Three ways digital transformation increases educational enrolments

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In the world of education, replacing a paper-centric signing workflow with a paperless one can deliver measurable increases in a school’s revenue. According to Forrester’s 2023 report, The Total Economic Impact of Adobe Acrobat Sign, 43% of organisational leaders say the adoption of digital signing has increased the number of enrolments.

In this press release, we’ll take a closer look at three key ways in which digital signature technology can streamline your school’s signing workflows, delivering enhanced customer experiences.

“In today’s digital-first world, even a single 'wet' paper signature can create significant friction in a digital document process. Think back to the last time you had to print out a form to complete an application. You probably found yourself annoyed and frustrated at this time-consuming step. Even if you did finish the application, the requirement to fill out and send a paper form hurt the quality of your customer experience,” says Dominic Richardson, CEO of local Adobe distributor, Dax Data.

This is why every document journey needs to be fully digital from end to end. Luckily, it’s easier than ever to achieve, with the help of e-signature APIs and integrations that come prebuilt into many popular applications and cloud services. For example, Adobe Acrobat Sign can turn any scanned piece of paper into a PDF form. It automatically inserts text fields and drop-down menus where they belong, and even enables you to collect signatures inside the PDF file itself.

Building on the e-signing functionality outlined above, a platform like Microsoft Power Automate enables you to multiply your school’s e-signature automation power by creating end-to-end electronic signing workflows. Integrations and APIs built into these platforms make it easy to create modern, cloud-based document and web experiences that are highly automated and always accessible.

Consider, for example, a traditional signing workflow on a student loan application. Each external signer (such as a student or parent) must download the required forms, print the forms, sign with wet ink, scan each page and e-mail the paperwork back. And worst of all, a single error at any stage of this process may require an entire stage of the signing process to be restarted.

The good news is that modern automation makes this process unnecessary. When you leverage the Adobe PDF Services API built into Power Automate, senders can submit a digital agreement for signatures from all signers in a sequential fashion, setting automated reminders to ensure timely completion. Since all internal signers are signing inside the same PDF file, they just click a link, review the document and submit their signature. Once signing is completed, the external signer can open the PDF, apply the final signature and submit it.

This streamlined workflow delivers measurable economic benefits. A full 60% of Forrester survey respondents agree that e-signature automation has reduced their document processing time, resulting in a 260% increase in employee productivity.

Organising your PDFs in a cloud-based “digital cabinet” like Microsoft SharePoint makes it much easier to collect electronic signatures on digital documents. You can enable each department within your institution to continue using applications they’re already familiar with. Acrobat Sign’s electronic signing capabilities integrate seamlessly with Power Automate’s functionality, making it easy to automate repetitive tasks like sending out forms.

Unlike most digital signing applications, Acrobat Sign requires recipients to sign with a qualified e-signature (QES), the most stringent level of e-signature, which is verified by a qualified trust service provider (TSP). It generates an audit trail each time that signature is applied to a document, streamlining regulatory compliance by ensuring that each signer is who they claim to be.

After a form has been signed internally and externally, Power Automate can extract data from all its fields, and automatically populate that info into a secure database, eliminating the need for costly, error-prone manual data entry.

To find out how to upgrade your school’s document signing processes, and reap the budgetary benefits of automated e-signature workflows, contact Dax Data, local Adobe distributor.