Immediacy in all Things = Social Media Principle #8
This post is the eighth in a series of my interpretation of Social Media Principles. More to come in the near distant future.
Jim Benson shares his thoughts on Immediacy in all Things on his blog, Evolving Web.
Immediacy in all things:
Acting on new, validated information when appropriate moves things forward more quickly than before.
Jim published his post before I had a chance to start mine. He raises points about motivation, respect, and delays to missions, writing:
We consider ourselves on a mission when we have clear goals, we have an idea of how to satisfy those goals, and we are somewhat excited about achieving them. A mission differs from a task by our emotional investment.
“Strike while the iron is hot. Eat while the food is fresh.” doesn’t mean as soon as possible. Taking the time to consider the context and circumstances, prioritize appropriately and keep an eye on the mission is much easier with respect and open communication. This requires knowing the mission and having the correct information, so that we can then judge if our actions are on or off strategy.
We have technological tools that empower us to get information more quickly, easily and cheaply. With the rise in adoption of mobile technologies including cell phones with sms and smart phones with email/internet, we can do more with small timeboxes.
What does this look like in the context of an organization?
DocuSign, Online Signature and Contract Execution Services
One company, DocuSign, clearly understands the value of moving information forward as quickly as possible.
DocuSign provides secure, legally binding electronic signature and online contract execution services. Fortune 500 enterprise organizations as well as individual small business owners rely on DocuSign’s electronic signature and electronic contract execution services daily. By using DocuSign, companies across all industries, with various business processes and needs, have dramatically reduced operating costs and significantly improved efficiency and customer satisfaction.
A possible DocuSign online contract execution process looks like:
- Open the form on a PC
- Fill in the fields
- Sign electronically
- Instantly and securely, the other party can access the form without using paper and overnight shipping.
- Move forward as appropriate, now that a legally binding contract has been entered into by both parties.
Compare that with an old-school, analog system:
- Sending hard copy documents often via overnight shipping
- Following up if a contract wasn’t returned
- Generating new contracts if something got lost or wasn’t filled out correctly
- Repeating the above as necessary.
In a best case scenario, the old-school, analog system for contract execution would take 2-3 business days. This assumes that all authorized signers are available to sign as soon as the documents arrive, sign correctly, and return ship the documents right away.
Just like email reduced the time for written correspondence, DocuSign reduces the time for contract execution. DocuSign’s ability to accelerate this process securely results not only in satisfied customers, but also impresses the clients of DocuSign’s customers. From the real estate industry to global brands, DocuSign helps its customers move their businesses forward by providing them with new, valid information more quickly than overnight shipping, bike messenger and fax.
The immediacy provided by DocuSign’s service enables its customers to move forward with their mission. By empowering its customers and impressing their clients, DocuSign aligns itself very strongly with its customers.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeCMDV-9tP0]
<disclaimer> DocuSign is a client </disclaimer>
January 14th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I am generally a fan of any technology that reduces the amount of paper I have to deal with. Harvard’s process for class registration is a particularly infuriating example (you can register online, but then you still need physical signatures from advisor and relevant professors, people who are often difficult to find, especially when you are a part-time off-campus student). I believe I’ve used DocuSign (or someone like them) with my financial advisor, opening an account while he was at my apartment going over documents.
That said, no offense to your client, this is an area where we need an open standard. In physical reality, I don’t need to pay anyone to obtain or use a pen to sign a legally-binding document. A company could certainly still provide the service of being a trusted implementer of the open standard. To some extent, this already exists in the form of OpenPGP (RFC 4880). GnuPG is the common open source implementation, while PGP Corporation tends to provide more usable front-ends, for a price. The hardest parts about this system to implement in the context of contract signing are probably the public key exchange (we still want the benefits of remote access); I also found, when using it myself, is that not enough people I knew used it.
A side advantage of such a system is that the document would also be encrypted in transit; while we generally trust overnight delivery services (especially people like bonded couriers), it’s still possible (although difficult) to intercept, open, and read a document in transit. I would assume DocuSign uses encryption for all of their transfers too, but is just the channel encrypted, or can the file be transmitted via other protocols?
More ramblings to think about :o).
(P.S. For some reason your YouTube embeds don’t show up in Google Reader.)