Can you put together an integrated workflow to have a business process that is automated, paperless and saves you time?

While there is no single “best” way for every real estate professional, there are a variety of tools that work well together.

Automated forms software: You may already be using ZipLogix (zipForms/WINForms), RealFast, IRES, LPS Real Estate Group (Transaction Point or DocCentral) and Reveal Systems. All of these real estate software form providers integrate with DocuSign.

Contact management: Your contact management may be your Outlook email or CRM system that enables you to connect contacts to tasks and companies.

Electronic signature and online contract execution: DocuSign’s real estate specific features, like signing order, correct on the fly, import of handwritten signatures and contract templates explains why DocuSign’s real estate subscribers and their clients LOVE DocuSign. You can ensure that you’ll get every signature and initial you need. You’ll get the completed ‘DocuSigned’ documents which will be more “clean” than any scan-copy-fax-sign transaction. Needless to say, DocuSign transactions shorten sales cycles, thus saving you time. Our subscribers use these time savings to close more transactions. 

Using compatible technology tools enables you to enjoy a smooth workflow and makes your life easier while saving you time and money. Couple that with increased customer satisfaction and a paperless office just makes sense!

In the months since she has been using DocuSign, she has only received positive feedback from her clients and other professionals that she works with. 

Why does she love working with DocuSign electronic signatures?

• Legible, easy to read contracts
• Positive feedback from banks – they like complete and “clean” documents
• Convenience for out of state buyers, late night signings, estranged couples, those with non-traditional work schedules, those traveling and generally busy people
• Saves her and her clients time, an important factor when putting together, and ultimately, closing deals
• Ease of use
• Allows her clients to ESIGN for free

For more detail and explanation why Ms. Cloud has adopted electronic signature and online contract execution, stop by her blog. Her explanation comes complete with screenshots so you can see why DocuSign electronic signatures and electronic contract execution services are a powerful ’value-add’ feature.

Why is DocuSign a great fit for real estate?

Real estate agents are busy professionals – landing listings, showing homes, helping buyers find the right home, helping sellers sell their homes, preparing documents for their clients to sign… I could go on. In addition to DocuSign’s integration with transaction management solutions specifically for real estate, the DocuSign system provides other advantages as well.

DocuSign’s electronic signature and online contract execution service provides:

Time Savings: DocuSign’s integration with the major real estate forms providers (ZipLogix, RealFast, DocCentral, Reveal, IRES…) means that you can use the technology you already have to create your documents.Templates from DocuSign Professional Advance enable you to save even more time if you repeatedly send many standard documents. Just create the document once, save it as a template, and use the template moving forward. This saves you even more time.

DocuSign also automates reminders, so you don’t have to remember to call or email to follow up every few days. DocuSign automatically reminds your signers that they have documents awaiting their signatures!

Increased client satisfaction: DocuSign’s senders report that signers also appreciate the convenience and ease of electronic signature and online contract execution. Imagine this: your client is suddenly called away on business and things start moving. Do you really want to ask your client to print out copies of the papers for signature, sign, and then fax back? It’s one more thing for your client to do when he or she is very busy.

Instead, you can send your client an email with a link that takes him or her to a secure site. Your client can log in, adopt his or her signature, apply it where indicated by the yellow stick-e-tabs. Once your client has finished the process, you receive an email notification that the signing process is complete. No more hunting for a fax machine, no more phone tag to confirm that the fax arrived to the right hands, and best of all, no more putting life on hold because you have to get papers signed.

Clear, completed documents, every time: The yellow stick-e-tabs make sure that senders get the signatures and initials they need. This means that you don’t have to fax and re-fax documents because page 21 is missing some initials. Faxes also aren’t as clear – the document quality gets more and more degraded as papers are faxed back and forth. With DocuSign, senders can see what documents are still in process and which ones are completed, all from one dashboard.

What other reasons have you experienced that show the fit between real estate and electronic signature / electronic contract execution?

The latest issue of Insurance Networking News features a cover story about Amica Life’s adoption of electronic signature and online contract execution technology. We especially appreciate that Amica Life named DocuSign as its e-signature provider of choice.

Amica Life Insurance Co., Lincoln, R.I., used DocuSign’s e-signature technology to:

Slash transaction times: Previous transactions completed by mail averaged a 14 day turnaround. With DocuSign,transaction times average two days, or 14% of the previous turnaround.

“In terms of getting the coverage in force and getting the case out of our queue, it really sped things up,” says Duncan Hannah, assistant VP of Amica Life Insurance Co.

Improve customer service: DocuSign revolutionized how Amica Life handled changes to accounts, like changing beneficiaries. Instead of the “type a form – snail mail for signing – return to sender” process, Amica simply keys the information into the form, sends the document through DocuSign’s secure system for electronic signature, and gets the deal done.

“The whole transaction is completed in a much shorter timeframe, and there is less follow-up on our part,” Hannah says.

Close new business deals: Amica Life trains its sales agents to walk their customers through the electronic signature process in a manner that makes ESIGN feel natural. Those on Amica Life’s sales team report a high rate of DocuSign usage.

With DocuSign’s technology, all signers and senders need is an internet connection, email and a browser. An insurer can send a contract and have it securely signed online. There’s no software to install and add an unnecessary layer of complexity when you can have a esign solution that is fast, simple and secure.

Thanks to Duncan Hannah of Amica Life for sharing how electronic signature and electronic contract execution helps slash turnaround time, improve customer service and close business deals. You can read the article in its entirety and experience the power electronic signature (for free!) with DocuSign Express for Drawloop.

By communicating with our customers directly through Twitter, our blog, and other social networking sites about electronic signature and online contract execution, we’ve learned many new things about our customers and received great feedback. This feedback enables us to create an even better digital signature and electronic contract execution experience with each new release. Thank you for being open and candid with your feedback!

These conversations, online and off, got me thinking about how amazing our customers are and why.

Why Our Customers are so Great:

1. Our Customers are SMART

I’ve been fortunate to meet some of DocuSign’s earliest adopters, who have recognized early on how electronic signature and online contract execution services can save them time, compared to the expensive and inefficient processes of printing, transporting, signing, tracking, storing paper contracts and capturing business data. Not only are they saving time and able to turn around contracts in minutes, not days, they’re also realizing operational savings by streamlining their business processes.

2. Our Customers are SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE

By adopting DocuSign for esignature and electronic contract execution, our customers have adopted a GREEN process. They’re able to reduce the carbon footprint created when shipping documents overnight. From pick up to drop off, overnighting documents involve driving and/or flying the documents to be signed and then making copies in duplicate, if not triplicate. All of this takes gas and massive amounts of paper. While we were named as a green office solution for electronic signature and online contract execution, our customers deserve recognition for implementing DocuSign in their businesses.

3. Our Customers give GREAT FEEDBACK

Again and again, I’m struck by the insight of their feedback. DocuSign forums, Twitter, service, blogs help us learn about what works and what could be improved from a customer perspective. Some of this feedback include suggestions on how to improve the user interface or user experience. Other feedback helps us understand misconceptions or misperceptions about electronic signature and online contract execution. This feedback leads improved or new features in future releases or to collaboration with policy groups to enable adoption of electronic signature and online contract execution technologies.

These reasons are only a few of the many you’re so amazing. What have we missed? Let us know in the comments!

What news do you want first? I’ll start with the other news, so we can end on a positive
note. 
Did you know…
DHL has discontinued U.S. domestic services. DHL, the overnight shipping service provider, no longer provides domestic-only air and ground services. Other overnight document shipping services have recently increased their rates, and there’s a rumor that USPS may reduce the number of service days. The average cost for overnight shipping, after surcharges, is roughly $54.00 based on sending from New York to Chicago depending on what carrier you use. What does this mean to you? You have fewer options when it comes to getting your contracts and agreements delivered. Yes, you can use the other shippers, who have increased their rates earlier this year. If you’re still shipping the same number of documents you’ve generally shipped, either your operational costs have likely increased or you’ve cut costs by using slower shipping services. Keeping operational costs needlessly high or slowing down your business processes which probably don’t align with your current business goals.

So now the good news

With DocuSign we’ve saved approximately 80% in overnight and express shipments.

–Ric Kimbell of Everest University Online

You have options. DocuSign’s electronic contract execution service, including tracking and electronic signature, takes your paper contract and agreement process online. By eliminating your need for costly courier services and depending on the size of your business, DocuSign could save you millions. We’ll make the savings easy and offer our electronic signature and online contract execution services at 20% of your 2008 express shipping charges.* If you take into account all of your costs associated with sending and managing contracts, your cost savings can be much greater than 80% of your shipping charges.

DocuSign allows you to address the 3 key factors to success in today’s business environment:

• Reduction of operational costs
• Closing more deals, faster
• Improvement in customer satisfaction and retention

DocuSign’s services also allow for integration with Salesforce along with greater control and tracking of your documents. With a free trial, you can try our services first. So while overnight parcel services are providing you with fewer, more expensive options, DocuSign is offering you another option that cuts your operational costs and accelerates your business. Doesn’t that sound like great news?

* Offer eligible for new DocuSign customers only
* 2008 shipping charges must be greater than $4000 to qualify
* Proof of 2008 shipping charges may be required

Finally, I have to admit we have not figured out how to send OBJECTS in a DocuSign envelope… but we do have this secret project underway that they won’t let me tell you about…

Photo courtesy of flickr user The Master Shake Signal under Creative Commons

As I’m reading blogs, I keep an eye out for blog posts that mention electronic signatures and electronic contract execution (ECE). The bloggers at John Hall & Associates created a great FAQ about ZipForm and DocuSign, specifically addressed to real estate agents in Arizona.  For those who don’t know ZipForm, it is one of the leading tools used by hundreds of thousands of Realtors across the country to create Real Estate contracts, purchase and sales agreements, listing agreements, etc.

Questions they address include:

• How to sign up for ZipForms, both online and desktop
• The difference between ZipForm Online and ZipForm Desktop
• How to use ZipForm Desktop
• How to use ZipForm Online
• How to give clients copies of contracts at signing, given that AAR no longer prints forms
• How to sign forms with DocuSign
• Who to talk to in Arizona about ZipForm

Arizona realtors can go to the Arizona Association of Realtors (AAR) Web site to sign up for ZipForms. Remember to have your NRDS number, which you can find on your NAR member card or in the address field of REALTOR® Magazine you receive monthly. You can also call AAR – 602.248.7787

ZipForm Desktop and ZipForm Online

You can choose to download ZipForm Desktop to your computer, or you can use ZipForm Online. ZipForm Online allows you to store your forms and files online, which means you can access your data from any computer, as long as you’re connected to the internet.

DocuSign is recommended

John Hall & Associates recommends electronic signatures, specifically DocuSign. Needless to say, I appreciate the recommendation. DocuSign’s ability to add value to the real estate market stems from:

• A strong legal framework, which is really important when you are working with transactions that are worth millions of dollars.
• The most familiar ‘yellow sticky tab’ signing process that can be done by anyone in any browser, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Safari, and which places the signatures and initials directly into each page on the dotted line (amazingly enough, some so-called ESIGN solutions can’t even do that!)
• Controlling the signing sequence the same way as it is done with paper so the right people sign in the right order
• Tight integration with nearly ALL the leading software tools used by realtors, including ZipForm
•  The fact that most home buyers don’t have fax machines at home, but DO have internet access means your customer satisfaction is increased because they don’t have such a hassle signing

With no initial setup costs, the ability to be up and running in minutes, and a 30-day risk free guarantee, you can try DocuSign Professional and start sending your real estate documents right away.

Other real estate bloggers have written about DocuSign’s electronic signature and online contract execution processes as well and we look forward to more stories about how we’ve helped you cut costs or accelerated your business.