Adobe launches e-signature app to alleviate SMBs’ paperwork pains

Adobe is doing its part to simplify document work for small businesses, with the launch of Adobe Sign.

Adobe Sign for small businesses brings enterprise-class e-signature capabilities, tailored to small business needs.

Adobe says that according to its research, more than 75% of surveyed small businesses in the United States report that they still sign documents with pen and paper. Paper-based processes are also a top barrier to running their business more efficiently.

Existing research from Forrester suggests that each document signed manually costs 1.3 hours and $11 in time spent.

When combined with other document technologies such as including Adobe Scan and Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Sign for small business helps companies digitise legacy work practices that rely on signatures, like customer onboarding, contracts and approvals, payments and invoices, and others.

In addition, for individuals getting their side hustle off the ground, Adobe Sign is now integrated into the Acrobat Reader desktop app, enabling hundreds of millions of people who have Acrobat Reader installed to send two documents for e-signature each month, free of charge.

"Millions of small businesses already rely on Adobe to simplify document work — converting paper to digital with Adobe Scan, creating, reviewing and editing PDFs with Adobe Acrobat and accessing the most powerful PDF services right from Microsoft Office 365," says Adobe Document Cloud vice president and general manager Ashley Still.

"Adobe Sign for small business now completes the toolbox for small companies to fully digitise their business.

Adobe Sign for small business is available through a subscription. It also offers:

Sign up customers directly from the site: PDF forms are used for everything from gathering a customer's contact information to collecting their signature on a service agreement. But providing a PDF that a customer then needs to download, print, physically sign and email back is far from a good experience. Now with Adobe Sign, small businesses can take any existing PDF form and automatically convert it to an online web form, giving customers a modern, completely digital interaction with the company's brand.

Let customers sign and pay for services in a single step: One sure way to lose new customers is to put them through too many steps to complete a purchase.

When customers first sign a contract online, like when joining a sports club, redirecting them to yet another form for payment risks losing them.

Thanks to the Adobe Sign integration with Braintree, a PayPal service, it's now easy for small businesses to collect payments from customers right as they fill out and sign a form.

Bulk send a single form to hundreds at once: Small companies often need to send a standard agreement to multiple recipients for signature, such as an outdoor adventure club that needs one hundred-plus people to sign a release of liability for a group hike.

Sending the form to each recipient one-by-one wastes time and makes it difficult to track responses.

Now small businesses can automate the process of collecting tens to hundreds of signatures at once with the click of a button, and easily track which signatures are outstanding.