“Conserve paper and be green” is the mantra for the overwhelming majority (85%) of Americans, according to a recent survey of more than one thousand U.S. adults conducted by Harris Interactive® for DocuSign, Inc. The broad consumer survey reveals nearly three in four adults are frustrated with completing paper-based documents, and provides a compelling snapshot of consumer preferences and the growing role smart phones are having on the average person’s daily activities.

Goodbye Paper
With the proliferation of web-based applications, e-readers and mobile computing platforms that make it easy for consumers to do more online and stay connected 24×7, it is no surprise that most people want to say bye-bye to paper documents. The nearly three in four (72 percent) adults who are frustrated with completing paper-based forms, documents or business agreements cite the following reasons filling out hardcopy forms is a pain:

• 72% stated the fields in many forms and documents were often too small to write in
• 38% said it’s too inconvenient to return signed paper documents by fax or mail
• 34% said their handwriting was too messy for others to read
• 23% make too many mistakes

Forty-four percent agreed that overnight express services like UPS and FedEx cost too much and are too slow for signing business documents and agreements. More than a third (36%) would stop using an overnight express service if they could sign forms and business agreements online; this number spikes for people in their prime working years: 54 percent aged 18-34, and 40 percent aged 35-44 would stop using express services to shuttle paperwork around the world if they could.
For tech savvy consumers used to searching for and storing documents electronically, keeping track of paper can be challenging. For example, only twenty percent of all adults admitted to accidentally losing or destroying important paper-based documents, but nearly one in three (30%) young adults aged 18-34 have trouble keeping hardcopy documents safe.

Untethered and Always On
Eighteen percent of all adults said, in addition to a computer, the use of a mobile device—such as a RIM® BlackBerry® or Apple® iPhone®—was needed to conduct their day-to-day business. Nearly half (44%) were in the highest income groups (household incomes of $75,000 or more), suggesting that their high-powered professions were faster-paced and required immediate client responses or turnaround.

E-Sign Rising
Virtually all adults (96%) agreed that their handwritten signature is an important part of their identity. Yet, the majority (63%) preferred typing on a computer to writing by hand, and 2 in 3 (66%) wish they could complete and sign certain forms and business agreements online. The good news is that modern e-signature services enable consumers to upload an e-copy of their signature to better replicate the ceremony of signing and retain that sense of personal identity.
The types of forms most U.S. adults wish they could sign online include, among others (respondents could select more than one):

• Employment or HR documents— job applications, W-2 or 1099 forms, 401K enrollment, etc. (47% overall, 62% of those with “high-powered careers,” defined here as adults residing in households with annual incomes of $100,000 or higher)
• Child’s school documents—immunization forms, field trip waivers, absentee excuses, etc. (47% overall, 62% of those with high-powered careers)
• Insurance documents—enrollment forms, policy change authorizations, claims, etc. (44% overall, 65% of those with high-powered careers)
• Business contracts—purchase orders, approvals, etc.(38% overall, 55% of those with high-powered careers)
• Medical or dental documents—patient information forms, insurance carrier or coverage documentation, etc. (36% overall, 47% of those with high-powered careers)
• Real estate documents—rental or lease agreements, realtor contracts, inspections, waivers, etc. (30% overall, 49% of those with high-powered careers)

Steve King, president and CEO of DocuSign, provides his insight to survey results:

This survey reflects the changing behaviors among adults across the United States and their desire to complete and sign documents online to be more productive and environmentally friendly. DocuSign is seeing a tipping point of adoption of our web-based electronic signature service, and as a company we’ve processed roughly 80 million transactions to date. Consumers who use the service for the first time to secure a loan, sign real estate documents and manage other paperwork are usually surprised as to how intuitive DocuSign is and how closely it replicates the experience of signing documents the old-fashioned way, but without the delays and hassles of paper.

DocuSign conducted the survey on the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN) Act. The ESIGN Act validated the use of electronic records and signatures in interstate and foreign commerce, and launched a decade of phenomenal growth in electronic commerce that made it easier for people to get things done and transact business. The survey enables DocuSign to better understand the views of mainstream consumers, including how they feel about the environment and their acceptance of online applications to do more things electronically. To view additional results from the survey, please visit the Harris Poll ESIGN Survey Results.

• 73% eSign Market Share
• 20,000+ DocuSign Customers
• 54 Million eSignature Events to Date – for the updated number of e-signature events, take a look at the DocuSign home page.

**DocuSign’s estimate based on market share data collected using compete.com and comparing the usage at the leading SaaS vendors’ applications in 2009 calendar year. For more information on ESIGN market leader methodology, click here.

Why do so many people who use electronic signature use DocuSign?

We have the customer stories from American Airlines, EDGAR® Online, LinkedIn, Yamaha and many others. DocuSign also has the honor of being the official and exclusive provider of ESIGN Services for the National Association of REALTORS® 1.2 million members under the REALTOR Benefits® Program and offer the special ESIGN Advantage Promotion for REALTORS®.

What Makes DocuSign Electronic Signature the ESIGN Industry Leader?

Delivered more than 480 customer-driven features while concurrently deploying the eSign industry’s only fully redundant data centers supporting high availability and immediate disaster recovery. We look for user testers via Twitter and have released features such as husband-and-wife signing, uploading one’s own signature, templates and Intelligent Document Recognition (IDR), Designed for Mobile, and many others.

Deployed a 10X upgrade in processing power and storage while consistently maintaining 99.993 percent system availability over the past 24 months. This system availability exceeds our SLA – we enable you to securely send, sign and manage your digital documents with confidence.

Offer live trainings via webinars every Thursday at 10am PST. We strive to provide you with the knowledge and understanding to use DocuSign so you can save time. Other options to learning more about DocuSign’s eSignature capabilities include a DocuSign YouTube Channel with plenty of how-to videos as well as this blog on which we regularly blog tips and tricks. If live webinars, videos, and blog posts aren’t enough, we also have FAQ’s, forums, and product updates and other documentation.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – 2010 is going to be a GREAT year for ESIGN. If you’re a current DocuSign customer, become a fan on Facebook. Leave us a comment. Let us know if you want to test features before the official release. Tell us about your event and let us know how we can help.

If you’re not yet a DocuSign customer, ask yourself if you’d like to save time. Ask yourself if you’d like to provide your clients with even better service. Ask yourself if you’d like to close deals faster and when you’re ready, let us know. If you want to try free electronic signature, try DocuSign Lite and send a document for esignature, FREE!

Uptime refers to the time during which a Web site is fully operational and viewable, which means continued service to our customers.

During the past 24 months, DocuSign experienced only three outages, and even so, has always met our customers’ expectations. Yes, we’ve met 100% of our service level agreements (SLA)

Over the two year timeframe, DocuSign’s overall percentage of uptime is: 99.9928%. For a mission critical electronic signature and online contract execution service, a nearly 100% uptime means that our customers can depend on DocuSign to be fully operational.

The past 24 months is 1,052,640 minutes, and the total number of down minutes is 76.

Think about it this way… in the course of the last two years, DocuSign’s total downtime was just more than an hour and fifteen minutes. That’s about as long as the total average daily commute time of those in major metropolitan areas, like New York, D.C., Los Angeles or Chicago… but spread out over TWO YEARS.

These uptime statistics demonstrates DocuSign’s ability to deliver enterprise-class stability and reliability. Of course, you don’t need to be a Fortune 500 to take advantage of the benefits offered by electronic signature and online contract execution. If you’re a sole proprietor, a real estate agent, a small or medium business you can still enjoy the operational savings, time savings, and ability to close deals faster along with the peace of mind that comes with DocuSign’s uptime.

State of Green Business Report

In February, Joel Makower released the second annual State of Green Business report, State of Green Business 2009, which assesses how and how well companies are doing from an environmental perspective. From reporting on the 10 trends of the past year as well as providing insight via 20 indicators that, in aggregate, provide a picture of U.S. companies’ environmental achievements.

Some of the news was encouraging and some was discouraging: Absolute greenhouse gas emissions grew 1.4 percent in 2007 over 2006, but shrank 0.6 percent per unit of GDP, the smallest annual decrease since 2002. Regarding electronic waste (“e-waste”), we recycled only a tiny fraction more e-waste in 2007 than the year before, even though the amount of e-waste entering the waste stream increased.

The encouraging side of things includes Makower’s findings that green building is on the rise – new technologies that save energy and money while creating more healthful workplaces. The automobile industry’s major players plan to introduce electric vehicles and the leading consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers are starting to rigorously assess their products’ environmental impacts, which has implications to the supply chain that tomorrow’s products will be held to higher levels of environmental responsibility.

I also found some interesting green statistics:

• The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years.
• Using recycled paper for one print run of the Sunday edition of the New York Times would save 75,000 trees.
• If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25 million trees a year.

According to Xerox research:

• 15.2 trillion pages were printed in 2006
• 10 trillion pages were printed in 2007 – 2010 in the US alone
• 53 trillion pages will be printed worldwide by 2010
  

To say we use a lot of paper is an understatement. In business, contracts, paperwork and other documents mean constant paper usage and document creation.

Unless…

There’s a better way. There’s a greener way. DocuSign’s electronic contract execution (ECE) process integrates with your workflow so that all of the physical (paper) documents you used to send can now be sent electronically, minimizing your physical document creation. As a matter of fact, if you dig around your business you will find that you spend a HUGE amount to manage the movement of paper.. It is not just lower postage and the cost of paper. It is also people – people who have to re-key data, scanners, printers, toner, physical storage space – it all adds up.

Say you hire someone – he or she has to sign a two page offer letter, a four page non-compete & non-disclosure agreement, a three page declaration of intellectual property, and a one page statement of company policy. That’s 10 pages for an employee, when he or she first walks in the door. Times two because you probably made a copy. Now, multiply that by the number of employees you hire a year. For a 50 person company, that’s 500 pages – with copies, that’s 1,000 pages – that now need storage.

That’s just for hiring – what about the other associated paperwork? What about contracts with your vendors and suppliers? What about contracts with your customers?

By providing secure storage of digital documents, DocuSign also addresses your storage needs. In addition to realizing operational savings from sending documents electronically instead of via overnight shipping and accelerating your business by allowing you to close more deals more quickly, DocuSign also allows you to go green. Our electronic signature and online contract execution services can greatly reduce the paper your business creates. Operational savings and increased business capacity while creating an environmentally friendly business impact can help your business succeed in this economic climate.

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 the following:

• Estimating a savings of 5 days per contract, or in the aggregate about 315,000 years of waiting has been avoided
• At an average of 10 pages per envelope and 1.7 signers, this is 391M pages of paper that did not have to be used or moved saving 5,000 trees.
• If these pages had been printed, it would take roughly 78,000 toner cartridges (5,000 page duty cycle). That is a line of toner cartridges over 22 miles long!

So here’s to a happy St. Patrick’s day! Go Green!

Image courtesy of flickr user pburghsteverunder creative commons.