Interview with Thomas Taylor, Founder of E-Sign

We caught up with Thomas Taylor, founder of E-Sign to talk all things from helping reduce the use of paper to adapting the business during COVID-19…

Tell us about E-Sign

E-Sign is a growing technology company creating market-leading software. Their SaaS products make users lives easier and through the digitisation of document send processes, they help to reduce the use of paper, benefiting our environment and protecting the planet for future generations.

This service allows for a reduction in the use of paper and printing, as well as a reduction in time spent posting paper documents. E-Sign allows electronic signatures to be added to documents and returned to the sender almost instantly. As it is an online service, it provides access to documents from anywhere in the world, at any time. The founder’s mantra is ‘always leave the planet in a better state than you found it.’

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

My career background is in engineering and software. Early on in my career my roles were focused on finding ways to improve existing processes. Whilst working offshore straight after university I often had to improvise and improve systems, to ensure oil production in remote locations. It had been on my mind for some weeks back in 2011, how ineffective (given the available technology) getting agreements signed and sent via post in general was. This thought led me to develop the first iteration of E-Sign.

How has E-Sign fared during the pandemic?

Fortunately as a technology business we were able to adapt pretty quickly and thankfully have suffered minimal disruption to the business. For this, I am extremely grateful and owe a tremendous amount of gratitude to the wonderful team we have here at E-Sign.

COVID-19 has undoubtedly changed the way we both live and work. The events of the past few months have resulted in an influx of businesses looking to digitise their processes while operating remote working practices – to ensure business continuity and customer engagement continues: and those changes need to be as efficient as possible due to the significant financial impact many businesses have faced.

With more people than ever working away from the office, traditional signatures and physical sign-off processes are no longer an option for most businesses. We have seen customer gains across many sectors, specifically, central government departments and healthcare providers.

Many of these organisations have been forced to go through a period of rapid transformation – having to create new procedures to enable them to serve customers and manage teams remotely. In lots of instances they are initially unsure of what they need and what technology is available. At E-Sign we listen and feedback their requirements in a ‘business value map’, this is just one tool we use to find out what the strategic goals are for the customer and then provide the technology for these to happen.

It has also been interesting to see first-hand how our existing customers are expanding on their digital investments to be able to cope with the current climate, to not only remain operational but also become more efficient. As a company it has meant we have seen a new customer growth of 22%, and in terms of revenue, the monthly average since lockdown has been increasing 53% month on month.

We have worked hard since lockdown began to not only adapt ourselves but to work with new and existing clients and give them the tools and advice to help their businesses continue to operate as successfully as possible.

What does the future hold for E-Sign?

Due to the pandemic, we are currently working with many businesses and organisations that are currently struggling due to the implications of adapting to remote working furloughed staff and budget cuts amongst many others. Our team work with our customers to find the most efficient solution to suit them, for example, this could mean altering processes and switching packages to enable a reduced team to deal with processing an increased amount of document transactions.

In the longer term, we want to make it as easy as possible for users to integrate into E-Sign, from whichever platform they use. Maintaining trust and deliverability is key for us as we move forward enhancing our software and service offering.