CoSign Digital Signatures for Engineering, Construction and Manufacturing  - Business Case

Digital signatures enable AEC organizations to compliantly replace slow and expensive paper processes such as design reviews and submissions with fast, low-cost and fully digital ones. This results in:

• The ability to enhance collaboration and design quality by securely tapping into the best internal or external resources regardless of location
• Faster turn-around time and agility to client requests
• Costs savings due to reduced printing and routing

• Engineering drawings
• ECOs
• Design documents
• Change orders
• Contracts
• Inspection reports
• Permit requests
• Manuals

CoSign is a standards-based digital signature solution (based on PKI technology) that enables engineers to place their digital signature, graphical signature, and professional stamp on the document types they use most (including PDF, AutoCAD®, MicroStation, Microsoft® Word, Excel®, InfoPath® and Outlook®). CoSign digital signatures can be verified by any third party without the need for special verification software, and provide proof of signer identity and intent, and transaction integrity. The digital signatures are compliant with the strictest industry regulations, and may be used to enable e-submissions that authorities prefer.

By demanding engineers to spend valuable time on printing, manually signing, and routing documents, paper-based signatures incur organizational costs, and cause delays and inefficiencies. It is estimated that each paper signature costs an organization $5.40 in associated expenses (i.e. paper, printing, signing, scanning, routing, archiving and replacing lost documents;  Pfizer estimates this cost at $30). Based on actual log data of ARX's customers, the average authorized signer signs over 250 documents per year, bringing the annual paper-based costs per signer to over $1,350. This figure is much higher for organizations with multiple locations and/or field staff that need to submit formal reports or contracts.

The CoSign digital signature solution eliminates these costs through a simple, scalable and quick-to-deploy solution. CoSign makes it easy to digitally sign all standard file formats by embedding the digital signature directly into the document and sealing it from change. CoSign digital signatures enable regulatory compliance, and support graphical signatures and multiple signatures per document.

Calculate the return on investment of implementing digital signatures in your organization by downloading our digital signature ROI whitepaper and Excel spreadsheet.