eSignature Workflows: The Next Chapter of Signing

The Signature Was Never Really the Point.

Rocky the Raptor here. I have a confession from someone who has spent a lot of time around electronic signatures: the signature was never really the point.

Think about the last important document you signed. Perhaps it was an employment agreement, insurance application, engagement letter, loan document, or customer contract. The business objective wasn't to capture the squiggle representing your signature. 

The objective was to get you and often several other people through a process. First, prove you are you, then review some information, fill in the blanks, perhaps upload something, consent to certain terms, initial something particularly important, sign, route the package to the next person, and then preserve the completed record so everyone can later prove what happened.

That's a Workflow

For years, the technology industry called this “eSignature” because replacing the pen was the innovation everyone could immediately understand. Paper arrived, someone signed it, and electronic signature software made that happen digitally. 

But our expectations have moved considerably beyond digitizing the pen. Blame the iPhone, Amazon, and now - AI. Modern applications have trained us not to study instructions but to be guided through an experience. We expect software to know what happens next, present the appropriate information, collect what is required, and move the process forward without making us think very hard about the machinery underneath.

Business Users Now Expect the Same from Signing

A modern eSignature process may begin by authenticating someone's identity through email, SMS, or stronger identity verification. It can present forms dynamically, require specific information, route documents among multiple parties in sequence or parallel, capture approvals and consent, apply business rules, send reminders, and ultimately assemble the documents, signatures, authentication events, and audit evidence into a defensible transaction record. The signature is simply one event in the middle.

Interestingly, the technology analyst community appears to be recognizing this evolution formally. IDC named RPost a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide eSignature Software 2023 Vendor Assessment. IDC evaluated providers on both capabilities and strategies, and its published assessment highlighted RSign's feature richness, ease of use, enterprise capabilities, integrations, security, and authentication. 

Now, the category itself is evolving. IDC's next assessment, expected shortly, is being reframed around eSignature Workflows. RSign® is again included in the assessment; we'll have more to say about the results after IDC publishes them 😊  

I like this new terminology because it better describes what businesses are actually buying. Consider employee onboarding. HR doesn't need an electronic signature; it needs the new employee identified, information collected, policies acknowledged, agreements signed, records distributed, and the entire process documented. Or consider a professional-services engagement. The firm may need to confirm the client, gather information, obtain consent, execute an engagement letter, route internal approvals, and preserve evidence. Insurance applications, healthcare consents, financial transactions, real-estate documents, and customer onboarding all follow variations of the same pattern.

The Value isn't the Signature; It’s Getting Everyone Safely Through the Process 

This is where RSign's evolution within RPost becomes interesting. RSign combines eSignatures with forms, authentication, routing, templates, audit trails, and integrations, while the broader RPostONE™ platform can bring in RMail® secure and provable communications, RForms™ data collection, RDocs® intelligent content controls, and RAPTOR™ AI cybersecurity and automation. 

RSign can also integrate signing processes with other business applications rather than forcing users to rebuild how they work. IDC's earlier assessment specifically noted RSign's ability to use document tags to automatically create signing and fillable fields and to move data between documents and other applications. That matters because workflow technology succeeds when people barely notice it.

The best digital transaction doesn't make the signer admire the sophistication of the software. It simply says: Here is what we need from you and here is what comes next - Complete. Confirm. Consent. Sign. Done.

Twenty years ago, eliminating the pen felt revolutionary. Today, that's table stakes. The next chapter of eSignature is about orchestrating the journey around the signature and making that journey elegantly easy, secure, affordable, and provable. 
Turns out, the signature was only one step along the way!

You might also like