Sign Here Please...

For most people, the task of creating and negotiating contracts was transformed some ten years ago, when email "tipped" and became the preferred mode of business communication. Drafts are prepared in Word, then emailed back and forth. Most of the time, changes are marked up (although sometimes not, but that's another story), and eventually a final version emerges, ready to sign.

It's at this point that things go decidedly low-tech. Despite much e-signature talk and buzz over the years, the task of signing contracts still seems to happen with pen, paper, fedex and fax.

But where do you look when, 6 months down the road, a dispute is looming, and you want to check the final terms of the contract you signed? Do you trust the last electronic copy buried deep in your email archives, or do you go rummaging around for the signed piece of paper?

This simple problem - keeping a signed digital copy of the final contract in one central place - is what EchoSign hopes to solve with a new web-based service.

All you do is browse to EchoSign, upload your final contract, tell it who needs to sign, and the contract is emailed to all relevant parties. They print, sign, and fax it back to your EchoSign number, and the final signed versions are stored as PDFs for future reference. Easy.