As Easy As a Hanko

Apr 27

Cloud-based e-signatures solve the last mile challenge in digital transformation

One of the biggest challenges faced by telco companies and logistics players alike is solving the “last mile”—making the connection between centralized hubs and individual endpoints. In the quest for digital transformation, the pervasive hanko presents a similar last mile problem.

While e-signatures have been legal in Japan since the early 2000s, the larger hubs of digital transformation—businesses of all sizes—have the will and the resources to start a change. But the last mile of digital transformation—the end user or the gemba (actual place) at businesses large and small that must interact with the big hubs to conduct business—often lack the desire, much less the infrastructure and expertise, to move beyond the low-tech rubber stamp.

Opportunity to Change

Focusing on the IT problem of the large hubs—with legislation, standards, and enterprise-scale solutions—won’t solve the problem for the end user, internally or externally. And that hurts everyone. When the benefits of digital transformation are opposed by the gemba, the overall impact of the effort is greatly reduced. Employee dissatisfaction increases and those that aren’t able to satisfy the end user will be at a significant competitive disadvantage.

That’s a major challenge, but it’s also a tremendous business opportunity—one that I’ve invested in with my latest venture, SignTime K.K.

SignTime K.K’s mission is to make the benefits of digital transformation easily available to businesses of all sizes, with a focus on the end user of the service. SignTime is a cloud-based e-signature solution that simplifies document creation, e-signing, routing, tracking, and verification—all within a highly secure and customizable environment.

For a small or medium-sized enterprise, having affordable and easy access to a full-contract lifecycle management tool such as SignTime can make the difference between being left behind and having a competitive advantage. For a larger enterprise, SignTime’s ability to customize its solution to the end user’s needs as a clean, easy-to-use design ensures that documents sent by SignTime will be built, signed, sent, and delivered in a more timely fashion than other available services.

Most importantly, SignTime can create real process efficiencies in areas that are mission critical but not core to the company’s product or service offering. Human resources staff can devote more time to recruiting and spend less time on paperwork. Real estate agents can automate much of the tedious back-and-forth flow of complex documents that reduces customer satisfaction and delivers no added value. Venture capitalists and startups can benefit from operational efficiencies and faster processing times during crucial phases of their business cycles.

Get Started

The legal and technological enablers are in place in Japan to start realizing these benefits today. But it’s also going to require a cultural shift and a comfort level with doing things a new way. We’re helping by making onboarding easy with an intuitive product and a free 30-day trial. We’ve also structured our pricing to enable businesses of any size to pay for only the services they use and the volume of documents they need to manage.

The transition to e-signatures won’t happen overnight. But with SignTime, we’re helping to ensure that no one gets left behind.

Presented in partnership
with SignTime K.K.