Go Paperless. Go Green.

Go paperless and go green is the new mantra for today's businesses that want to attain efficiency and speed in their processes. The challenge is to reduce paper dependence, and automate the processes through secure and legal mechanism. It is always difficult for any business to shift away from its traditional model, and mould itself into a new shape. However, in this competitive era, businesses cannot afford to lack behind their peers, they need tools to stay in the race. Therefore, the emergence of digital signatures has proved to be a savior for such businesses. Efficient and affordable, digital signatures are helping these businesses go paperless and green in a secure and legal manner.

Of late, there is a growing momentum around climate change and increasing de-forestation. Therefore, it becomes responsibility of every business to reduce paper dependence, there by saving trees. Digital signatures allow business to contribute to this cause in a successful way. So by going paperless, businesses are not only contributing to their 'commercial' cause, but to the social cause also. Globally laws have been made to make digital signatures and digitally signed documents legally valid. This legal status of digital signatures has enabled governments to shift to paperless environment, reducing response time and maintain process transparency.

Going paperless can help businesses save money, space, and increase productivity, while automating the process for internal and external communications. In an online transaction or communication, it is very much important to maintain authenticity and security of the information exchange. For that, the information should be supported through a legally valid mechanism, guaranteeing security and non-repudiation. This is where digital signatures play a vital role. Digital signatures help businesses climb up the ladder of 'Green' goals with paperless tools.

In today's 'expensive' world, digital signatures have shaped up the spending culture of businesses by allowing them to paperless. Businesses not only save on time and money, but also on manpower and overheads. Just take an example of e-Procurement process. Compared to the traditional procurement process, which involves bulky paperwork and manual work, e-Procurement helps both buyers and suppliers reduce the processing time and unnecessary paper work, while maintaining process transparency. And to secure and authenticate this process, businesses are using digital signatures. Hence, it is a win-win situation for businesses and users.

Being paperless helps businesses add to their customer support initiatives. Similar to government agencies, other businesses like banking, health care and telecom companies are using online platforms (sending monthly statements or online loan applications) to serve their customers effectively and efficiently.

In terms of e-Banking, from digitally signing bank statements/reports to online loan applications, digital signatures are helping both customers and banking institutions save lots of money and time by going paperless. Digitally signed statements/reports can be sent to the customers in bulk via emails in an encrypted format. To decrypt the sent data, a decryption password is provided to the customers to maintain statement privacy and data integrity. As it eliminates the need for physical presence, the entire process becomes faster and more convenient for customers, building their trust in the bank.

Slowly and steadily, this idea is gaining momentum, and efforts are being made to reduce paper dependence for the daily tasks. Digital signatures have made it possible for business, irrespective of size and vertical, go paperless and go secure in a smarter and cost-effective way.

Finally, digital signatures help users endorse green technology and clean environment, while assuring security and authenticity.

Author: Kapil handles marketing communications at E-Lock, a global provider of digital signature solutions

Resource: For more information on Go Green and Go Paperless, please visit http://www.elock.com