Signature Authentic

Signature Authentic

Electronic Signatures for Hierarchical Approval & Authentication

In corporate organizations approvals along with electronic signatures are required at every step of any business process. Many of the business processes require sequential approval in form of electronic signatures in hierarchical order, depending on the authorities involved in the process. In case of critical business processes like accounts, finance and human resource hierarchical sequence and authentication of the approving authorities are of utmost importance. Many times these approving authorities need to add their remarks as well along with their electronic signatures.

In scenario of paper-based system, such processes get considerably delayed and increase cost overheads as it involves many commercial resources. Thus organizations prefer electronic documentation and communication, which is fast, easy and cost effective. And thus arises crucial need of maintaining the hierarchy and most importantly authenticating the signers. Digitally signing electronic documents is the most preferred way to address these needs.

Lets see a simple example of leave application in an organization. Employees seeking leave need to apply to concerned authorities for approval. Application process may vary depending on the hierarchy in organizational structure and human resource policies of that organization. But the basic concept of application and approval remains same.

Any employee seeking leave will draft a leave application mentioning the required details, sign it and send it to his/her immediate manager. Manager may then check the application, add his/her comments about the approval, sign it and send to human resource executive. Human resource executive then adds his/her comments for acceptance of the information, signs the application and archives the same for further records.

This single application document has to go through multiple authentication processes to be executed by different people involved. Each person in this entire process needs to add comments to the document and sign. This demands for a solution which supports multiple signatures, allow multiple people to add new content to the document and sign it with out invalidating the previous signatures. Section break is handy feature of Microsoft Word to cope with demand of multiple collaborators in single document.

Some advance electronic signature solutions offers an option to use the section feature of Microsoft Word to break the document in multiple sections and allows signing authorities to sign these sections independently of each other, which can be verified. This way each signer can add new content to the document without invalidating previous signatures and also ensures the integrity of the content.

With some solutions users have option to use either password-protected credentials or PKI based digital certificates to sign the communication/documents. Thus, internal communication with in organization can be authenticated using password-protected credentials while inter-organizational communication can be authenticated using PKI based digital certificates.

Simple collaboration tools and a resourceful solution for advanced electronic signature can help organization to move to paperless business processes.

About the Author

Kundan handles marketing communications at E-Lock. He has experience in various fields like marketing, sales, online marketing, SEO, web design corporate communications etc. Starting his career with sales in 2002 he gradually shifted to online marketing and corporate communications in 2005. Kundan is associated with E-Lock since 2009.

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