply more staff and newer technology, big businesses seem to have an advantage when it comes to wooing potential clients to sign on the dotted line.

But small companies often find creative ways to level the playing field. Here's a look at how three companies get customers to say "yes."

HiDef Web Solutions: "We Can't Imagine Life Without EchoSign"

2008-05-27T21:17:02-07:00

HiDef Web Solutions just put up a terrific piece entitled, "Green Machine: 3 Ways this Albuquerque Web Design Firm is Going Paperless". They highlighted EchoSign, RapidFax, and PayCycle.

We loved their pragmatic and fun approach to going paperless.

"Green development is a huge trend in the business world, with many pundits claiming it’s the next cash cow for early investors. Businesses adopting eco-friendly habits early on are enjoying not only notoriety but also significant morale boosts, bottom-line savings, and long-term profits. Web companies like us are well-positioned to embrace habits that help the environment since our main deliverables are stored as 1’s and 0’s. What tools do we use to turn positioning into practice?

At HiDef we’re not concerned as much about the fringe benefits of going green as much as that warm, fuzzy, 100% organic feeling experienced when we visualize our nearly invisible carbon footprint. So whether you’re looking to save money and time or get a dose of altruistic glee, here are some of the tools we employ to pursue our passion:

1. EchoSign™ - Sign Documents Virtually

We started using EchoSign™ just a few months ago and now can’t imagine life without it. Having independent contractor agreements, non-disclosures, W4s, I9s signed and archived are as easy as a few clicks with absolutely no need for paper waste. The great part is that documents are archived forever on EchoSign’s secure servers and attached to an email as a PDF so you’ll always have a backup copy (which is great for those of us who follow the bad practice of using our email client as a quick file backup utility) ...."