Three Applications to Help you go Totally Paperless…  I spend quite a bit of my time thinking about paperless since DocuSign’s electronic signature and electronic contract execution processes help customers minimize physical document creation. Recently, Twitter user @notatsxsw said something interesting that caught my eye:

“@DocuSign @earthclassmail, but we’re glad you’re at #notatsxsw. Did you know that we’re virtually paperless? You gotta love that!”


Earth Class Mail

Earth Class Mail is a Seattle-based startup, changing how postal mail is delivered to individuals, businesses, national post offices and the planet. I am a customer, and ECM intercepts all my mail, and allows me to deal with it as electronic files rather than chasing paper around. I can even receive a document that requires my signature, and send THAT through DocuSign – 100% in the cloud, and I can do it from ANYWHERE.. Pretty cool stuff.

From Earth Class Mail’s Web site:

“No matter where our customers are, they simply log in to their secure Earth Class Mail account to view scanned images of their mail envelopes. They then decide which items to have opened and securely scanned so they can read the contents online, and which items should be recycled, shredded, archived, or forward-shipped to them wherever they’re located – all with a few clicks of a mouse.”

Earth Class Mail recycles mail AND has also developed an online postal-mail delivery system that scales for entire countries’ postal mail. By offering national posts the ability to deliver mail online, Earth Class Mail can move posts from their current energy-wasting physical-delivery model to clean electronic delivery for a significant portion of the mail they currently handle. Think of all the trees Earth Class Mail saves.

“Post offices are generally among the largest consumers of energy in their respective countries.

Various studies report that the average person recycles perhaps 20% of his or her mail, while Earth Class Mail customers recycle more than 90% of their mail.

For every ton of paper Earth Class Mail recycles, the company reduces the marginal air pollution generated by new paper production by 74%, and water pollution by 35%.”

Contxts

I also heard about Contxts, a Denver-based startup, which enables professionals to exchange contact information via SMS. By using SMS, or text messaging, readily available with mobile phones, you can easily and rapidly distribute your credentials.

“Exchange all of your professional information with a single text message
Keep all of your professional contacts organized in one place
It’s eco-friendly (text messages don’t kill polar bears)
Rid yourself of ‘old school’ business cards
Link with other professionals”

Instead of giving your new friends and professional contacts your printed business card you can save a tree (or many) and text them your virtual one. This action automatically places them in your Contxts online contact list and if they have a profile on contxts.com you both are connected.

Your text business card also serves as a request to connect profiles through the Contxts network. Every contact that you make is added to your virtual rolodex. From there, you can access to whatever additional information they provide, such as flickr, twitter, or LinkedIn.

What if the person that you are connecting with doesn’t have a profile yet? No problem! When he or she does create a profile, all of his or her information in your rolodex automatically updates. Pretty cool.

DocuSign

Like Earth Class Mail, we’re also Seattle-based. Our passion and #1 priority is to perfect the way companies of all sizes manage the process of transacting business agreements through innovative “cloud computing” technology. From a simple NDA to a complex global sales agreement requiring multi-party signatures, we provide the only proven, on demand electronic signature and online contract execution solution that delivers increased revenues, decreased expenses, improved customer satisfaction and a greener operational impact to the environment.

In fact, our system is now processing over 1.5 million electronic signature events per month. We’ve processed about 23 million to date. This means our customers collectively are saving, at an average of 10 pages per envelope and 1.7 signers, 391M pages of paper that did not have to be used or moved. This equals approximately 5,000 trees. In addition to the trees saved, think about the jet fuel and gasoline saved because you aren’t ‘overnighting’ any physical documents.

Electronic signature and online contract execution can decrease your paper consumption in a meaningful, measurable way. With digitized mail delivery and sms business cards, you can further reduce your environmental impact. Even better, these tools allow you to access all this anywhere, anytime. These services really do make your life better.

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