Chicago — May 17, 2011 — “It’s time to axe the fax!” That’s the message that Sertifi is bringing to hotel operators as the company enters the hospitality industry this month. The Sertifi platform entirely replaces the paper process of obtaining signatures — sending, printing, signing and faxing — with an expeditious, low-cost electronic signature method, making it easy for hotels of all sizes to streamline operations and accelerate revenue with visibility and control. 
 
“Sertifi is helping leading corporations and Fortune 500 companies to use electronic signatures to get contracts and other agreements signed faster, close more business, and reduce costs,” said John Stojka, Sertifi president. “Sertifi has become the standard eSignature provider across several industries, from payment-processing and media to medical and software, and today we're bringing our proven solution to hotels. With the vast amount of contracting that goes on in hospitality sales and human resources departments alone, we strongly believe that Sertifi will quickly transform the manual contracting process across all industry segments to an electronic environment.
 
“The bottom line is that existing manual processes waste valuable time and resources,” he said. “The name of the game today is 'do whatever you can to get contracts signed quickly and business in the door.' Not only is an electronic process more beneficial to sales teams, but it’s extremely appreciated by hotel patrons as well. Across the board Sertifi is reducing the time it takes to get contracts signed by at least 20 percent, resulting in a minimum 10 percent increase in business.”
 
For customers such as CareerBuilder.com, Sertifi has enabled the human capital solutions firm to reduce its contract close cycle by more than 50 percent while also reducing operations costs. Likewise, The Tribune Co., the nation's second-largest newspaper publisher, has reduced its contract close by 30 percent via seamless integration from Sertifi to Salesforce.com.
 
Stojka explained that hotels working with the Salesforce.com platform will immediately benefit by integrating Sertifi to their existing CRM application and by leveraging Force.com, Salesforce Mobile, and Visualforce functionality. Website integration increases the ability for hotels to receive executed forms and contracts through in-session signing.
 
Sertifi for Mobile
"As hospitality businesses begin migrating to cloud-computing environments and adopting mobile strategies for increasing guest satisfaction and improving operational efficiencies, the need to cut physical ties to static business equipment is mounting," Stojka said. "'Sertifi for Mobile' extends interoperability with a broad variety of mobile devices, including Apple® iPhone® or iPad™, RIM® BlackBerry®, Google® Android™, and Windows® Mobile phone, just to name a few. Therefore, giving customers the opportunity to review, e-sign and return contracts using their own personal mobile devices while they are on the fly is just as valuable a service to them as it is to hotel operators.
 
“The green benefits of the Sertifi eSignature solution are equally as valuable,” Stojka said. “By moving contracts from a paper to digital format, hotels are not only reducing paper costs, but reducing their carbon footprint and adding to their growing lists of enviable sustainability programs.”
 
Sertifi is Web based and delivered on demand. No IT department is required. The sender simply fills out a basic webmail form with the name of the person needing to provide the electronic signature. The agreement is attached from the sender’s hard disk or network drive and emailed to the recipient. The signer receives the document and signs it either via digital input signature, pen-based tool or their finger.

“Sertifi is focused on hospitality and dedicated to meeting the unique requirements of hotel management, sales and human resources staffs to quickly deliver, execute, and track business agreements online, thereby speeding the close of deals and eliminating paperwork," Stojka said. "Sertifi's eSignature solutions are easy to use, customizable and flexible to support high-performance business applications and workflows. It also leverages the latest application security and infrastructure protection.

"We are delighted to introduce Sertifi to the hospitality industry, and we are confident that hoteliers will quickly realize the bottom- and top-line benefits that eSignature brings to their businesses," he said.

About Sertifi
Chicago-based Sertifi is a leading e-Signature platform that enables hotel sales and human resources departments to close business faster and reduce costs by electronically sending, e-signing, and managing agreements with customers. By speeding the time it takes to get customer contracts signed and returned, it affords more time to close on new business. Sertifi is ideal for sales, catering, or human resources groups who require signatures on agreements.  For more information, call Doug Rae at 949-422-6033, email [email protected] or visit www.sertifi.com.