I have lived most of my life without an electronic signature. So have most people on the planet. So I procrastinated on recognizing it, although a colleague who works at Asseco encouraged me to do so probably as early as 2017.
Signing contracts was always an opportunity to meet a contractor, procelebrate, renew relationships... But covid came along and relationships with contractors moved to zooms, teams and skype. I easily switched to it, and contracts circulated in envelopes between my company and its partners. It was a bit tedious: "print first, sign, send back two copies, when I get one I'll sign it too and send it back to you." Then we still only had to make sure that our original was not cut in, send it to the accountant, who keeps a paper archive, because with her nothing is lost, before sending it is still worth scanning the signed copy to distinguish the signed version from the previous five negotiation versions. Of course, the accountant also keeps some sort of electronic inventory of documents for herself, because searching through papers would have killed her long ago.
A new chapter began, as Mr. Maciej from podpisano.pl explained to me in a few sentences that running a company could be easier without paper contracts. He drove up, helped with the installation and now signing contracts and archiving them is a pleasure, the binders don't grow, authorized persons have instant access, baja.
Thank you podpisano.pl 🙂