Subscribe

Standardising e-signatures to drive adoption


Johannesburg, 03 Feb 2020
Andy Papastefanou, founder of Impression Signatures
Andy Papastefanou, founder of Impression Signatures

The e-signature market is highly regulated, with a plethora of choices when it comes to vendor solutions. Organisations are often overwhelmed with a vast range of possibilities when implementing electronic signatures into their business processes, and this often stifles the adoption. Key to any e-signature solution selection is understanding what standards have been established to ensure the organisation’s investment is protected.

Standards have a major impact on business performance and technological efficiency. By establishing consistent interfaces, businesses can adopt a standard they know is universally understood, legally compliant and cost-effective. Some advantages of embracing a global standard for e-signatures include avoiding vendor lock-in and promoting application development through interoperability and re-use. Increased levels of consumer adoption will ultimately lead to e-signatures becoming a commodity, lowering its overall cost. Which standards are setting the benchmark and best practices that your organisation should be following?

The Cloud Signature Consortium (CSC) was founded to create a global standard for e-signatures. “The Cloud Signature Consortium is a group of industry and academic organisations committed to building a new standard for cloud-based digital signatures. Its mission is to support Web and mobile applications and comply with the most demanding electronic signature regulations in the world. The goal? To provide a common technical specification that will make solutions interoperable and suitable for uniform adoption in the global market,” confirms Andy Papastefanou, founder of Impression Signatures.

As the first and only South African member of the global Cloud Signature Consortium, Impression Signatures leans heavily on these best practice guidelines to ensure all its digital signature processes are verifiable, trackable, compliant and secure. “At Impression, we are committed to driving e-signature adoption among organisations and consumers. While creating our own technology, it was important that Impression consider the trends globally while still focusing on the unique requirements of our local market,” continued Papastefanou.

When simplifying and streamlining digital experiences, organisations should carefully consider standards and benchmarks – and this is especially true for e-signatures. “The Cloud Signature Consortium will have a marked impact on the cloud signature landscape and by partnering with Impression, customer contracts will be more secure, digital signatures will comply with all regulations and parties can trust that the highest standards have been considered in the generation, signature and storage of vital documents,” he concludes.

Share

Impression Signatures

Founded in 2011, Impression Signatures (an iOCO company) is the leading provider of e-signature solutions in South Africa. Our patented approach is locally created whilst committing to making this innovative technology available to the public enabling true social inclusion to fully realize digital transformation in South Africa. For more information, visit www.impression-signatures.com

iOCO

Established to simplify ICT, iOCO is Africa’s leading integrated technology services company, with the largest concentration of skills on the continent. As a Level 1 B-BBEE end-to-end ICT managed service provider and Cloud systems integrator, iOCO operates with over 20 years’ experience. Its team of more than 4500 specialists delivers Open Digital Integrator, Enterprise Applications, Data and Analytics, Compute and Platforms, and Manage and Operate solutions to over 1 000 customers.

Inspired by digitally native internet organisations (iO) and creative organisations (CO) of the future, iOCO helps customers navigate the path to an exponential future. To achieve this vision, iOCO holds strategic OEM partnership agreements with more than 90 global leaders.

The fourth industrial revolution brings not only exponential opportunity, but exponential challenges too. The key to succeeding in this two-speed world is finding a digital journey partner that has the expertise needed to drive unprecedented growth. iOCO offers modern solutions that meet the demands of the cloud economy and 4IR.

For more information, please visit: www.ioco.tech

Editorial contacts