Power > Trends > What's New

Digital Signature Capture Comes of Age

You could streamline business processes and lower costs

Most of us have heard the terms “digital signature capture” or “electronic signature capture,” and we’ve most likely used signature capture. Think about the last time you went to a grocery or department store. You probably swiped your credit card and signed on a signature-capture pad. What about the last time you signed for a package? The delivery person likely had you sign a digital tablet.

Even though signature capture has been widely used in the retail industry for years, many companies have yet to employ the technology throughout their businesses. How can your company take advantage of digital signature capture to streamline processes and reduce or eliminate printing, filing and scanning costs?

Streamlining Processes

Many businesses have customers or drivers picking up merchandise at a storefront or from a warehouse, which typically goes something like this: A customer or driver arrives. Multiple copies of an order, invoice or bill of lading are printed and signed. The customer or driver takes a copy. The store or warehouse employees file a copy locally and ship a copy to corporate headquarters where the final copy is filed or scanned into an imaging system and then filed. This process wastes paper because several copies of the document must be generated or multipart carbon forms must be used. And shipping documents to headquarters for scanning and filing costs money.

Let’s see how digital signature capture might streamline this process. A customer or driver would arrive and visually review orders, invoices or bills of lading on a monitor at the pickup counter, then simply sign a capture pad and click a button to confirm the signature. He or she could also possibly place notes on documents before signing to record missing, defective or broken merchandise. The employee would then click a print button from the application to print one copy of the appropriate documents already signed. A digital copy could be manually or automatically saved to a network folder or to the customer’s electronic document management software and made available immediately for customer requests.

For enhanced service, an e-mail or Web copy of the document could also be electronically delivered to the customer within minutes of pickup. This might also be an appropriate time to e-mail the customer a thank-you note and offers on complementary products. Best Buy does this when you purchase a product from its website. I suspect that many companies could greatly enhance customer service with instant document feedback and promotional marketing.

Using Mobile Devices

Another area where signature capture can enhance an organization’s workflow is by collecting signatures when merchandise is delivered to a customer. When you think about how FedEx and UPS capture signatures with a mobile device, it seems obvious that every company should automate the capture of signatures at the point of delivery. Over the past few years, mobile technology has caught up with the desire to capture and store signatures and then marry them with the appropriate business documents to produce a final signed order, invoice, bill of lading or other delivery receipt. iPad and netbook devices could also make inexpensive tablet PC signature capture a reality. Windows* Mobile devices have signature-capture capability built in and BlackBerry signature capture devices are available. For BlackBerry devices to become more useful for signature capture, they need a built-in signable touch screen like the iPad, iPhone and Windows Mobile devices. For the moment, it appears that Windows Mobile devices are the best way to do mobile signature capture because of the built-in signature capture capabilities and ease of software development. The Windows Mobile OS also has a high adoption rate in warehouse and delivery environments.

Let’s walk through a possible signature-capture scenario using a mobile device. A truck driver leaves the local warehouse to spend his day delivering items. At each stop, merchandise is dropped off and the customer confirms receipt by signing a screen displaying order information. A receipt could be printed on a mobile printer and handed to the customer or, more likely, the driver could return to the warehouse at the shift’s end and upload the order info and signatures to a network folder so final customer documents could be produced electronically with signatures in the appropriate fields. Automated forms software could merge the signature files with the appropriate form overlays to create the final paperwork. In another scenario, the final signature file could be uploaded to the warehouse in real time via Wi-Fi or a cellular modem, and final paperwork could be e-mailed to the customer immediately with no need for a mobile printer.

Tweet