Digital Signatures and Electronic Content Management: FIFA’s Winning Goal

Posted by Ashley on June 20th, 2010

Have you noticed the growing trend of organizations adopting electronic content management (ECM) or document management systems in order to turn their business operations electronic? (If not, where have you been?) Even FIFA, the international football (soccer) association, uses digital signatures integrated with their ECM to enable electronic approval of invoices (in bulk!), saving them endless hours of paper-based signing.

So, what happens when the need for a signature arises and an organization’s ECM lacks a digital signature component?

Reintroducing paper into the workflow after having invested in business automation tools like ECMs shrinks the sought-after benefits of the investment, which can be quite pricey. Among other disadvantages, it increases costs and process times, and decreases efficiency and productivity. Fortunately, one of the greatest aspects about today’s digital signature technology is that it can be integrated seamlessly with popular ECMs, like Microsoft® SharePoint®, at a fraction of the cost.

By implementing a digital signature solution into an electronic content management system, you can gain the greatest benefits from your investment in automation – like never having to print out another piece of paper again solely for obtaining a signature approval. This will lower your costs and expedite your business, while enabling you to remain legally compliant. Using a digital signature rather than an electronic signature solution even avoids vendor lock-in; digital signatures are standards-based, which enables anyone, including outside parties, to view and verify the digital signature. Pretty cool, huh?

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One Response to “Digital Signatures and Electronic Content Management: FIFA’s Winning Goal”

  1. Fred says:

    Hey, good stuff. I didn’t know there’d be an entire blog devoted to digital signatures. Thanks for the info!

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