Early on in our childhood, we were all told that the early bird gets the worm.  At least this was always drummed into me as my father tried to get me up for school in the morning back in the 50s.  The same applies to the world of transacting business.  It’s very important when executing contracts, agreements, and other documents required when consummating a business transaction, to have them done as quickly as possible. In a sales situation it is always prudent to close the sale as quickly as possible after a customer verbally agrees to the transaction.

In our architectural design of AssureSign, we were always cognizant of the goal to make the product work in an efficient manner to facilitate quick setup and signatory presentment.  Since AssureSign operates as an application operating in the Web 2.0 cloud, we wanted to provide the ability for our clients to take advantage of integration tools to make the submission as seamless as possible.  The first generation of AssureSign allowed users to manually upload documents for setup and transmittal to signatories.

In the second generation we developed an integration toolset called DocumentNOW®.  The DocumentNOW toolkit allows a customer to build XML identifying AssureSign templates, signatories, or other data needed to setup a document for signature to one or many signatories.  In addition, the client has the ability to specify a local file location on their domain to which the document can be automatically uploaded, so the user doesn’t have to manually upload files.  This creates the ability for the client to make the submission, setup, and signatory presentment a completely automated process, depending on the amount of integration programming they want to implement.

What’s in store for 2009 and the future?  The DocumentNOW toolkit allows us to coincide with other cloud applications such as salesforce.com, as we provide as a current offering, and will continue to exploit that ability. We are looking to add further strength to our authentication capability, researching new methods in the use of wizards to help new users set up components such as signing ceremony workflows and notifications, and also configuring abilities for our advanced users to micro-manage each detailed step, from setup to signing.

On the engineering team at AssureSign, we have accumulated many ideas from our day to day development as well as ideas from our current and prospective clients.  Those ideas are under constant review by all divisions of the company for possible inclusion and positioning for production.  We are all “early birds” in engineering, and strive to make this product the most efficient, expedient, and productive electronic signature product on the market.