Adobe Sign is a very useful tool for securely gathering authorizations and signatures for documents. It expedites some processes and allows digital processing of documents that might have previously required paper processing. However, there are some things it can do that are better accomplished other ways. There are other processes that are unaffected by using the Adobe Sign platform as well.

See below for some general guidelines about what Adobe Sign does well, not so well, and which processes are unaffected by using Adobe Sign. If you have any concerns or more specific questions, please contact the CIS Business Systems Team (cis-bst@spu.edu) or the Office of Risk Management (orm@spu.edu).

Adobe Sign does the following well:

• Getting a legal signature from a known source.
• Making a document available online so that end users can initiate signing the form and submitting it to you. 
• Getting a legal signature from a non-SPU user (provided we have an email address for them).
• Getting authorizations from multiple users in a process.
• Preserving a single document of all authorizations and agreements.

Adobe Sign doesn't do the following well:

• Gather formatted data for entry into data systems.
  
  • This is better-accomplished in Microsoft Forms or Formstack.
• Multiple linked documents requiring authorization.
  
  • Multiple documents must be merged into a single document in order to be stored and authorized together.
• Implement a business process workflow.
  
  • Any workflow processes that need to be accomplished before, during or after, one or more authorizations, need to be defined and conducted outside of Adobe Sign.

Things that are unchanged with Adobe Sign:

• Writing and creating agreements.
  • The Adobe Sign process begins with the finalized version of a document. Continue to use your current processes for writing and revising documents for agreements, and then once the language has been finalized and approved you can upload the final version to Adobe Sign.
• Legality and enforceability of an agreement.
  • SPU users should continue to work with the Office of Risk Management to ensure any agreements they need to sign, or have signed by other, are created properly to meet the needs of the university and that the authorization method being used is acceptable for the agreement in question.
• Simple data collection.
  
  • If data collection is all that is needed, then SPU owns Microsoft Forms and Formstack as better tools for doing so.
• Records retention policies.
  
  • Agreements that are signed digitally are still subject to the same University and legal retention policies as if they were physical documents.
  • SPU recommends that employees centrally store all such documents in a place where they can be retained and purged per these policies.
    
    

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