New research from DocuSign, titled Time to Value: How to achieve business growth, competitive advantage and productivity, finds that despite the belief that the pandemic has sparked a wholesale digital transformation of businesses in Singapore, organisations are still lagging behind when it comes to technical advancement — with 39 per cent of businesses still running just one to four SaaS solutions.
SaaS solutions are a key driver of digital transformation initiatives as they save companies time (59%), heighten security (60%), enable scalability (55%), reduce cost (52%), facilitate integration (54%), and provide vendor service and support (54%). Of these benefits, time to value is ranked as the second highest in Singapore, demonstrating the importance placed on delivering rapid tangible business value from technology investments.
The research, which surveyed 194 IT Decision Makers across Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand, unveiled that, of the SaaS solutions available, e-signature ranks number one in customer satisfaction for time to value, with 45 per cent of customers extremely satisfied. This highlights an opportunity for businesses in Singapore to prioritise investment in eSignature solutions ahead of other technology investments.
While there is a demand for e-signatures, 56 per cent have yet to implement a solution, citing lack of collaboration between IT and business units (30%), integration challenges (28%) and regulatory requirements (24%) identified as the main barriers.
However, investment in these solutions is definitely on the rise, with 60 per cent of businesses introducing these digital tools in 2020-2021 alone.
The Singapore-headquartered financial institution, Finaxar said that the introduction of SaaS technology, like DocuSign eSignature solution, was ‘a game-changer’. As a result, this service enabled the business to reduce errors and increase efficiency by 50 per cent.
“We needed 20 signatures from a group of investors, shareholders, and clients. Once, someone misspelt an email address in a document, which is a completely normal human error, and that was when we agreed to get DocuSign on board,” explained Co-Founder and Group CEO at Finaxar, Dr. Sian Wee Tan. “DocuSign saves me so much time. And we haven’t even scratched the surface in terms of what I would like to do. From an administration, usability and an execution standpoint, it is by far the easiest and best software to use,” he noted.
Amid the pandemic, Finaxar had to adapt its tech to support small businesses moving operations online and digitising where possible. DocuSign supported this transformation and helped accelerate Finaxar’s digital journey and has since had zero complaints from customers.
“COVID-19 has had lasting repercussions for both the economy and society as a whole, serving as a catalyst for businesses in Singapore to accelerate their cloud adoption”, says Dan Bognar, Group Vice President and General Manager for the Asia Pacific and Japan DocuSign. “It is clear that SaaS solutions, like e-signature and contract lifecycle management, deliver faster time to value than other alternative technology investments. We expect that demand for these solutions will continue to increase as businesses take advantage of the benefits of digitising their agreement process and equipping their employees with tools to work from anywhere.”
