For decades, data-driven Platform economies have been encountering challenges of data safety, user privacy and identity, and complex data entering practices, which are labor-intensive and time-consuming. Automation entered a big way for companies to save money and time with cost-effective and affordable technologies that are efficient, quick, and faster than several of the applications we have been using since the advent of the early twenties.
Earliest Digital Documentation and Sharing Tools
Although computer literacy and computer-based documentation made heavy inroads from across the industries sectors of the economy, paper-driven documentation dominated the industry usage for ages for obvious reasons like poor digital infrastructure, lack of automation throughout the documentation process, lack of awareness of cost-effective digital documentation approaches, apprehensions on trying no-code platforms.
Emails are the popular document-sharing applications of the early 70s. They suffered heavily from challenges like document fraud, lack of data security, and lack of intelligence on whether the document reached its intended destination and status. Although a plethora of document collaborative apps including Google Docs and Microsoft Office made their way in the early 90s and reigned the workspaces for a decade, they failed to ensure flexible and agile document creation and sharing options.
The Era of Digital Office Workspace
Early 2000 unveiled the era of the latest and modern digital documentation applications that are flexible, agile, and highly collaborative. Unlike the on-premises documentation techniques that are effective only when certain parameters like electricity, wi-fi, and electronic hardware infrastructure such as computers, pen drives, and discs are present. Modern technologies evolved free from all these technical glitches.
Features of the Next-Generation Document-Sharing Tools
Modern and next-generation document-signing tools inherited several traits that are a novice to 21st-century businesses, and it is still evolving every day by adding new features to keep pace with the volatile and dynamic market needs. The outbreak of the pandemic, COVID-19, in a way, furthered digital transformation that is quite unusual. What is expected to happen in a span of a decade or two unfolded in just one year where individuals and communities remained indoors and availed services at their doorsteps. Technology-enabled digital transformation unfolded in a big way proving an end-to-end, and unique experience.
Technologies that Simplified Work and Play
No-code platforms with Document Management capabilities emerged in a big way allowing users to drag and drop fields on a blank page to create customized offer letters, tender documents, business agreement documents, and contracts. Employees with no technical background could create these documents with minimal training in the tool. It used to take days and weeks in the past to compile a document speeded up to a few minutes or hours for the business to share any document of pertinent business impact.
Time-Savers with Enhanced Productivity
Employees can create customized documents not from scratch repeatedly. Once created, users can save any document as a template to reuse it multiple times to share with multiple users, who may be diverse and scattered. Organizations can edit these templates to suit their new or emerging requirements in minutes to share them on the cloud to complete the business deal.
Cloud-Based Document Sharing Model
Unlike on-premises computer networks, cloud-based platforms have redefined the organizational style of document sharing. Emails were the familiar methods of document sharing using a computer connected to the internet. Document management platforms allow users to share documents without switching to mailing platforms. When a document is available on the cloud platform, users/recipients can extract or download it immediately upon receiving a notification.
Multiple Document-Sharing Options
No-Code online signature platforms for enterprises offer innumerable document-sharing options, including sharing a document as a link, sharing it as an email attachment in a Word or PDF, workflows, and bulksending.
Users can copy the document URL as a link and share it with one or multiple users on any encrypted platform or social media platform to reach the intended and general audience. Again, companies can create and wrap a bundle of documents as a workflow with the users in their order of priority. Recipients can navigate through them to complete them in the same order, without any discrepancies.
Businesses can use the “bulksend” features to share documents with multiple users at once, instantly, through the web document management platforms without any hitches.
Enhanced Document Security
The User-friendly no-code platform offers a Two-step Authentication factor to enhance security. The platform ensures that the document reaches the customer’s email ID with a security password sent to the registered email address. The web signature platforms for businesses adhere to all the global compliance norms with a “Digital audit trail”. This feature provides documental evidence of a file, or a contract created online using these tools. It maintains a thorough document history, recording the date and time of the document creation, name of the document creator, signer, and number of times the document is edited and shared, or signed by different users. This process ensures transparency and helps users to detect any document fraudulence or forgery.
Sensible Document Management Features
Document management platforms are highly sensible and interactive. Its automated document management features include sending alerts to the users when the recipient signs a document, completed a document, and shared it with the sender. Users can create a customized dashboard to view all the documents sent, received, completed, declined, voided, and archived. It helps the user to spot any document without much effort from the dashboard or through a search option. Dashboards offer enough business intelligence for the users to make strategic decisions. The analytical dashboard of the Online document management platforms is highly collaborative with interactive features. Users, irrespective of their numbers, can interact online while signing a business deal or a contract using the chat option available on the document creation page. Users can prompt questions, clarify clauses, modify paragraphs if needed, and remain informed and transparent before signing them. The tool allows users to set priorities or the order in which the users should sign. This feature automatically allows users to sign in that specified order. Users need not print and sign the document to upload a scanned document. Users can preserve customized electronic signatures on their devices to drag and drop signatures online, which is legally binding.
Final Thoughts
Companies are shedding age-old document creation and management practices by shunning a paper-driven approach. The increased shift to digital and online document management platforms is mainly due to simple, and user-friendly features. Electronic signature tools have transformed the way businesses create, edit, and share documents to sign deals online using their electronic signatures. For more on enhanced document security measures and cloud-based document-sharing approaches, please visit esigns.io.