EchoBlog - Electronic Signature Solutions

Greening Your Small Business

At EchoSign, many of our larger customers have green initiatives, and in many cases, EchoSign makes a material contribution to them.  We're proud to be part of the green programs of leaders such as BT, Aetna, and Time Warner.  In these large enterprises, our customers generally have employees to manage their green efforts.

For our smaller customers, though, that person probably is you.  Prentice Hall's new book "Greening Your Small Business" focuses on strategies that make sense for time-strapped, cash-strapped, small businesses wanting to go green.  Namely. things that are easy to implement quickly, and that make sense for the bottom line:

“A lot of people don’t get started because they are fearful it will be too complicated and expensive and they won’t be green enough,” says Kaplan. But many green practices cost little or no money and can reap you immediate financial rewards, she says.

Jennifer Kaplan practices what she preaches.  In running her own small business, one of her first steps in going green was kicking the fax machine to the curb, using digital fax and EchoSign:

"Kaplan made a concerted effort to green her own small business while working on the book. One of her first steps was eliminating her fax machine -- and need for expensive, environmentally unfriendly toner cartridges. To send a fax, she now uses a digital fax service (there are plenty of free and low cost ones, such as jConnect). To put a digital signature on documents she sends, she uses EchoSign."

As Ms. Kaplan notes, e-signatures on their own are just one small piece of going green.  But for a small business, they are a step you can take almost instantly -- and that also save you money.

The Evolving/Evolved Role of the Legal Department in E-Signatures

Much has been made of the shifting roles of IT departments in SaaS applications.  When we started EchoSign over 4 years ago, in many cases, IT departments at medium and large enterprises were opposed to, or at least concerned with,  SaaS and web applications.  Fast forward 4+ years, and most IT professionals we work with have a much different, and in many cases, more exciting role -- to evaluate SaaS applications and ensure best-of-breed applications can be safely and efficiently brought into the enterprise.  We're proud to have passed a half-dozen Fortune 500 security audits in Q4'09 for example.  SaaS has become an enabler of the IT department, vs. a potential headache 4 years ago.

Something similar is taking shape (in a much less heralded fashion) in legal departments across the country and the globe.  Legal, like IT, has dual roles in the enterprise that sometimes can be in seeming partial conflict with each other.  Both legal and IT need to evaluate and protect against risk -- but at the same time, identify where new technologies can add value across the enterprise (and in many cases, by doing so, also reduce risk).

While SaaS drove this change it the role of IT, the change in legal is being driven more by e-discovery and similar technologies.  While the legal framework for e-signatures has been in place for over a decade following the passage of the Federal E-Sign Act, five years ago, the still somewhat novel idea of signing and storing contracts on-line could seem risky vs. using tried-and-true paper.  Back in 2006, in-house counsel that was focused on business processes, especially sales-side business processes, would often embrace the change to electronic signatures and contracting.  Others, however, often expressed concerns about moving from the trusted wet-ink and paper paradigm to a new web-based and digital contracting world.

Fast forward to 2010 and we are seeing a different world for legal.  SaaS hasn't drive the change in legal -- rather instead, in many cases, e-discovery and e-archiving have. E-discovery (like SaaS for legal) has proven itself in fact a dramatically more effective choice in cases than producing hundreds or thousands of boxes of legal documents.  So much so that e-discovery has taken over as the paradigm (in many cases, a mandated paradigm) used by the most conservative courts and conservative outside counsel. In-house counsel has driven this trend, trying to deal with the massive amounts of data generated in discovery in particular.

This in turn has helped drive an overall change in a paradigm for in-house counsel to view digital document management as the preferred medium for storing and archiving content.  With that, comes an inherent "crossing the chasm" to a comfort level with documents that may forever exist only in a secure digital format.

And once documents are only stored digitally -- the fact that they are signed digitally becomes something that is not only embraced, but intuitively understood -- and desired.  If contracts are to be stored digitally, it simply makes sense they be executed digitally as well.

We view EchoSign as the in-house counsel's best friend.  Contracts are no longer lost -- ever.  Audit trails are automatically created.  All parties receive real-time notification and copies of all signed contracts -- automatically.  Room for error shrinks to zero. 

With the uber-trends in legal moving (finally) toward a 100% digital solution, we're looking forward to, and already seeing, legal being the key stakeholder driving many of our customers to use EchoSign.

Gartner's 2012-2014 IT Predictions, and How We are Getting Ready

Gartner just published its annual Top Technology Predictions for 2010 and beyond. 

The 9 summary predictions aren't earth-shattering, but they are a good summary of the key trends in computing over the coming years.

We thought we'd use it as a check-up and let you know what we're planning in the future.

Below we've listed Gartner's 9 Top Predictions for 2012-2014, and what (if anything) we're doing to be prepared:

• * "By 2012, 20% percent of businesses will have no ownership of IT assets. Fueled by technological developments in 2009, such as virtualization and cloud computing, there’s a movement toward decreased IT assets."

EchoSign:  We've seen this trend accelerate ourselves in 2H'09 and into 2010.  Look for EchoSign to integrate wherever contracts and content are on the web and in the Cloud.  EchoSign for Salesforce, Google Apps, Zoho, Box.net, and others are just the start.

• * "By 2012, India-based IT companies will represent 20% of cloud service providers in the market. Gartner attributes this to companies leveraging their market positions and R&D efforts in cloud computing, resulting in cloud-enabled outsourcing options."

EchoSign:  Ok, we're still figuring out our India strategy.  Food for thought.

Cisco: Lessons from the Big Boys, and What Big and Small Share

We were pleased to note that Cisco featured EchoSign's CEO in its recent Technology Spotlight on "Lessons from the Big Boys", available as PDF here.

Cisco looks at technologies which large enterprises deploy, that SMBs can also integrate into their businesses.  Despite very different buying processes, Cisco notes that both enterprise and SMB customers often have similar technology needs -- the #1 difference being that SMBs just don't have any resources to deploy technology.

This is what we are all about.  Our thousands of SMB customers can leverage much of what we've developed together with leaders such as BT, GE, Dell, Comcast, TimeWarner, and 100s of other global leaders -- and vice-versa. 

It's a virtuous cycle.  The enterprise customers push workflows, permissions, security enhancements, heirarchies, and other features that SMBs can benefit from.  In return, the sheer number of EchoSign SMBs (100x in number), and their constant and unfiltered feedback, dramatically improve the core end-user experience -- to the large co-benefit of our enterprise customers.

It can be challenging to support both Fortune 500 companies and companies of one.  But together, we are stronger.

 

The 60,000+ Salesforce Customers Name EchoSign to "Best Apps"

We're very pleased to announce that the 60,000+ customers of Salesforce.com have named us to "The Best Apps of 2009" as the winner in Contract Management.  There were 10 category winners out of more than 1,000 apps on the AppExchange.  We deeply appreciate the support. Press release from Salesforce and EchoSign after the break.

Vintage 2010

We're pleased that once again our customers have beaten us to the punch.

Bouchard Cooperages Ltd., an independent artisan wine barrel broker in New Zealand, has featured EchoSign in its Vintage 2010 newsletter, before we could get out our thoughts on the new year.

Like many businesses, they've gone global with the help of the internet.  In 2010, they are improving their customer service with EchoSign:

"E-Signing Across the Globe:

We've been working on ways to streamline our order confirmation process and make it easier for you.  We've decided to use EchoSign, a web based company that enables clients to send contracts for signature electronically.  We 'test drove' it in the USA this past season, and it was fantastic ... No more printing out, manually signing, and then faxing back orders!"

A great newsletter to kick off an important theme for us in 2010: E-Signing Across the Globe.  Look for more here soon.

The Other Shoe: How VOIP is Slowly Killing Fax for Contracts

While is may surprise a casual reader of this blog, EchoSign is actually a big fan of fax, in particular, electronic fax.  We've offered a fax signature option since our launch over four years ago, and devised many clever (at least, we think clever) ways to combine fax signatures and e-signatures.  We've even integrated with eFax, the leading electronic fax provider on the internet.

Many business processes still rely on fax for a variety of uses and the transition from fax signatures to e-signatures, while now substantially accelerating (see our forthcoming 2009 Summary / 2010 Preview post), will remain in a transitory phase for many years, like the transition from DVDs to web-based video (which we're seeing as we speak), or the transition from analog to digital photos (now a fait accompli, but one that in fact took a full decade).

The transition to electronic contracting and electronic signatures is occuring for one primary reason: people who use the web to run their businesses find they also want to close their customers on the web.  Simple as that.  When you use web-tools like Google Adwords or Jigsaw to acquire your customers; Salesforce or Netsuite to track them; and Citrix Go To Meeting or WebEx to collaborate and demo with them ... it's dawning on web users worldwide that it just makes sense to close them, and sign them, on the web.  Hence, in part, our substantial growth in 2009.

But a technical problem with fax is also helping accelerate the trend at the margin: VOIP phone services like Vonage.  The bottom line is, broadly speaking, fax just does not work over consumer-grade VOIP.   And e-fax services don't help here because generally speaking, they just receive faxes.

That means, for example, the 2,500,000 Vonage customers probably cannot fax a contract back to you for signature.  Don't try to send them a contract to fax and sign back.  The cool Ooma boxes we bought at EchoSign?  A no go for fax too.  And the 20,000,000 Skype users?  It's pretty challenging to fax through Skype as well.  The technical reasons are around handshaking and the fact that fax was designed around analog modems that assume a dedicated phone line, not intermittent internet packets that make up VOIP.  The practical impact is your customer can't fax sign.

VOIP isn't the primary driver of e-signatures in 2009 and 2010.  But it's an interesting contributory factor.  

How E-Signatures Make Contracts Immutable - and Thus Dramatically Improve Your Close Rates

The benefits to e-contracting and e-signatures and many and varied.

However, before our customers starting using e-signatures, the #1 factor for changing is speed and ease-of-use over fax/efax/FedEx/mail.

What often gets lost in that up-front analysis is just exactly why contracts on EchoSign get e-signed so quickly.

Part of the reason is certainly ease-of-use.  By making it incredibly ease to sign contracts, without having to find a fax machine or track down a FedEx number - more deals close.  It is that simple.

But that doesn't explain why deals close, on average, in 42 minutes on EchoSign (or just 9.9 minutes in our own org). 

The reason they close that fast is that EchoSign by default locks down contracts and makes them unchangeable, or immutable.

The reality is, when you send over a contract as Word file or even a PDF for fax-back or mail-back ... you invite comments.  Generally, pointless comments.  $10,000,000 contracts should go through drafts, redlining, iterations, and legions of lawyers.  But $5,000 contracts shouldn't.  When buying a relatively inexpensive service under contract, nine times out of ten, the only variables that matter are just price and term.

But send over a Word document for fax signature .. and off it goes to legal ... with "comments" on things like choice of law, payment terms, liabilities, representations, boilerplate, reciprocity, blah blah -- stuff that just simply does not matter in a $2,000-$20,000 contract.  Your sales process grinds to a halt.

But when the contract can't be changed, and it's super-easy to sign (say on the exec's Blackberry), something simply magic happens.

They just sign, when the key terms are fine.

Not always.  But almost.  90% of the time.

So making it easy to sign without debate ... that's the secret sauce for standard sales contracts.  That's what brings down sign times to 42 minutes -- the end of pointless negotiations on unimportant terms.

Because the best way to not sweat the small stuff is not to allow it into the dialogue in the first place.

ADTRAN: "We deployed EchoSign from the AppExchange in less than 24 hours"

We appreciate Salesforce.com recently highlighting how our customer ADTRAN and how EchoSign was one of the key components of boosting their sales team's productivity.

ADTRAN is a long-term marquee Salesforce customer.

The interesting part to us wasn't the spectacular results -- deployment in one day to a global salesforce, leading to send-to-sign time of within 24 hours.  "ADTRAN reduced the contract approval process from weeks to less than 24 hours."  These results are commonplace for our customers.  You should expect a 10x improvement in close times, and ease-of-use, and customer signing experience, from using EchoSign.  Otherwise ... why bother.

The interesting part for us rather was actually how ADTRAN describes their use of end-to-end web tools. This is the theme we are seeing in 2009, and which will accelerate in 2010.  Sales teams, and really, any run-of-the mill business, are beginning to run their entire business on the web.

A few years ago, the average customer would pick and choose a few web tools.  Salesforce probably.  EchoSign for some.  GoToMeeting or WebEx for some teams.  A few others.  But they were all point solutions -- even Salesforce.  Lead generation, lead automation, lead tracking, collaboration, contract generation, signing and execution, storage, archiving ... rarely was the entire sales process web-based and web-automated, end-to-end.

Fast forward to 2009 and really 2010.

ADTRAN is:

  * Generating customers on-line with Google Adwords

  * Using a web-based call center to manage them

  * Using Salesforce to track leads and customers

  * Using Blackberries and Salesforce mobile to manage them from the field

  * Using EchoSign-for-Salesforce to approve and sign contracts on the web.

This is the sales automation circa 2010.  It's more than just "Sales 2.0".  It's end-to-end web based processes.  Nothing off-line, nothing local, and importantly, no point solutions.  Everything just "works" together, 100% on the web.

It's not all there today for every customer, but it's getting closer.  Further accelerating end-to-end 100% web-based sales processes is a key part of our 2010+ agenda and vision.

Really Going Green and Paperless

When we started EchoSign back in 2005, we thought the green benefits of going paperless would really resonate with our users.  We tried green ads.  We did some work with Treehugger. 

But mostly, we were wrong back then.

Whether it was gas at $1.00 per gallon, rollin' on the 22" dubs on our chromed-out Escalades, or just the post-Kyoto ennui, it wasn't really until 2008 and into 2009 that truly being green made the list of EchoSign benefits people really cared about (vs. just paying lip service to).

Getting your contracts signed on the web, electronically, truly helps.  Paper represents approximately 1/3 of all solid waste in the U.S.  And we've gone further by being 100% wind-powered.

But to get the full benefits of being paperless -- both the archiving benefits, and the green benefits -- you also need to archive your contracts 100% digitally, without paper.  If you end up printing out, photocopying, and file-cabinet storing your e-signed contracts, you've really only gotten about 20% of the green benefits.

According to a 2006 Citigroup/EDF study, the average contract is photocopied and printed a further 4-8 times after execution, in large part so each party, and each department, can have its own copy.

This is where the "Echo" of EchoSign comes in.  Every web EchoSign user is automatically generated a contract archive which can store, manage, search and sort over 20,000 contracts.  In addition, Team and Enterprise accounts are dynamically hierarchical, so managers, legal, finance and other groups can automatically search and find any contract across their company.  And for our Salesforce customers, all contracts can be automatically pushed into, and archived within, Salesforce.

To go truly green, you have to go all the way, 100% digital -- create, send, track, sign, and store on-line and digitally.

Expect even more to come here in 2010 (a future post).  We're working to make sure that your contracting process is 100% web-based, 100% digital, end-to-end, no matter how, where, or what you work with.

Forrester Research: "E-Signatures are the Linchpin of the Document Legalization Process"

Forrester Research just released a terrific, succinct report on the current state of the e-signature market and the top 9 questions to think about as you choose a solution.  The report is $499 and is available here.

Bill Nagel walks through nine common questions business and IT execs have, with crisp, plain answers to all the key questions.

The most interesting part to us is Forrester's recognition that e-signatures have gone mainstream, based on pressures to be more efficient, adopt cloud computing services, and to save money wherever possible. 

And that since they have gone mainstream, IT professionals can benefit from a simple, straightforward guide to "jumpstart their e-signature projects in 2010".

E-Signatures for Dummies is likely not far behind.

Albany Workforce Management Deploys EchoSign Across EMEA

Albany Global Workforce Management, one of Europe's largest workforce management companies, announced it had deployed EchoSign across its customer base.

Albany has over 14 offices worldwide and over $300m in annual turnover:

"Late last month, contingent workforce management firm Albany rolled out EchoSign electronic signature software in EMEA, enabling all contracts to be signed online. EchoSign reduces the time to sign contracts from days and weeks to hours in most cases. EchoSign also enables Albany to significantly reduce its carbon footprint.

Albany clients have been broadly enthusiastic, benefiting from cost-savings and efficiency over manual methods for signing contracts. This is among several initiatives that form Albany's corporate responsibility program and efforts to be more environmentally friendly. The company plans to roll out the electronic signature capabilities in other regions throughout 2010.

Although less than a decade old, digital signatures are widely accepted and legally admissible in many countries worldwide. The UK adopted and implemented certain provisions of the EU's Electronic Commerce Directive in the Electronic Communications Act 2000. All communications and documents emailed through EchoSign are encrypted with full 128-bit SSL security.

"EchoSign exponentially helps Albany reduce turn-around times for finalising contracts," said Cornelius Hattingh, Albany EMEA operations director. "Clients appreciate its ease of use, the proven legality of signing contracts online and reduced distribution, paper and postage. It's also a great preventative measure for contracts being lost or misplaced." About EchoSign The EchoSign electronic signature program automates the entire signature process in just one click, from the request for signature to the distribution and filing of the executed agreement or form. With nothing to download, learn or install, there is no faster, more secure way to get contracts signed, tracked and filed. EchoSign has over one million users at organizations such as British Telecom, Delta Airlines, and Time Warner Cable."

EchoSign has a very strong presence in the EMEA and the U.K., stemming from our partnership with BT and key European customers such as GE Financial.  Please contact us to discuss more how we can help you across the U.K., the EU, EMEA, and the Globe.  More detail here.

Dreamforce '09 Round-Up: Electronic Signatures Go From Cutting Edge -- to Best Practices

We could do a dozen blog posts on Dreamforce 2009 and what we learned.

First, thank you to the over 100 EchoSign existing customers that came by to chat with us and visit at our booths.  This is our favorite part of Dreamforce -- a chance to meet many customers than otherwise we never get a chance to meet face-to-face.

In terms of learnings, two related things stood out.  The summary: electronic signatures, and electronic contracting, are now -- finally -- recognized as a core part of the sales solutions tool kit.

Salesforce.com led a session on Core Sales solutions and for the first time we've seen, highlighted e-signatures as a standard process step of sales operations.  That's a big deal (and something we've been preaching for 4 years now): 

 

On a related note, 13 of our customers presented on EchoSign or mentioned us in their presentations (see examples below).  This is a small testament to EchoSign, but the more interesting part is that they presented EchoSign and e-signatures simply as a part of their key sales toolkit.  Not as a novelty or something new.

 

In 2006, when we launched EchoSign-for-Salesforce together with Bluewolf, we were a slick 100% web-based sales tool for closing contracts that wasn't quite like anything anyone had seen before.

In 2007, when leaders like Successfactors, Preferred Offices and Clickability highlighted us at Dreamforce, it was to demonstrate their leadership in adopting next generating sales tool.

In 2008, when Qualcomm won the CRM Elite award for their Salesforce-EchoSign deployment, web-based e-signatures were highlighted as a relatively new advancement to bring to enterprise sales teams.

Fast forward to 2009.  At Dreamforce 2009, electronic signatures and e-contracting were highlighted not as cutting edge -- but rather just as standard and best practices by dozens of leaders.  

E-signatures as a routine, almost mundane, part of the core sales ops toolkit.

Pretty neat.  

Bluewolf, PricewaterHouseCoopers, and EchoSign Launch Salesforce Channel Compliance Solution @ Dreamforce

We're pleased to announce our partners at Bluewolf, and PricewaterHouseCoopers, have launched an exciting new integrated Channel Compliance Solution for Salesforce.com at Dreamforce '09, integrating EchoSign.com e-signature for Salesforce.

Demos, customer case studies, and more at the Dreamforce session on Compliance and Risk Management, Thursday at 11:30am:

"Finding Your Way to Full Compliance: Automating Channel Compliance" (Thurs., Nov. 19th at 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.) with Kenneth Edwards of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Jason Lemkin of EchoSign, and executives from Bluewolf who will share insights on compliance. Since the "Enron Era" of 2001, compliance has been a daunting, costly, time-intensive experience for organizations. At this panel, hear real-life stories from enterprises that are finding their way to compliance, providing a robust defense against fraud and illegal transactions, from deal registration to electronic signatures"

EchoSign-for-Salesforce Version 7 Launches

EchoSign has been the market leader in electronic signatures for Salesforce.com users for 4 years running - since 2006.

We're proud to have launched together with our partner Bluewolf Group in 2006, four years of #1 rankings and over 1,000 Salesforce customers later, we're launching the seventh version (v7) of EchoSign-for-Salesforce at Dreamforce tonight.

_____________

Simply put, we don't believe anyone can touch EchoSign-for-Salesforce after all this time, learnings, and installs.

V7 is available for existing customers to deploy to test sandboxes now and will have general availability in approximately 3 weeks.

Key innovations:

* Fully rebuilt in latest VisualForce for the state-of-the-art Salesforce experience

* Completely integrated INSIDE Salesforce.com - not an external web app bolted into Salesforce

* Full contract preview and drop-and-drag interface exposed to all sales reps (as desired)

* Dynamically set Alerts on a per-contract basis (know the second a contract has been viewed -- or not viewed -- by a prospect)

* Full integration with latest version of top-rated CongaCourier (launching at Dreamforce 2009 as well) and real-time integration with top-rated Apttus

and much more.

Please come by either of our booths for a demo.  We're at booth 210 on our own, and also being demo'd in Bluewolf Group's Platinum Booth (you won't miss that one).

"Looking Good and Walking the Walk" with E-Signatures

We're always pleased when thought leaders reach out to us.  Dean Holmes, Social Media Strategist with over 14,000 followers on Twitter and 10,000 members on LinkedIn (and a 2 year EchoSign veteran), recently reached out to us to tell us how EchoSign had added value to his practice:

Workflow Challenge

“My challenge is all about speed and efficiency”, says Dean Holmes. “For me, time is money so I need to make the most of it.” As a leading online strategist, Dean Holmes is always looking for technologies that can help both his business and his clients. Dean was using eFax to get non-disclosure agreements and customer agreements signed and it wasn’t efficient enough. “I still had to go through a manual process and faxes are cumbersome and inefficient.” In addition, even with eFax it took 2-3 days to get contracts signed so Dean searched for a better way.

EchoSign Solution

Dean Holmes has been using EchoSign for about two years. He landed a client in Australia, used EchoSign to send the contract, and is now turning his client onto EchoSign.

Results

Dean has found that with EchoSign his contracts are returned within hours. “In addition to more efficiency, the ‘coolness’ factor of signing something online is key for me. It makes me look good to my clients and shows that I walk the walk.”

Faxes are a thing of the past. With EchoSign it’s won and done!

— Dean Holmes

Looking good to your customers.  It's critical.  If you are in technology -- which is now the single largest segment of the U.S. economy -- you need to be signing your customers and closing them on the web.  Practice what you preach.  As Dean notes, "walk the walk".  Fax just ... doesn't quite cut it anymore.

Forrester Research: "Demand for E-signatures is Finally Reaching Critical Mass"

DestinationCRM had a very interesting article in its November issue on e-signatures.  It was one of the first we've seen that recognizes the change in the landscape that is happening to signatures and contracting, as signing evolves from a primarily fax and paper-based process into a primarily web-based process.

And it backed this trend up with analysis from three leading analysts:

"Consider for a moment how the Dark Ages finally gave way to the Renaissance: The capability for learning had been there all along, but a complete shift required evolution and expansion. The same could be said of the electronic signature. 

Bill Nagel, a Forrester Research analyst focusing on risk management, says the technological foundation for e-signatures—the combination of secure digital signing and paperless processing—has been in place for approximately 20 years, with some vendors in the space sporting a track record nearly that long. But demand for e-signatures is finally reaching critical mass, Nagel says ..."

Gartner Research went on to highlight a key reason why web/SaaS e-signatures are accelerating:

"Gregg Kreizman, a research director at Gartner, says that e-signature users not only gain efficiency but also lose fewer business opportunities. “The number-one benefit is basically speeding up processes versus the time it took to handle signatures manually, or [to overnight] documents…and [wait] for the response,” he says. “There’s also the ability to get a customer signed and not lose the opportunity because of the mail or courier time involved, loss of interest, or [the emergence of] a better deal.”

DestinationCRM also noted EchoSign's leadership in the space and placed us on its Vendor Shortlist.

 

BT: "We Save 5 Hours Per Week Per Sales Rep" using E-Signature from EchoSign

We'd missed this great video BT made a little while back on their top 4 sales tools for their sales teams.  EchoSign (known as BT eSignature at BT) is prominently featured at BT's offices around 5:00 in the video.

There are some great benefits and ROI examples, including that BT saves about 5 hours per week per sales rep using EchoSign due to lack of any need to do follow-up with their customers after they hit "Send for Signature".

That's pretty outstanding.

Click on the image to watch the full video.

The Evolving Landscape of Contract Lifecycle Management (+ E-Signatures, + The Cloud)

There's a traditional $100m segment of enterprise software known as CLM, or Contract LifeCycle Management, which for most of the past 10-15 years has been pretty staid (and grown pretty slowly).  CLM has focused on on-premise software for managing complex contracts, generally buy-side contracts (e.g., procurement), and with a strong focus on selling to legal as a vertical (the folks with all the liability when complex contracts go wrong, or are lost).

Like much of enterprise software, CLM has traditionally been expensive, with long-sale cycles and complex implementation cycles, often measured in years.  A few vendors, like our partners Apptus and Upside, have shaken up the market and changed a number of these assumptions around by moving to a SaaS / on-demand model.

 

CLM though has traditionally only focused on two pieces of contracting -- archiving and then managing complex, high dollar contracts, and more recently, authoring and creating contracts.  We've always believed since founding that electronic signatures are the key "glue" to make CLM truly end-to-end digital.

We were thus gratified and pleased to see AMR Research's most recent report on CLM which positioned Contract Signature as a key evolution of a truly digital CLM Business Process (with ourselves highlighted in the report) -- along with cloud-based Authoring systems like Google Docs (which EchoSign has integrated natively).

CLM software can be overkill for high volume, routing contracts like a standard, formulaic sales agreement. In those cases, often (x) a simpler-to-deploy combination of a tool to create form contracts (Google Docs or Box.net, or the EchoSign form library, or a Conga Merge in the Salesforce ecosystem) combined (y) with a service like EchoSign for signing, tracking, storing, and managing, can completely automate the contracting processes.

However, for more complex, lower volume, higher-dollar contracts with many participants, reviewers, and stakeholders, with complex post-contracting compliance, CLM software can provide huge value.  And there, connecting CLM software with automated contract execution closes the loop.

EchoSign at Defrag 2009

For our more tech-focused customers -- EchoSign is proud to be a part of Defrag 2009:

In addition to participating in the dialogue on where the web is, and is going, we'll be on stage during the Kederosky Awards.  We're not quite sure how they work, but we'll apparently be competing for the "smartest person" together with our partner, Box.net and several other CEOs.

Please root for us, and if you are attending, we'll see you there.

-> Defrag is the first conference focused solely on the tools and technologies that are leveraging the "social" aspect of software to accelerate the "aha" moment. Defrag is not a version number. Rather it’s a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, builders and thinkers that are working on the next wave of software innovation. <-

The Tipping Point(s) for Web Signatures, and the U.K. Postal Strike

This week, EchoSign presented at the 5th Annual Houlihan Lokey Technology Conference and part of the discussion was on the tipping point for web / electronic signatures.  I.e., when will the majority of routine contracts and documents be signed on the web?

The reality is there probably will be no single tipping point, but rather a confluence of smaller events that help, each on their own, to accelerate a trend already in place.

One we're seeing right now in the U.K. in the postal strike.  As The Times notes, there is essentially no point in putting anything in the post in the U.K. right now.  Since the "last mile" postal workers are on strike, nothing will be delivered (though it will be picked up).

The Times, eWeek Europe, and a number of others have noted that we are seeing a dramatic uptick in interest and sign-ups for BT eSignature (our brand in the U.K.).

The postal strike won't tip web signature penetration from it's current 2-3% (up from essentially 0% a few years ago) of contracts to 50% overnight.  But it's a small piece of what will, in a few years, look like a tipping point.

Box.net + EchoSign inside of Salesforce.com

Today our partner and friends at Box.net, the web's #1 cloud storage and collaboration platform, launched a very powerful integration inside of Salesforce.

The integration is clever for a couple of reasons.  First, it gets around storage and costs issues on the Salesforce platform (which are expensive).  Second, it allows a more robust way to work with content inside of Salesforce, especially for folks who do not pay for or have the Salesforce Content module.  

And when you use Box.net inside of Salesforce, you can full access to the applications natively integrated into Box.net -- including EchoSign.

Click on the image below to see a demo including sending a contract for e-signature on EchoSign from Box.net inside of Salesforce.com:

EchoSign offers its own top-rated Salesforce integration on the AppExchange.  

But now, if your content is stored in the cloud on Box.net, you can also access right inside of Salesforce.com as well.

MicroBilt: "Less Stress = More Sales."

The fax is on a slow, but accelerating, decline to irrelevance as a vehicle for signatures.

There are a number of reasons why.  Signing on the web is becoming more and more intuitive.  Customers are beginning to simply expect a web-based contracting process from their suppliers and vendors.  And of course, there are large efficiency gains.

But when our customer Microbilt reached out to us, they highlighted a simpler way to describe why the transition from fax-based signatures to web-based ones is accelerating.

Web signatures take stress out of the sale.  A lot of stress.  And by removing stress -- more deals close.

They're right.  It's that simple.  

 

MicroBilt's Workflow Challenge

Heavy Federal and state regulation is a significant challenge for companies in the consumer data industry. Due to these regulations, MicroBilt customers are forced to complete lengthy contracts that are typically 30-35 pages long. “The Identity Theft Crisis in our country has compelled federal regulators to impose the highest standards of due diligence on those businesses granting access to personal identifying information”, says Juliet Arthur, Contracts Specialist, MicroBilt. MicroBilt has been looking for a solution to speed up both the contract delivery process and the post-signature contract review process.

Historically, faxing contracts of that length has not been reliable and in many cases has proved to be detrimental to the sales process. Several years ago MicroBilt simplified the contract delivery process by using email to send contracts rather than faxing them, however the contract still had to be completed, signed and faxed back. When a customer returned the signed contract via fax, some pages would be missing and often times account managers had to contact the customer numerous times to gather the missing pages and resend. Most of our customers are small and medium sized businesses and typically the owner is required to complete most of the paperwork. Once they fax in the completed paperwork, they’ve moved onto the next task in their busy schedules. Contacting them to track down missing pages is a nuisance that MicroBilt has been looking to eliminate. “We can’t process our contracts unless we have every page, and often it would take days to get the entire contract from the customer. It was a manual process that just wasn’t efficient.”

EchoSign Solution

In August 2009, Juliet was assigned to manage the initiative to improve the efficiency of MicroBilt’s contract process using EchoSign. EchoSign was chosen because the setup and implementation was a smooth process and it was very easy for the account reps to use. “We use EchoSign every day, and since August we’ve sent out over 300 contracts and addendums using the tool.” Each contract is sent via email as a complete digital package so pages don’t get lost.. “Even though our contracts are lengthy, our customers only have to sign it once so electronic signatures are ideal,” comments Juliet.

Results

“EchoSign has reduced our sales close cycle tremendously – we’ve seen contracts come back in as fast as 15 minutes!” says Juliet. Another benefit is that the sales reps are removed from the contract process so they can focus on selling – once they make the sale, they do not have to contact the customer multiple times to track down missing information. “EchoSign has relieved a lot of stress for our account managers. We use it every day. Our contract process is a lot smoother, and our account reps sell more.”

EchoSign has reduced our sales close cycle tremendously!

— Juliet Arthur, Contracts Specialist, Microbilt

We'll See You at Dreamforce

We're looking forward to meeting many of you at Dreamforce 2009, our fourth Dreamforce.  EchoSign will be represented on several panels, including our CEO speaking on Executive Insights for "Finding Your Way to Full Compliance - Automating Channel Compliance".

Last year, several of our customers, including an in-depth presentation from Time Warner Cable, spoke about the impact of EchoSign in accelerating and improving their sales processes.  This year we anticipate over a half dozen of our customers speaking about EchoSign.  More details to follow closer to the event November 17-20.

Please let us know ahead of time if you'll be there, or if you can't, please come by our booth to say hi and see EchoSign-for-Salesforce Version 7, launching at Dreamforce.  It will change the face of e-signatures for sales teams.

EchoSign October Release & New Features

EchoSign has just put out its October 5.2 Release, with dozens of terrific new features.

A partial summary:

• Save your written/biometric signature.  The next time you sign with a mouse, you can save it and reuse it again and again.  Super useful for countersigning.
• Multiple automated signature stamps.  For an even more paper-like signing experience with 2-6 signers. 
• Advanced attachment settings.  Users can now automatically turn off signed PDF attachments in emails and remove thumbnails of signed contracts in emails.
• More Mobile.  Our Blackberry and iPhone mobile sign experiences have been further enhanced, with an even slicker experience and more form support.

A slideshow summary below.

The Sidekick, Trust, and The Right Questions to Ask

Much has been made over the past several days on the seeming total data loss at Microsoft of T-Mobile Sidekick data.  How could Microsoft lose all of this data in the cloud?  It seems impossible.  

The true story may never be know.  But it highlights one key point on cloud / SaaS vendors: they all claim wonderful uptime and operational data.  Just like every salesperson somehow was in the "President's Circle" or top 10% of earners.  Or how almost everyone that graduates from Harvard somehow does so with "honors".

The real question to ask is - what sort of downtime incidents has your vendor had over the past 3 years?  How were they handled?  And what was the real world impact?

If you hear from a vendor "we're never had any downtime", run, do not walk, to the exit.  

No on-line SaaS/web vendor, including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Salesforce.com, has ever experienced zero downtime.  It's not possible nor is it credible.  Servers are not 100% reliable -- including the ones that provide redundancy and horizontal scaleability.  

The real learning is how vendors handle it.  

At EchoSign, we've learned a lot over the past 4 years.  First, we provide 2.5 years of 100% fully transparent up-time data 24x7x265 at trust.echosign.com.  It includes scheduled downtime - i.e., we don't hide or ignore maintenance schedules.  Why?  Because it's too easy to blame real problems on 'scheduled maintenance'.  And hide them.  

We also discuss and highlight the downtime incidents we've had, in real-time, at trust.echosign.com.  

At EchoSign we've had two material downtime incidents in our history, and zero data loss.  The downtime incidents, one in 2007, and one in 2008, luckily both occurred after standard business hours and had minimal impact on our users.  One was due to a total power loss at both the primary and back-up power centers at our primary data center - a once-in-a-decade event as there are multiple redundant power sources in our SAS 70 data center.  But, the longer you are around, the more likely a perfect storm can and will hit. The other was a DNS (routing) issue that impacted a relatively small subset of our users at the end of the business day -- but for over an hour.  

Evaluating the true reliability of an online services vendor starts with the product, its status in the ecosystem, its reputation and customer base, its scale.  

But when the quality-of-service truly matters -- as it does with electronic signatures, when you're closing deals with your end customers -- ask for the real data, and the real stories.  

The Secret to "Easy"

As those of us who remember Clippy will attest, one man's idea about how to make something simple is another's nightmare.

As of our October release (coming out Monday - more to follow), EchoSign will include approximately 11,600 workflow permutations.

Divide that across over 13,000 customers, and you get to ... well .. a lot of different ways people get contracts signed.

A lot more than the 4 workflows we started with.

We've been at this for almost 4 years, and we're only a small part of the way to building every use case and workflow we want.  But we've built quite a few.  Thousands in fact.

Our goal is to Work the Way You Work. 

If you don't see an option, a workflow, a way to close your customers -- let us know.  We've probably got an answer.

Happy Birthday to the Barcode

Google proudly (and geekily) noted today as the 57th anniversary of the barcode.  Apparently, the first product purchased using a barcode was a ten-pack of Juicy Fruit gum.

Since then the barcode has gone on to many unimagined uses, including routing of EchoSign faxed documents.

While e-signatures are our primary function, EchoSign has sent and received almost 400,000 faxes since launching in 2006.  We have a mature, proven global fax network with over 40 points of presence to receive faxes across the world -- from India to Ireland, to South Africa to Sweden -- and a multiply redundant fax processing system that guarantees your fax signatures are not only received, but processed in real-time.  We also monitor our fax network by the minute to ensure 99.95% uptime and throughput.

The barcode is an unsung hero at EchoSign, but we're joining Google to raise a pint to honor its contributions to signature and contract automation.

Information Week: "EchoSign - Very Cool. E-Signatures in the Cloud"

Information Week's Fritz Nelson just did a terrific piece and video ReviewCam of EchoSign, taking notice after we crossed 1,000,000 users. 

Our favorite part: Fritz thinks e-signatures are both fun and "very cool".  Our kind of guy.

OK, this is fun: Electronic signature in the cloud. I know, it sounds small, but how many documents do you sign? What about your employees (HR forms)? Your sales team (contracts)? EchoSign lets you create a workflow to do this, from delivery to the actual signature to the storage and management. And all in the cloud.

Click below for the full piece and video.

 

The Facebook Effect (and Business Apps)

Q3 was a strong quarter, with a strong finish in September, for EchoSign.

We celebrated crossing 1,000,000 users -- and added another 78,000 in September.  At that rate, we'll add another 1,000,000 users in less than a year - 1/3 of the time it took us to get to the first million ;)

What's happening?  Well it's not that the entire world is deciding overnight to move to e-signatures.

Rather, it's something you might call The Facebook Effect.  The Facebook Effect (a term we're coining here -- attn Richard Lewis) is where an application that you started to hear about a few years ago begins, seemingly years later, to become more relevant, more common, more mainstream -- and then shortly thereafter, dramatically expands its footprint.

Where were you when you first heard of Facebook?  For us, it was in late 2004 from college students.  However, it wasn't clear how relevant it would be to us in the business world (Facebook wasn't even open to alumni, let alone the general public then).  Around early 2007 we started to receive more and more invites from tech-centric business partners as Facebook opened up, but we mostly ignored them.  By 2008, our aunts, uncles, grandparents, bosses, partners and customers were all connecting with us on Facebook.

And all the time.   

The Facebook Effect is similar in business apps, but it takes longer.  Viral exposure is measured in months, not minutes.  Small businesses in particular are often laggards, too busy to investigate new web services.

But then it hits.  Years after you first heard of it, you start to hear a lot more.  And then, a little later, it's all around you.

Signing contracts, closing customers, on the web.  It's happening.  The FaceBook Effect will be here in 2010 for web signatures.

Houlihan Lokey Selects EchoSign for its 5th Annual Technology Conference

We've very pleased to note that leading technology investment bank Houlihan Lokey has selected EchoSign as one of the top 20 Technology Companies to present at its 5th Annual Technology Conference in San Francisco on October 21.

It's a testament to the support of our over 12,000 customers and 1,000,000 users that we have become recognized as one of the top up-and-coming SaaS leaders in the industry.

Thank you.

 

The Future of Contracts

One topic we've been thinking on, and working on, with some frequency is the future of contracts.

EchoSign has seen explosive growth in Q3 -- we've almost doubled our growth rate over Q2 (our previous record), and crossed 1,000,000 users.

Which begs two questions.  One, how to keep it going.  But two, once the world starts to adopt e-signatures en masse, what next?

The 1.0 concept here is so-called "signature automation" or "straight through processing".  Once your contracts are digital, and the data in them is digital, they can be processed automatically.  For example, several of the world's largest leasing companies use EchoSign to automatically process equipment leases, direct debit the first month's payment, and record all the paperwork, automatically, in one click.

But Contracts 2.0 may be something even more radical.  If the contract is created, reviewed, approved, signed, tracked, stored, and extracted all on the web ... does it even need to mimic paper at all?  And the business processes that have evolved, originally around paper -- are they ripe for radical de- and re-construction?

We're working on innovations here for 2011 and beyond.  But some early observations:

• The C> Drive is dead (long live the C> Drive).  Getting a contract saved locally to your hard drive is certainly far easier than the '90s paradigm of going to a file cabinet.  But local content can be lost, corrupted, changed and mismanaged -- and is lost to the enterprise.  The contract will be entirely, and dynamically, generated in the cloud.

• But Fax will survive far longer than people think -- just not for signatures.  Approximately 40% of documents that are FedEx'ed are documents "out for signature".  It's reasonable to assume a similar percentage for fax.  This will no longer be done, ever, for Contracts 2.0.  But fax also is a way to transport documents from one office to another, without the need for scanners or a stateful PC.  Fax of documents not for signature will last for decades and only slowly decline. Fax for signatures, however, will be dead and extinct in 6-8 years, much like analog film is now dead.

• More documents will be signed, not fewer.  In the digital age, one might wonder if signatures might become an anachronism.  In fact, the opposite is occurring.  As commerce becomes more global, and more remote, "handshake" deals become less and less practical.  Virtual relationships need to be physically consummated.  The signature is that moment in time, and its value only grows as commerce ever-accelerates and ever-expands its footprint.

There's more coming.  One thing we can guarantee you.  In five years time, EchoSign will look a lot like it does today -- only it will be more powerful, more feature-packed, and more integated with more and more web solutions.  But EchoSign will also being doing some things that today seem pretty out there. 

EchoSign Passes 1,000,000 Users Worldwide

We're extremely pleased to note and announce that EchoSign has now crossed 1,000,000 users worldwide.

While it's revenue and profits that keep EchoSign running, it is the breadth of our entire userbase that allows us to continue to learn, innovate, and expand our product and platform.

We thank you for your support.

We're very interested in getting your stories and thoughts as we pass this key milestone.  

For the next 30 days, for every EchoSign story you tell us, or piece of product feedback you give us, we'll plant a tree.  Feel free to post your EchoSign story on the EchoSign 1,000,000 users Facebook wall here, or on Twitter using the hashtag #es1mill, or just in the comments below this post if you want.

Either way, we'll plant a tree to say 'thanks'.

For coverage on TechCrunch, click here.

T-Mobile And the Cost of Not Going Paperless

T-Mobile recently announced a monthly charge of $1.50 to receive a basic (1 page) paper bill and $3.50 to receive a detailed paper bill.  That, on top of their average $75 per month service charge.  After a net-based backlash, T-Mobile has temporarily reversed the charge for the basic paper bill -- though it's kept the $3.50 charge for a detailed paper bill.

There is, of course, no charge for paperless bills.

These fees, and the costs they represent, tie directly to the data and feedback we've heard from our almost 1,000,000 users.  Generally, our customers measure EchoSign in terms of revenue ROI, i.e. the value in (x) closing deals and contracts more quickly, and (y) how much more revenue that generates in terms of addition days of revenue and additional deals closing which otherwise would have been lost (deals which die while waiting for a fax or FedEx that never comes).

But especially with our non-sales focused customers, the ROI can often turn to the costs saved by going paperless.  The indirect cost savings are actually the largest cost savings category by far, in particular, never losing track of a contract ever again.  The cost to an enterprise of trying to find lost contracts can be vast.

However, the direct cost savings are simpler to measure.  Some customers measure the costs of e-signatures vs. overnight or fax, and e-signatures almost always win.  Others use a subtler measure of the basic cost of processing a contract.  Those numbers typically pencial out to about $3-$6 per contract (before fax and FedEx charges).  

Which seems to be exactly what T-Mobile is charging for a detailed paper-based bill.

T-Mobile has relented, in part, for now.  But in the coming 12-24 months, you'll find yourself charged more and more for not going paperless.  

It's just too darn cost effective to be 100% digital and electronic.  So the luddites are going to have to pay.

Never Forgetting

We honor and remember those who fell in 9-11, and those who have fallen since.

The heart of innovation is freedom.

Why We Need Web-Based Electronic Signatures

This may sound strange coming from an electronic signature vendor, but one thing is clear: no one needs to use e-signatures.

Business today does manage to operate, credit-crunch aside, with some success using fax, FedEx, snail mail, and the like.  Global commerce existed before the internet, and contracts have been signed quite successfully using good old pen and paper for quite some time.

So why change?  A simple reason.  To make signing (and closing your customers) 10x better.  10x easier.  10x faster.  10x simpler. 10x more elegent.

Anything less than 10x -- there's no reason to change.

• Bringing down signing times from > 1 week to 42 minutes = 10x better. 
• Sending a document for signing in 5 clicks = 10x better.
• Signing on a Blackberry, rather than trying to find a POTS fax machine somewhere = 100x better.

And what about scanning in your signature and using that?  Well, E-SIGN issues aside, you could.  But how does your customer do that?  Do you buy them a scanner?  FedEx it to them?  That's not 10x better.

On that note, we found this post on how to "Create Your Own Electronic Signature" demonstrative.  You could do this ... but why would you?  

"Create your own electronic signature [Using Flex and Cold Fusion]
In an enhanced example of a technique that works well - combining an AS 3 PNG encoder, an open-source utility, the Apache Batik project, and of course, ColdFusion 8, you can create your very own electronic signature.
The electronic signature you create, by dragging your mouse across the signature canvas to, in effect, sign your 'John Hancock', works like this:

• The signature drawing is passed as binary data to a ColdFusion CFC function that saves the PNG to the ColdFusion server's file system.
• Next, leveraging an open source tool, KVEC, the PNG, created in step one, is passed to another CFC function that converts the PNG to a SVG file.
• Next, the SVG is passed to a CFC function that completes the final conversion to a PDF file, using the Apache Batik project's batik-rasterizer.jar.
• Next, leveraging the ColdFusion 8 <cfzip> tag, a CFC function creates a zip archive of the PNG, the SVG, and the PDF files of the signature just created.
• Finally, to save on disk space, a final CFC function is called to delete the PNG and SVG files (once the PDF and zip archive are safely created)." 

Electronic signatures, and electronic contracting, as a web service can make your close process 10x better.  For you, your customer, your colleagues, you boss, your team.  That's why you go digital, when analog still works.

$200 Million a Month on EchoSign, and Going From Mainstream to Ubiquitous

With an irregular frequency, we survey our customers to get a statistically significant representation of how much commerce flows through EchoSign.  Our latest survey comfortably confirmed more than $200,000,000 of contracts a month are signed on EchoSign.

Why does this matter?  It's part of the evolution of e-contracting and e-signatures, and Office 2.0 in general.  Our CEO made a related post here, talking about how Office 2.0 is a 10-12 year journey, of which we are at about year 4.  Year 4 is when Office 2.0 begins to go mainstream (if not having yet achieved ubiquity).

When EchoSign was founded, SaaS and web services were still perceived as something relatively new.  Today, SaaS is not just mainstream, it's ubiquitous.  Today, Salesforce.com alone has over 60,000 customers.

The same is happening with e-contracting and e-signatures, a few years behind.  With $200,000,000 in contracts flowing through EchoSign a month, thousands of paying customers (including many in the Fortune 500), and very very close to 1,000,000 users ... $200,000,000 in e-signatures is edging right into mainstream.

Our plan and goal (together with our colleagues in the industry) is now to go from mainstream to ubiquity.  

Once you've gone with e-signatures, you never go back.

E-Commerce, E-Billing, E-Contracts and E-Signatures: Making More Money By Going Paperless

The direct ROI from switching to e-signatures is usually immediately measurable -- at least qualitatively.

EchoSign provides performance dashboards to all its 960,000 users that show both how quickly your organization closes deals, and also what % of contracts are signed.

Typically our users and customers immediately see an improvement in the % of deals signed vs. paper-based processes, which equals immediate additional revenue (beyond the cost savings from going paperless and skipping FedEx fees, etc.).

But precisely quantifying the exact average revenue "bump" from moving to electronic signatures and contracting can still be challenging, due to the different sizes of deals and other variables. 

To answer the question of the the precise ROI of going paperless, FiServ just commissioned a fascinating study of the revenue and customer retention benefits of Qwest moving to e-billing.  The study represented a 50% representative sample of almost 8 million households.

The bottom line: the ROI from going 100% paperless with your customers is so high that "customers should be strategically guided" toward a combination of e-billing and e-payments.  Combining paperless billing and paperless recurring electronic payments led to a stunning 15% higher customer retention rate.

Paper processes = higher churn and less customer satisfaction.  And the lowest costs.  The full report is here.

Collaborate, Review and Sign: Box + Fuze + EchoSign

One of the most common use cases people imagine for contracts is one where the customer and the vendor/seller (for us, the Sender) work together on a contract in real-time, review it, and then sign it and seal the deal, all in real time, all together, all on the web.

There are a number of ways to do this with EchoSign today.  Our integration with Google Apps and Google Docs allows both real-time and asynchronous editing and redlining of contracts in the cloud. 

But perhaps the most common theoretical use case is simply talking a prospect or customer through a proposal or contract over the web, in real-time.  One new way to do that is leveraging Box.net's existing integration with EchoSign and its new integration with Fuze web-meetings.

As the example in this post shows, now you can grab a contract or other document on Box.net; review it in real-time with a prospect using the Box.net-Fuze integration, together on the screen; and then sign the contract and close the deal using the Box.net-EchoSign integration.

EchoSign Featured at SIIA On Demand: Driving Revenue in a Recovering Economy

Now this is our kind of conference topic: driving revenue in a recovering economy.  

Enough of the post-Lehman negativity.  We're so done with that.  EchoSign is all about closing more deals, more quickly for our customers, and helping them accelerate their sales and sales processes. 

The Software & Information Industry Association, the nation’s leading independent authority on Software as a Service, has again tapped EchoSign to speak about key SaaS trends at its annual On Demand conference October 29-30.  Our CEO will be speaking on pricing models:

"Pricing Models

A survey of SIIA members showed pricing to be a very hot topic. Indeed, the pricing model is one of the most important choices a company must make. Whichever metric is chosen - named users, transactions, etc. - will drive customer behavior such as software adoption. The frequency of adjustment will determine how quickly revenues can increase in a good market and how rapidly they decline in a recession. Length of term and amount paid upfront are also key issues ...."

We'll see you there. 

With EchoSign pricing being 100% transparent, and 100% all-in (with no per document, storage, transaction, or overage charges), we may have to be brief.