E-Sign is the Trusted Supplier to Prestigious Educational Institutions

It’s safe to say that the educational sector has already adopted some degree of digitalisation. Long gone are the days of paper and pens; enter any lecture hall across Britain and you’ll be met with a sea of laptops, tablets or smart notebooks. Indeed, to the modern student, owning some form of laptop or computer is essential to their education, either for basic internet research or running highly specialised programmes. Students, both at high school and university level, have readily adopted digitalisation to support their learning and educational institutions are following suit to modernise their processes. Indeed, every university and many high schools will have some form of virtualised learning platform or centralised hub for detailing assignments and collating learning resources.

That being said, with the mass closure of schools and an unprecedented move to online learning, COVID-19 has highlighted a definite need for further digitalisation and greater flexibility in the education sector. This is where E-Sign can step in and offer support to schools with our electronic signatures and digital document management solutions.  Whether at high school or further education level, the education sector still has much to gain from modernising their document processes and investing in greater digitalisation.

Anyone who’s ever worked in the education industry will know the vast amount of administrative tasks and paper-based documents that are required to run an institution. Whether that involves student enrolment, employee onboarding, student safeguarding or financial documents, the form filling that goes on behind the scenes of every educational institution is immense. Think of all the documents that are exchanged between students, staff, and the admin department, such as:

• Financial aid
• Grant requests
• Student loan applications
• Offer letters
• HR documents
• ID documents
• Course enrolments
• Permission slips
• Timesheets
• Change-of-course forms
• Leave applications
• Student and Teacher reports
• Coursework assignments

With E-Sign’s electronic signatures and document management platform, all these can be moved online and digitalised, bringing tangible benefits for educational institutions of all sizes and levels.

How Can Education Institutions Benefit From Going Paperless?

By moving away from traditional paper-based processes and embracing increased digitalisation, educational institutions stand to benefit enormously. Here are 5 ways schools, colleges and universities can benefit from going paperless:

1.Substantial monetary savings

With the cost of education increasing, schools, colleges and universities are under pressure to reduce their annual budgets, often while simultaneously increasing student intake. By going paperless, institutions can save money on the associated costs of paper-based processes. Spending on paper, printing supplies and postage fees, as well as making additional savings on filing supplies like folders, envelopes, and storage cabinets, all add up and can constitute a considerable chunk of a budget. By going digital, educational institutions can effectively eliminate the cost of paper-based administration and invest the money elsewhere.

2.Streamlined document processes

Beyond the obvious cost savings of digitalisation, educational institutions can also increase profitability by driving productivity, improving efficiency, and reducing human errors. By moving documents and forms online, educational institutions can streamline document processes and document management, saving significant time on day-to-day administrative tasks, potentially reducing the number of staff needed behind the scenes and freeing up employee resources for other areas of operation.

Digital document management can also significantly reduce turnaround time by making administrative processes simpler for users. By moving processes online, forms and documents can be filled in, e-signed and returned in just a few clicks, eliminating the need to print, scan and either return documents in person, via post or by email.

3.Improve user experience

The increasing marketisation of higher education means that university students have become consumers. As such, they are looking for the best possible value for money and a seamless user experience. By equipping your institution with an integrated document management platform and e-signature, you not only free up time for employees but also for students. With the ability to complete and return forms through one dedicated portal, you can provide a convenient and hassle-free onboarding process for new and existing students.

4.Easy compliance

While it’s easy to dismiss electronic signatures as less secure than pen and paper, e-signatures are supported with additional information and are backed by robust security safeguards. Electronic signatures are unique to each signer and to the document, and are accompanied by a digital signature certificate, traceable audit trail, unique digital fingerprint, and digital identification. E-Sign’s e-signatures are also fully 27001 and GDPR compliant and are protected by server-side encryption (SSE), twin firewalls and an encrypted client library.

5.Safeguarding your school

With schools, colleges, and universities once again opening, many parents and students will be concerned about the risk of contracting Covid-19. By using digitalised documents and online processes, educational institutions can significantly reduce the amount of face to face contact and any potential contamination from passing paper documents from A to B. In this way, digitalisation can aid institutions in the formation of a COVID-secure environment, protecting staff, students, parents, and the wider community from the spread of the virus.

E-Sign Trusted by Oxford University

E-Sign Ltd is one of the UK’s leading electronic signature providers and is used by thousands of organisations and academic institutions. E-Sign can help the education sector achieve true digitalisation and simplified document management, saving institutions vital time on daily administration, increasing productivity and maximising profitability. But don’t just take our word for it. E-Sign is a preferred supplier of digital document solutions to some of the UK’s most prestigious educational institutions, including Harrow and Oxford University. When one of the best universities in the world is embracing digitalisation, you can be sure that that’s the right move for your institution.

E-Sign currently supplies these institutions with our electronic signature service and integrated e-signature platform, which allows documents to be uploaded and sent via email. Once received by students or employees, they can access the document via a link, fill in the form with the required information, e-sign the document and return to the sender. This entire process can be completed in a matter of minutes with just a few clicks, resulting in an easy and convenient process for students and staff, and a significant reduction in document turnaround time for their administrative office.

With the ability to integrate an ID Checker, payment processes and two factor authentications for maximum security, E-Sign’s platform can handle a variety of documents from onboarding documents such as ID documents, offer letters and course enrolment, to financial documents such as grant requests, financial aid and accommodation contracts.

Is your educational institution ready to embrace our best-in-class electronic signature service and document management platform? Get in touch with us today and see how we can help you get to the top of the class. 

E-Sign is a leading provider of electronic signature solutions supplying professional Electronic Signatures, Form Builder, Web Form, ID Checker and Personalised Email solutions to businesses across the UK.

To find out more about our E-Sign solutions and how they could transform your business, get in touch with us today.