Posted by Phil Ayton
February 16, 2017

Hot on the tail of my recent failure to revolutionise law using AI, a colleague asked me what were we doing around e-Signing. “Is that actually a thing?” I asked.  Recently, I had to e-Sign a document myself and the process was laughable.  I work on a PC (I believe there are a few of us), and I had to try and make a signature with a mouse.  Really?  As an alternative, I was offered the chance to “adopt” a signature.  That just seemed ridiculous, so I stuck with my wobbly signature and signed as required.  The whole process felt unsecure and not very professional.

e-Signing is all about verification and confirmation.  Verification that a document has been read and confirmation that the recipient of the document agrees with the content.  e-Signing also is time sensitive: I am agreeing to this now, not in 10 years’ time.  The signature part of e-Signing is almost irrelevant. 

To create an e-Signing process, we need 3 steps:

·       Creating a signing document template

·       Using the template to create a document

·       Receiving and signing the document

Sysero is all about templates and fields, so creating a new field type of “signature” was easy.  Signing on screen is again no problem as modern browsers support drawing natively (got to be honest, I didn’t know that before I started this either).  The challenge is to make document authoring and recipient signing easy and secure.

In the Sysero system, authoring a document is done by filling out an e-Form and downloading the completed document into Word or as a PDF.  As the author is logged in, we can get them to sign the form and drop this into the document.  However, we need a different approach for recipients.

To make life simple (I’m all about that!), we just take the PDF version of the document and email it to the parties who need to sign it.  The template can create colour-coded links (“Please sign where you see the yellow lines”) that recipients can click to take them to an online signing page.

What we needed most was a signing page that could be accessed by PC’s, tablets and phones.  I receive most of my emails when I’m at my PC, and I read PDF attachments using whatever reader my machine uses.  Once I click the signing link, my browser opens and I’m asked to enter my name and email address using my keyboard. 

However, I don’t want to sign on my PC, so I’m given the option to forward the verification to my phone.  My verification email comes through with a link to an on-screen signature pad and I am given a few minutes to sign using this one-time link.  I’ve tried getting a few of the guys in the office to sign using their fingers, and the results look great using phones and tablets.

We’ll be demoing the new feature at the upcoming LegalEx show in London, so come visit us at Booth L630. We will also be looking for Beta testers soon, so if you want a signing solution that provides two-factor authentication, has the option to use your phone as a signature pad whilst and doesn’t require clients to install more apps, get in touch with phil.ayton@sysero.com.

Phil Ayton is the founder and CEO of Sysero. His expertise lies in helping law firms drive greater productivity, ensure compliance and drive client service innovation through knowledge automation. Contact him at phil.ayton@sysero.com.