Someone emailed me a link to this video of a TV ad, “Paper is not dead”, as part of this person’s broader argument that the world shouldn’t go paperless:
I think the video makes the opposite point. Possibly the only reason we need paper any more is for toilet paper. Almost every other example in the video shows a use of paper that is no longer necessary (I’ll allow that kids drawing is still a great thing). In many cases, using paper is incredibly wasteful and inefficient. (I cringed seeing the printer cranking away.)
Time to go paperless. Paper is dead. Except for toilet paper.
We’ve released a new feature today to speed up signatures when you already have a contract prepared in PDF or MS-Word and you just want to get it signed.
Why are we enabling working with PDF and MS-Word documents, when our vision for Contractually is to make the contracts process paperless? Why support legacy formats like PDF and MS-Word that are designed for printing, that is, built to replicate paper on-screen because the document will be printed?
It’s a bridge between the old world of on-screen paper (PDF and MS-Word) and the new world of paperless contracts:
1. We have customers who love using Contractually for outbound contracts, where they prepare the contract and then share it with other parties. But they haven’t had a simple way to handle inbound contracts in Contractually, where the other party sends a PDF or Word document. Now when they receive an NDA in PDF, it’s easy to upload it to Contractually and still get it signed online.
2. We’ve heard from many first-time users that they came to Contractually because they had a need to sign a contract that’s ready to go. With this new feature, they have a solution to their immediate problem, on the way to going paperless with future contracts. No need to import the document and create a template first.
With this bridge, we can facilitate the shift of contracts and legal documents to web-native documents that are integrated with data flows and people workflows.
You can use the feature by clicking on ‘Start New Contract’, then clicking on ‘Upload’ in the contract selector.
We’re committed to going truly paperless, but we also want to make it easy to get any kind of contract done quickly. Let us know what you think, or if there are other features that you’d like to see us focus on.
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Data Portability
Contractually makes it easy to store all your contracts on your own system if you wish. We automatically email you a PDF of each completed contract and you can download a PDF of your contracts at any time. We can provide you with a copy of all your contracts upon request: contact us at support@contractual.ly.
