Yesterday, Jason Lemkin CEO of EchoSign approached me to see if there are ways his service could be of value to the profession. For those that don’t know, EchoSign provides a blindingly simple way of obtaining secure, signed copies of business critical documents. In our case the first one that springs to mind is the letter of engagement.
The really cool thing is that the recipient doesn’t have to be online but can return a document by fax if they wish. That might seem so 90′s to many readers but let’s face it, the majority of small businesses make minimal use of computing as it is.
For a full run down on the service, take a look at TechCrunch (an early view) and Forbes for a more recent assessment. For the compliant savvy, Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal (not online) said:
EchoSign helps businesses comply with Sarbanes- Oxley and other federal regulations by providing third party verification of when documents are delivered, when they are signed, and who has received copies
OK – so we don’t have SOX but we have plenty of compliance and contract issues that require the receipt of verifiable documents. That’s a big, big productivity bonus.
EchoSign claims 8% of users are in the UK. There is a UK fax-in number should clients prefer to provide a handwritten signature on documents alongside using a fax process. Since more banks accept fax documents these days, this could provide a neat way for a range of financial documents to be securely delivered, archived at your offices and transmitted onwards to financial services organisations.
If you look at the service in greater detail, you’ll find there are a myriad of ways in which the service can be used including internal document approval (the workflow is dead easy and includes reminders plus the ability to add side notes) and document archiving – one of the profession’s bugbears. It also makes a logical addition to client communications which could encourage those clients to take up the service for their own use. Needless to say, costs are trivially low.
My interest was in discovering whether there is an API. This allows you to think about EchoSign as a component in a wider document management context. The API is in closed beta but expect to see it in the wild in around 2 weeks. If you need more details, Jason is willing to let you into take a peek. I’d also like to see tagging so I can integrate directly to other DM and knowledge based solutions. It’s ‘on the list’ but an alternative is searchable data (name/title etc) that’s collected as part of the process.
This is one service whose simplicity belies its power. That’s the secret of creating great services that solve apparently complex problems. Take a look and let me know what you think.
Technorati Tags: innovation, document management
