Efficiency unleashed: the power of paperless
In honor of Earth Day on April 22nd, Signicat showcases a noteworthy decrease in printed pages, achieved through paperless procedures as revealed in the 2023 Total Economic Impact™ study.
Going paperless helped interviewed Signicat customers cut more than 1.1 million printed pages per year. That’s according to a 2023 Forrester Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study, commissioned by Signicat.
To put it in perspective, this amount of paper, if stacked, would reach a height of 55 meters, equivalent to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Alternatively, by placing the pages side by side, the inside of a football field could be cover.
Clearly, removing paper from business processes is a great way to reduce environmental impact. Yet done effectivity, it’s merely a by-product of practices that increase business efficiency, agility and productivity.
An increasing number of organizations are embracing digital processes, including digital identity verification of customers as well as the contract signing. It’s clearly quicker, cheaper and more efficient to verify a person’s identity or sign a contract digitally than in person. But again, this comes as a by-product of a bigger digital transformation objective.
Let’s look at the typical customer onboarding flow within a regulated sector like financial services, by way of an example.
Stop losing good customers to bad onboarding
People work, shop and bank remotely nowadays. That’s good news for financial service providers, who have invested in digital transformation. Yet some of them still aren’t getting digital onboarding quite right.
68% of consumers dropped out of a digital sign-up in 2022, up from 63% in 2020. That equates to €5.7 billion in lost revenue for financial services firms alone each year, according to the latest Signicat Battle to Onboard research.
It’s clearly not great for customers if they’re so frustrated that they quit part-way through the process never to return. Either because it takes too long (21%) or they’re asked for too much information (a further 21%).
What’s more, over one-third of consumers did not have the right identity credentials, for example a digital username-password or a physical document such as a passport. They abandoned a financial product application for this reason. And 42% had been put off switching providers due to the effort and paperwork involved in proving their identity.
A sub-optimal onboarding experience can have real bottom-line impact for financial service providers, gambling operators, insurance companies or mobility companies but also those in the non-regulated sector like retailers. No business gets a second chance to make a first impression, particularly when competitors are only a mouse-click away.
–“Signicat has helped us reduce our ecological footprint by shifting from paper-based to digital documents.”
From business bottleneck to business accelerator
Traditional paper-based business processes are often time-consuming, resource-intensive and highly inefficient. A friction-filled flow leads to abandoned applications; abandoned applications mean failed conversions; and failed conversions translate into lost revenue.
As a result, organizations must transform their compliance workflows from business bottlenecks to business accelerators. They are looking to automate and streamline onboarding, AML monitoring and fraud detection. This is where digital identity and electronic signatures come in.
For example, interviewees in the TEI study say that deploying digital signing via Signicat helped save time processing and reviewing contracts manually. It also provides a certified signature, guaranteeing the authenticity of signatories and legally binding signatures that stand the test of time.
One product owner at an HR consulting firm mentioned that prior to using Signicat, their agents printed and manually reviewed an average of seven pages per applicant. Skipping burdensome back-office admin allows agents to spend more time productively engaging with clients and candidates.
–“We sign on average 200,000 contracts per year […] If we did not have Signicat, we would have to review each contract physically, verify that no pages are missing and that they are all signed correctly.”
1.1 million printed pages saved a year, Total Economic Impact™ study shows
Signicat’s digital identity platform streamlines time-consuming, manual processes with a single platform to verify and authenticate individuals and businesses. It offers a comprehensive one-stop-shop that includes identity proofing, authentication, fraud prevention and electronic signing, plus optimized orchestration of these workflows.
To quantify the business upside and cost savings enabled by Signicat’s solutions, Signicat commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study. The study examines the potential return on investment (ROI) businesses may realize by implementing Signicat solutions to inform technology investment decisions.
Forrester interviewed five representatives with experience in using Signicat. And aggregated the interviewees’ experiences, combining the results into a single composite organization. The study revealed that Signicat improves business efficiency, while also delivering cost savings and an improved customer experience.
- Elimination of printed pages. Due to Signicat’s digital signing capabilities, contracts and agreement have been digitalized, which contributes to eliminating paper and printing costs. This resulted in a saving of €28,000 in not printing contracts over 3 years.
- Saving of staff time. Prior to using Signicat, customers manually reviewed and processed contracts to verify physical signatures. The removal of these steps delivered a six-figure saving in staff time.
- Efficiency improvement for customer support. Signicat’s authentication methods provide the composite organization’s customers with improved ways to log on to their accounts. This reduced potential issues due to lost credentials or passwords, resulting in a reduction in access-related requests to customer services, estimated at €57,000 over 3 years.
- Increase in customer conversion. Due to robust local identification methods across multiple markets and quicker, streamlined verification process, the composite organization experienced a 19-percentage point increase in client conversion rates. This is equivalent to €3.2 million net profit over 3 years.
About Signicat
Signicat is the leading provider of digital identity solutions in Europe, with access to 35+ trusted electronic IDs, video identification, ID document verification services, and 130+ risk and identity data sources. Signicat covers the full digital identity lifecycle, offering local compliance across multiple markets, developer-friendly, scalable solutions, all on one contract and one API.