Document signing inefficiency can be a bottleneck to business and a drag on operations. Traditional digital signing methods require time and busy work to manage the document signing trail. Even when a document gets through all the human variables, it often needs more customization, making the process feel tedious while depleting your team’s bandwidth from focusing on core business features. These frustrations generally lead product or operations teams to seek more efficient digital signing solutions.
Enter Anvil, a leading provider of customizable e-signature solutions designed to seamlessly integrate E-signatures into any software or workflow – a win for users and developers.
Understanding Anvil’s E-Signature Solution
What are E-Signatures?
E-signatures, aka electronic signatures, are a digital version of handwritten signatures. They hold the same legal status as traditional signatures, making the signing process in modern business more efficient and “with the times.” E-signatures reduce paperwork, enhance security, and ensure quicker turnaround times. Everyday use cases include HR (employee agreements), sales (order forms, service agreements), and contracts (SOWs, project estimates), where timely and accurate document signing is important.
Here in the United States, the 2000 ESIGN Act granted legal recognition of electronic signatures and regards them as having the same validity as written signatures. The law's broad definition implies that electronic signatures are available for any transaction in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce.
In other words, electronic signatures can be used for anything and everything. So businesses should take that opportunity to make the signing process as seamless and efficient as possible.
Overview of Anvil E-Signature Features
Anvil’s e-signature software offers an embedded e-signature feature for those looking to build the best signing experience for their users. This seamless user experience is customizable through CSS and allows businesses to integrate the signing process into their platforms. Embedded signatures ensure a consistent and branded interface, enhancing user trust and satisfaction. Your signature represents your name, company, or brand. So, shouldn’t it be customizable to resemble your actual signature? We think so.
Anvil has a comprehensive guide for embedding e-signatures in various applications, such as React apps, which covers everything from creating and using a PDF template to requesting signatures for multiple PDFs. It’s a great way to quickly understand the flexibility and ease of integrating Anvil e-signatures.
Primarily, Anvil simplifies e-signatures through a single API with customizable pre-written web components. Users can request signatures on documents directly within their application or website, making it a convenient option for signers without forcing them to leave the online or mobile experience or check their email. The process is straightforward:
- Generate a signature request
- Display the signing experience in your application or website
- Get notified by Anvil of status changes or query the API.
This method is ideal for businesses looking for quick, efficient, and seamless document-signing solutions.
Benefits of Using Anvil’s Etch E-Signature API
Customization and Brand Consistency
Anvil's e-signature API and webhooks provide extensive control over the signing experience. White labeling and embeddability mean businesses can personalize the e-signature interface to match their brand’s look and feel, ensuring brand consistency. Together, by customizing options like signing order, adding logos, and applying CSS styling you can build your perfect signing experience. This level of flexibility should matter to businesses. Balancing the tech with the human experience is critical for automation. In this case, a brand is a living, breathing entity created and managed by humans. Therefore, the standards and guidelines that make up a brand deserve to be highlighted in the company’s most important documents that require signatures. Anvil makes that possible.
E-Signature API Easy Development and Scalability
Integrating Anvil's e-sign API is quick and easy, allowing businesses to get up and running with minimal effort or onboarding. The typical integration process involves a few simple lines of code and is often completed within a day. If you run into issues, our Customer Success team is ready to help. As businesses grow, the e-sign automatically scales to meet increasing demand, making it suitable for companies of all sizes.
Document Workflow Efficiency
Workflow automation features like web-based information collection, dynamic document selection, and signer management further enhance efficiency by bringing the entire signature process online, from paperwork preparation to signature. For example, Anvil can automatically select the state-specific PDF form when a signer provides their address, fill in the PDF form with data, and then present the completed PDF form for signature.
How Gridline Built a Better Document Signing Flow Using Etch E-Signature API
Gridline, a fintech company with an emphasis on private market investments, wanted to give their investors a better subscription agreement process. Subscription agreement documents are historically long and complex, with robust signature trails that don’t translate very well to most digital e-sign platforms. Gridline desired a seamless, in-app experience where investors could easily sign agreements without the usual frustration – and with the familiarity of Gridline’s brand.
Initially, Gridline considered building its own e-signature solution to maintain control over the user experience, but during their search discovered Anvil Workflows and Etch e-signatures. What they found was a flexible, API-first approach that integrated into Gridline’s proprietary application. Anvil helped Gridline build a Turbo Tax-like flow for their subscription agreements, ensuring that investors could complete the process in minutes, not hours.
By integrating Anvil, Gridline improved the user experience and helped the company save significant time and resources. This two-pronged success helped establish an efficient, branded process that kept investors within the platform, reduced errors and eliminated the need for costly legal reviews. Ultimately, Gridline walked away with a superior subscription agreement experience that met the high expectations of its investors and strengthened its competitive edge in the market.
Check out the full case study for Gridline.
Transforming the Digital Document Signing Experience
Recognizing the Limitations of Current Digital Signing Methods
Current digital signing solutions have complex interfaces and a lack of customization, frustrating users. These limitations result in inefficiencies, errors, and poor user experiences. Integrating generic digital signing tools into branded workflows can be confusing to end users and reduce trust in the product.
Evaluating the Benefits of Digital Document Signing
A business should audit existing platforms and processes and ask itself: are we working smarter or harder?
Optimizing the digital document signing process offers numerous advantages.
- Seamless integration into existing workflows and enhanced user satisfaction.
- Features like advanced tracking, real-time notifications, and embeddability improve the signing process by keeping customers on your website or in your application.
- A customized signing experience aligns better with brand identity, improving user trust.
- Streamlined workflows and reduced errors lead to cost savings and higher return on investment (ROI).
Next Steps to Transition to Anvil E-Signature API
Transitioning to Anvil’s e-signature API involves a detailed roadmap for improving the digital signing experience. Businesses can continuously optimize their signing processes with Anvil’s scalable and flexible APIs. In fact, Anvil is one of the only e-signature APIs that doesn’t charge per packet sent, which helps mitigate costs. Multiple sources suggest that 32% of organizations experience abandoned deals or incomplete transactions, which can ramp up costs on a cost-per-sent packet model. By contrast, Anvil only charges per packet signed, making our API more affordable and costs more predictable than our competitors.
It’s also a favorite amongst developers who find the software flexible, fast, and easy to implement. With 99.99% uptime reliability and the ability to delegate the templatization of PDFs to non-technical teams with Anvil’s AI-powered templatization interface, developers can focus on their application’s core features rather than waste hours on tedious paperwork and PDF tasks.
In summary, Anvil’s e-signature API offers unique benefits that enhance the digital signing process for users and developers alike. By leveraging Anvil’s e-signature API, businesses can improve their document signing workflows, creating a better user experience and improving internal efficiency.
Ready to transform your document signing process? Try it yourself or chat with our team to see how Anvil’s e-signature API can better your workflow and boost business efficiency.