The skies over Europe remain largely silent, but the sound of business deals closing doesn’t have to.

I have been touting the time-savings and cost-savings benefits of eliminating paper from the signing process for years. However, the current flight disruptions caused by Iceland’s volcanic ash is testament to how an organization’s business processes can completely grind to a halt if it still relies on air-lifting time-sensitive documents to people for signing. As the skies over Europe remain silent, business deals are not being signed and decisions are not being formally authorized.

We can’t control mother-nature, but we can fix our business processes.

Last week, I posted a couple of blogs about why you can’t compete as a global player if you’re still on paper. How today’s economic climate won’t allow organizations to continue living with the inefficiencies of paper for much longer. And why organizations soon won’t be able to imagine doing business without e-signatures. This rings especially true this week. The events over the past week remind us of how vulnerable commerce is to mother-nature and other uncontrollable events. But while we can’t control mother–nature, we can fix our broken business processes.

There’s no better time than now.

Organizations have made significant investments to optimize their operational efficiency and improve customer experience by bringing business processes online. Most of the pieces are already in place. The only thing standing in the way of keeping processes online and getting maximum return on those investments are e-signatures. The good news is that there are solutions in place today that immediately deliver these capabilities over the cloud, such as e-SignLive for LotusLive, while also making it extremely affordable for small and large organizations alike. 

Seeing (and clicking) is believing.

IBM recently posted a video demo of its newly integrated Skype, SalesForce  and e-SignLive services for LotusLive. In under 3.5 minutes, you’ll see just how easy it is to prepare a document for signing and invite people to participate in a “click-to-sign” e-signing ceremony. But clicking is truly believing. I highly recommend that you try the service for yourself by registering for a free 30-day trial. Don’t worry. You don’t have to commit in any way once the trial period is over (But I’m hoping that you love it so much that you e-sign on.)

I’d like to hear from you.

Has your organization been affected by the flight cancellations in Europe? What types of documents have you not been able to air lift? What impact has this had on your business?