At Adobe EchoSign, we’re always looking to help streamline business processes by adding our eSignature solution. And whenever we can help a government agency do that, it helps everyone. So when government IT solutions provider Carahsoft Technology announced the addition of Adobe EchoSign to its General Services Administration Schedule, we were pleased to be part of a solution that will provide government agencies and citizens with a simple, secure and compliant option for sending, tracking, and signing documents.

Adobe EchoSign helps agencies accelerate digital document processing, improve tracking and centralize the management of signed agreements by reducing the time and costs of having documents signed with traditional methods, such as fax, overnight envelopes or in-person signings.

In announcing the news, Carahsoft’s Cortney Steiner, vice president of the Adobe Government Solutions team said, “Government agencies are working hard to simplify and speed interaction with their constituents. That’s why we’re so excited to add the Adobe EchoSign solution to our GSA schedule. It provides agencies with a fast and secure way for businesses and citizens to sign, track or file documents and contracts as they interact with the government, while enabling agencies to leverage their investments in Adobe software they have already purchased without additional IT implementation or maintenance.”

Thanks, Cortney. We’re excited to be part of the solution.

You can get the big picture of how Adobe EchoSign is helping customers here. And to get your business on the fast track, check out this test drive.

It’s always a great feeling when you win an award. It’s especially great when that award comes from a partner like SalesForce.com and you win the award because customers voted and chose your product as the best.

For the seventh straight year, Adobe EchoSign was named the number one e-signature application and overall winner for sales for the Salesforce.com’s 2012 AppExchange Customer Choice award! Ec hoSign collected the most glowing customer reviews in its category for the past year. Thank you to all our customers for your enthusiastic responses to our product and voting us number one again!

“Companies of all sizes turn to the AppExchange as the world’s leading business apps marketplace to extend the benefits of the cloud throughout their organizations,” said Ron Huddleston, senior vice president ISV and Channel, salesforce.com. “Adobe EchoSign taps into the power of social and mobile cloud technologies to transform the way companies connect with customers, partners and employees. We congratulate Adobe on being selected by customers as a leader in the Customer Choice Award category and applaud their ongoing commitment to delivering customer success.”

Adobe EchoSign is used by more than 35,000 companies to sign 1.5 million contracts each month. EchoSign has helped these organizations cut sales close cycles by 50 percent to as much as 500 percent and reduce post-sale internal contract processing costs by 50 percent to 75 percent.

The New York Stock Exchange uses EchoSign to sign and manage renewal agreements with the companies listed on the exchange. “We saw an immediate improvement in the process. We reduce the time it took to get agreements signed from several days to about one hour,” said Brandon Baker, vice president at NYSE Technologies.

Those are just a few examples satisfied EchoSign customers. Why not find out what all the hoopla is about by taking a test drive here.

Eitan Saban, vice president, Customer Success, Adobe EchoSign  

Twitter: @EitanSaban

We're pretty jazzed about all of the exciting things ahead in 2013, and being featured in the Forbes 10 Mobile Apps To Make Your Business More Productive in 2013 was a great way to kick off the year. We're particularly happy to see that Forbes notes how easy it is to use EchoSign in conjunction with some of the other productivity apps that most of our customers use every day: Box, Dropbox, and Acrobat.com, to name just a few in a pretty extensive list.

Check out the full Forbes list. We're in good company.

Important news for the fast-paced financial world! In support of the IRS’ commitment to accept electronic signatures on the 4506-T for the first time ever, Veri-Tax and its subsidy, Verification Bureau, have launched a newly designed e-signature solution using EchoSign. Now the process of verifying a borrower’s income during the loan origination process can be faster and more efficient than ever. For lenders and borrowers, that means closing loans in a matter of hours instead of days.

We're pretty excited about this announcement because it showcases just how simple it is for organizations to integrate the EchoSign platform into their solutions -- and how that's a win for everybody. Faster, more transparent processes, less paper, higher productivity -- what's not to love?

Check out the full details.

We can say it all we like, but it's nice when the data backs us up. A global survey of information workers by research firm IDC has found that information workers are spending a lot of time juggling documents. The worse news, though, is how that time translates into lost productivity. (And we all know lost productivity hits the bottom line eventually.)

In the IDC white paper, sponsored by Adobe, "Bridging the Information Worker Productivity Gap: New Challenges and Opportunities for IT" (September 2012), IDC surveyed 1,200 information and IT workers around the world. Check out these juicy tidbits they gleaned from respondents:

• Information workers spend 6.6 hours -- nearly a full day -- every week obtaining document signatures and approvals.
• 1/4 of the time that information workers spend dealing with documents is spent working with paper.
• They waste nearly 2 hours each week unravelling version control problems created by awkward routing, review, approval, or signature processes.
• 35% of respondents said that getting signatures on a document is one of their biggest time drains.

If those stats don't quite drive the point home, consider this one: IDC estimates the cost of all this wasted time to be $19,732 per information worker per year.

It's no surprise that we think EchoSign is the best way to fight that productivity problem. But don't believe us -- believe our customers!

We're keeping some pretty good company on this list of 20 must-have tools for small businesses on Forbes.com, where EchoSign comes in at no. 2. The writer focuses on the way EchoSign can save dough for small businesses that don't want to invest in all of the "stuff" required in the traditional signing process:

"Instead of throwing away hundreds of dollars on paper, printer ink, and a scanner, EchoSign saves you time, money, and work, all while creating an effort to improve our ecosystem." 

Those are big pluses indeed, especially for small organizations that run lean. We'd also like to point out that some of the biggest gains are actually in productivity, which creates value for the business. (And makes workers a lot happier, we might add. Who wants to be a paper pusher?)

We're very excited to announce a major milestone!  Adobe EchoSign has been integrated with the newest version of the industry standard for PDF - Adobe Acrobat XI.

Together, Adobe EchoSign and Acrobat XI deliver a powerful new solution that rises to today’s complex document challenges for creating, consuming, sharing and securing PDF content across devices and platforms. Now customers of the industry standard for PDF will have the opportunity to expedite document and Web contract approvals from weeks to hours with the sophisticated web contracting and electronic signature service from EchoSign.

Acrobat XI and EchoSign have already gotten high marks from customers that were in our beta program:

Bill Lunsford of BBDO Atlanta likes the speed and efficiency he gets with the integrated services, especially Adobe EchoSign. “The new EchoSign features within Adobe Acrobat XI will streamline everyday tasks. These days, no one is going to stand at a fax machine to wait for approvals. Being able to electronically sign a PDF on cost estimates for a project will accelerate go-to-market schedules.”

Regarding accelerating document exchange, Saul Morse, vice president of multichannel integration, Palio, said, “Acrobat XI now makes it even easier and faster to create PDF forms and to automatically distribute and collect information with new online forms services available within Acrobat XI.”

Click here for the complete low down on Acrobat XI from Kevin M. Lynch’s blog post and click here to see the Acrobat XI press release.

Yes, we had taken a little break from blogging (thank you to those that noticed), and now we're back!

Bounced Email Tracking
Don't you hate it when your signing process grinds to a halt because of a bounced email? Now, when your agreement doesn't go through, you'll get a notification. Bounces will also show up in Document History and your audit reports, so you can quickly replace the signer with someone else or correct the email address.

Improved Security for Document Processing
Get a warning when a signer is about to sign a contract meant for someone else. 

This release includes a bunch of other updates (including new API features) that will help make your web contracting processes faster and easier for all parties, so check it out today. Let us know what you think and, as always, tell us what you want to see in the future. You guys are our best source of great ideas.

A New York state appellate court has ruled that electronically signed affirmations are legally admissable under state court rules. We love seeing items like this becuase it means we're all that much closer to the greater good of esignatures everywhere!  See our overview and this FAQ if you need more info on EchoSign's compliance with the Federal ESIGN Act.

EchoSign Summer Release is live! We’re pretty excited about this release because it includes a bunch of new features that customers have told us they want. These aren’t insignificant updates—they’ll make your web contracting processes much easier and even faster.

Adobe Digital Certification for all EchoSign documents
Now, all PDF files sent or downloaded from EchoSign will be certified with an Adobe EchoSign Digital Certificate.  When you see the blue “certified” bar, you have that extra bit of assurance that a file is the real deal and that nobody tampered with it.

See the video

 Collect Supporting Documents
We’ve added the ability to collect supporting documents from signers and attach them to a contract, creating a complete package of the deal. (But you can also download attached documents independently.) Think of a mortgage application, for example. It usually includes dozens of documents from the signer, and now you can combine all of those files and move them through the process as a package.  Or if you're in HR and you need someone to attach a driver's license as verification -- now it's as easy for your signer to upload verification files as it is to esign. You can also access/download documents via the EchoSign API.

See the video

Approvals
Even before you send a document for a signature, you probably have to get approval from various people. Now, you can integrate that step into EchoSign, too. That’s good for legal reviewers, executives, and anybody else who isn’t an official signer but still needs a chance to approve a document. (And if you want them to initial,sign, or enter information you can require that, too.)

See the video

Conditional Data Fields
This feature is cool because it lets you either show or hide fields based on the data entered during signing. So imagine that you have geographic conditions: all people in the U.S. need to provide certain info, and all people outside the U.S. need to provide different info. You can build that logic right into the document, so it will know which fields to present to the signer. You don’t need multiple versions of the contract floating around.

See the video

P.S. If you haven't heard, we also recently released a new version of our iOS app!
Some cool new features:   

•  Access documents in cloud-based systems such as Box or Dropbox.  You can also send documents directly to EchoSign from the Box OneCloud mobile application
• Save documents locally and send these documents for signature

… and much more.  Download the app today.