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Globally, organisations are quickly doing away with the use of wet signatures and adopting e-signature solutions to streamline business processes, improve security and save money.

Coupled with these benefits, e-signatures help business and government increase efficiency, with the ability to sign contracts on the go, on any device and at any time.

We recently surveyed over 100 Adobe EchoSign Australian customers. This is what we found:

  • 100% of respondents agreed e-signature solutions increase business efficiency
  • 76% of respondents believe governments should do more to promote the use of e-signatures

These results are positive, but Australia still lags behind in e-signature adoption. The charge is currently being led out of the United States, with approximately 11% adoption by businesses. This is expected to grow to 30%-40% by 2016. The U.K. comes in second, with approximately 3.5% adoption.

While adoption rates in Australia are lower, we are seeing rapid growth rates and I expect e-signatures to become even more prevalent over the next three years.

ESig Trends

High growth rates aside, more needs to be done to drive awareness around the legality of e-signatures in Australia. Interestingly, many people are simply unaware that e-signatures are in fact legal in Australia.

The lack of awareness comes despite the passing of the Electronic Transactions Act 1999 by the Australian Federal Parliament, which came into force on March 15, 2000. As part of this legislation, e-signatures were recognised as a valid form of legally binding signatures.

Internationally, we’ve seen e-signature adoption amongst industry leaders including Time Warner Cable, British Telecom, Facebook and Google, who use Adobe EchoSign to get documents signed—easily, securely and on any device.

Will your business or organisation be making the switch to e-signatures, or are you already ahead of the curve?

Jon Perera is the Vice President of Adobe EchoSign, one of Adobe’s fastest growing SaaS business units. Jon also helps lead Adobe’s overall digital document and eCommerce strategy across Acrobat and DEX services.

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Don’t forget to come and visit Adobe on Booth #1 at this year’s Salesforce1 Conference, Melbourne, to find out more about Adobe EchoSign for Salesforce. The Adobe team will also be in the EXPO Theatre from 4:00pm talking all things Adobe EchoSign for Salesforce: Changing the Game for Your Company, Customers and Partners.

Adobe is a Platinum Sponsor at the Salesforce1 World Tour in Melbourne on 26 March, 2014.