Realizing Cost Savings while enhancing Security and Customer Service

If there is one major promise that IT never really fulfilled in recent decades it is the one of a “paperless office”. Probably because there have been several concepts for “paperless signatures”, which were not really convincing and difficult to understand. In addition to this there is a lot of confusing terminology around all sorts of electronic signatures. This article helps you to understand the basics of taking signatures seriously without paper. It reflects the experience in going paper-less e.g. in banking, insurance and at the POS.

Gijima’s Systems Integration division has over 500 IT Professionals with a vast pool of knowledge and experience in systems implementation. Our experience in the implementation of Static and Biometric Signature Systems at various clients in South Africa is supported by those of our partner, SOFTPRO, who has extensive experience and knowledge in this arena.

Clients where SOFTPRO solution has been implemented include:

·         First National Bank, South Africa

·         Standard Bank, South Africa

·         Absa Bank, South Africa

·         Integrated Processing Solutions, South Africa

·         IKEA/Telecash, Germany,

·         VPV Insurance, Germany

·         Berliner Sparkasse, Germany

·         Sunrise Telecom, Switzerland 

·         Spanish Confederation of Savings Banks

·         Saudi Arabian Chamber of Commerce

·         Ingolstadt Hospital, Germany

Gijima's electronic digital signiture solution caters for the three major eSigning processes:

Document Signing:The signing of a digital document (for example, account opening, change of details, signing mandate) with a handwritten electronic signature. The signed document can then be printed or emailed (for the customer) and archived as required.

Signature Enrolment:The collection of three sample signatures from an individual for a specific account, which would apply to new customers or customers with new signatures. This can be directly into the system or as part of the document signing process. From the three signatures, a single biometric (dynamic) reference signature is created and stored in the SignBase database.

Signature Verification:  The comparison of the high quality electronic signature against a captured signature. In a customer maintenance/verification process, this will perform a dynamic verification of an individual’s submitted signature against the reference signature stored in the database. Both the static (look and feel) and dynamic (pressure, speed, acceleration) characteristics of the signatures are compared. This is not in scope initially but is possible with the proposed solution, and could apply externally (customers) and internally (employees).

Gijima suplies the following electronic signiture components:

·         SignPad– Digital Signature Tablet with LCD (Colour or Black & White)

·         SignDoc– Thick client or Browser-based Electronic Signing of documents

·         SignDoc/SignWare SDK– Integration of eSigning functionality into existing applications

It is estimated that around 65 million signatures have been captured within a year on the SignPads rolled out at German IKEA stores. SignPads have a longer life expectancy when compared to similar devices on the market since, unlike other devices, the tablet’s sensor is behind the display and does not interact physically with the pen so there is no wear and tear. As a result, devices come with a 3-year guarantee.

Implementation footprint– SOFTPRO solutions are running at the other three big banks and have been for 7 years. The eSigning solution and almost 8,000 SignPad devices are in the process of being implemented at other financial institutions around the country.

Support footprint– Gijima is extremely experienced at device support and maintenance, and has over 80 points of presence around the country to facilitate this. We are responsible for the country-wide end-user support for Absa and its branches, we service all the national police stations (SAPS) and provide a break-fix service for FNB. 

 Experience in signatures– SOFTPRO is, and always has been, focused only on the business of signatures and signature verification. They are on ISO working groups to define biometric standards for signatures and have many customers around the world using their solutions.

Solution capability– the solution is unsurpassed in terms of its eSigning functionality, including signature enrolment, document signing, and biometric signature verification. The SignBase signature repository provides a single source for reference signatures together with the signing rules (mandates) and the SignCheck automatic verification solution enables documents to be verified automatically or later in batch. 

Superior Signing Pad– The Wacom devices, designed in conjunction with SOFTPRO, are extremely durable devices (3 year warranty) that provide high quality digital signatures to meet any business's requirements.

Mobility– SOFTPRO is expanding their solution set to provide support for iOS and Android. This will enable Companies to either use the Mobile Device itself [iPhone, iPad, Android phone] as a signing device or to enable Signing of PDFs on iOS and Android tablets. Unlike many other applications that provide a jagged, uneven and slow drawing and writing experience, SOFTPRO has used its experience to completely optimise the writing and signing process. 

For more information contact christo.leroux@gijima.com