Imagine you are buying a school uniform for your kid. You would likely pick up one that is a size bigger because you want to make provision for the future. If you are buying grain for your family, you will likely buy in bulk, enough for 6 months to 1 year because again you are making a provision for the future, and it is pretty cost-effective that way.
While making purchase decisions in our day-to-day we always keep our future needs in mind. We should maintain this attitude when investing in technology; keep our future needs in mind.
Let us take for example a signing solution. May be right now your finance department wants to digitally sign invoices. Rather than focusing only on the immediate need, you should consider your future needs. Digital signatures can be extended to purchase orders, employee letters, vendor agreements, designs…pretty much to every document that is generated in your organization and has to be signed. Having said this, it would make abundant sense to choose a signing solution that meets your future needs as well as it meets your current requirements. A signing solution that scales to increasing volume of documents without sacrificing performance. A signing solution that does not bleed your wallet.
Here are a few tips when you choose your signing partner:
1. A centrally available solution that can be integrated into ERP, CRM, HRMS and any homegrown systems too. It should serve as a single point signature server for your organization.
2. The solution should support all signature types that are legally valid not just in India but abroad as well.
3. It should scale easily to support increasing documents.
4. The signatures done are compliant with IT Act 2000 and proper audit trails in the required format are maintained in the database.
5. It supports multi party signing in serial/parallel order.
6. Templates and saved workflows are supported to save you time.
7. E-stamps support is key because it helps improve your productivity by automating the manual task of attaching a stamp paper.
8. Liveliness check is available.
9. Make sure that the signing partner is on top of the changing regulatory landscape around signatures and ensures you are compliant at any point in time.
10. Most importantly, look at the product roadmap of the partner. A reliable partner is one that invests in R&D to enhance their product.
