I experienced WordStar era, follow by WordPerfect, and then finally, Microsoft Words until today. When we need a signature for the document, we print, and send by mail (or fax) to the personnel, and once they signed on it, and they will send back to us.
Electronic Signature has been around for a while, you can treat it as part of the digitalization revolution.
However, even until today, I do know that quite a number of people around me, still send documents by email, and the receivers print it out, and sign on it, and send it back. This method is in-efficient, and created multiple copies of same document when there are more than 1 personnel need to sign on it.
Electronic Signature is not a rocket science, today we have plenty of choices to create it for your own business document, without any coding, and minimal technical know-how.
So we've got a problem
Your boss want to impress the clients, and show off that the company is a role model when come to digitalization. So you being tasked to
- Digitalized the contract, which you already done that using Microsoft Words
- Let more than 1 personnel to sign on contract electronically.
- Maintain 1 copy of the contract only
- Capture the date of signing
Let's get it done
Let’s start with a sample PDF, and with 2 personnel – treat it as your clients that need to sign on the same documents
- Sample document in PDF – You can save your Microsoft Words in PDF easily by using “Save as”. To save your time, I prepared a sample document for you.
- 1st personnel – Rick Grimes, and the email is [email protected]
- 2nd personnel – Shane Walsh, and the email is [email protected]
I going to show how to create an electronic signature document, with the above material
p/s: Yes, I am the big fan of The Walking Dead the TV series (at least until Season 7…)
The Solutions
JotForm
JotForm is more than a beautiful form, it can do electronic signing easily as well
- Free plan available
- REST API available
DocuSign
When come to electonic signature, DocuSign is definitely 1 of the pioneer
- 1 of the pioneer and leader in electronic signature
- No free plan, but you can have free trial without credit card
- REST API available
Dropbox Form
Dropbox Form (formerly HelloForm) by Dropbox is a handy tool when come to electronic signature. However, the confusing part is, there is another similar sibling product called Dropbox Sign (formerly HelloSign), which focus solely on electronic signature
- Free plan available for Dropbox Form, but not Dropbox Sign (which is strange)
- We will focus on Dropbox From in this case
- REST API available
