As a leading ERA franchisee in Texas, ERA Colonial Real Estate is ranked as a Top 10 ERA Company nationally and was named Top Overall Real Estate Company Nationwide in 2003. To maintain this lead, ERA Colonial Real Estate wanted to improve the experience with their many clients stationed abroad, while making the transaction easy for clients and agents alike.
Business Challenge
ERA Colonial Real Estate provides service to many active duty and Department of Defense personnel moving to and from Texas. Because many of these clients are remote, agents spent a lot of time scanning, emailing and printing documents for signature, not to mention following up to make sure the document had been signed.
Moreover, there was often a loss of legibility in documents over the course of the transaction as documents were faxed, signed and re-faxed. This slowed the process as agents attempted to read the documents and get illegible information fixed and re-sent. ERA Colonial Real Estate sought a more efficient and client friendly solution for managing real estate contracts.DocuSign Solution
ERA Colonial Real Estate had just started investigating electronic signatures when one of the company’s tech-savvy agents started using DocuSign. “We quickly saw that DocuSign would enable us to work smarter and provide higher service levels to our clients,” said Tom DeWine, President and Chief Operating Officer at ERA Colonial Real Estate.
The fact that DocuSign is integrated with zipForm®, the form technology of choice for ERA Colonial Real Estate agents, made the decision that much easier.Results
DeWine estimates between 50 and 60% of the company’s transactions are now closed through DocuSign. Using DocuSign, ERA Colonial Real Estate has seen a big improvement in the ease and speed with which paperwork is returned by clients. In addition, ERA Colonial Real Estate agents are saving time in managing the final steps of the transaction and have reduced cost associated with postage, printing, faxing and storage space.
“With DocuSign, the process is more efficient overall because we can be more timely in executing paperwork with our clients,” said DeWine. “The integration of zipForm® with DocuSign has been extremely valuable in processing and completing paperwork.”
Clients who have used DocuSign are extremely satisfied with completing documents remotely. “Everyone who uses DocuSign has great things to say about it,” DeWine explains, “Clients and agents appreciate that DocuSign eliminates faxing and enables them to complete documents via email.” The ease and effectiveness of matching templates to forms out of zipForm® is icing on the cake.
DeWine believes Docusign makes sense by bringing together easy, everywhere technologies like smart phones and laptops into the business of real estate. “With so much connectivity, it is a step backwards to have a client or an agent go to an office or seek out a fax machine in order to complete documents.”
