Twenty years ago… Apple released its second generation iPod, Disney’s Lilo and Stitch was released, Rachel gave birth to Emma in Friends, Michael Jackson dangled his baby boy over the balcony of his hotel room, 24 was the most talked about TV drama and Halle Berry became the first black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Our twenty year anniversary is upon us and whilst we say ’20 years in the making’, Docsafe is far from finished. It’s a work in progress, something we continue to develop and refine, year on year. That’s not to say that Docsafe is incomplete – far from it. Docsafe is of its time and that’s why we keep on making it better so it moves forward and is reflective of today’s workplace.
Over the past 20 years we have seen many changes but there are some things that have stayed the same. We continue to create a product that serves businesses with clients – it was accountants first, then along came solicitors, IFAs, estate agents and financial advisers. Having started with a product that served the professions we have expanded into working with business owners and creatives.
Docsafe makes it easier to do business. Online signing was not mainstream 20 years ago and we have introduced it at the right time and pride ourselves on our electronic signing capabilities far out-performing the market in terms of sophistication and flexibility. Slowly the business world has adopted e-signatures as a secure way of sealing a deal. It’s only in recent years that the legal profession has seen how it can be safer than a wet signature and fully embraced it.
20 years ago, ‘working in the cloud’ was a concept we had to explain as it was relatively unknown. It’s hard to imagine a world without it now. Accessing information, sharing and collaborating without having to meet in person, not to mention having your data backed up automatically – what a relief!
20 years ago we wouldn’t have been able to introduce the many ways we have now to authenticate a login. Sending secure confirmation codes to phones and email has become the norm and we were right there at the start.
GDPR was a huge deal in terms of its publicity and taking care of data. We already had so many secure systems in place that not much changed for our clients but we did win lots of new business on the back of making sure everyone is compliant. We think the fact that you can send files without using email attachments was a big factor in that. Sending emails to the wrong people will probably always happen (we are only human) but if the information isn’t attached it’s a significant and essential step in damage limitation.
For the future we’ll keep doing what we know best – and that’s how to create hard working solutions so our clients can continue to work smarter and not harder.