eSign, Racing Towards the Next Decade

11/01 2024 350

Whether it's the CA license, the self-developed contract AI large model, or going global, it's clear that in every wave, eSign has consistently evolved. This evolution involves calm reflection on the industry, product iteration, optimization of the service system, and continuous advancement in strategic direction.

Author|Dou Dou

Editor|Pi Ye

Produced by|Industry Home

"Let a quarter of the world's population sign contracts with eSign." This was the flag set internally by Jin Hongzhou, founder and CEO of eSign, 10 years ago.

Today, this statement is rapidly becoming a reality.

At the recent eSign User Ecosystem Summit, the further evolved eSign once again stood at the forefront. Some of the labels being given to it are – China's largest third-party commercial trust service platform, achieving universal access to intelligent contract management services, and building a global electronic signature system led by China.

A question arises: What makes eSign capable of this?

Reviewing the entire conference, the answer might be: holding a CA license and moving further towards integration; being the first in the industry to develop a contract large model, making products not only usable but also user-friendly; and being the only vendor with multiple data centers in the Asia-Pacific region.

During the conference, these answers were gradually unfolded and presented to all audiences. Along with these answers, the new anchor point for the next decade for this top player in China's electronic signature market was also presented.

1. Holding a CA License

Moving Towards a Third-Party Commercial Trust Service Platform

Recently, the electronic signature industry has undergone some changes due to a new regulation. The same is true for eSign.

"Electronic certification service providers shall not entrust external institutions or individuals with the acceptance and verification of certificate applications, or the issuance and delivery of certificates." On September 2, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Measures for the Administration of Electronic Certification Services (Draft for Comment)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Draft for Comment") and solicited public opinion from the society. In short, CA institutions cannot outsource key business such as certificate applications and verifications to third parties in the future.

In layman's terms, for inherent traditional CA institutions, they need to complete the entire certification process and thus take full responsibility for the certification results. This regulation implies that the role of CA institutions needs to shift from being purely third-party certification agencies to a model integrating "certification + services", providing social trust services.

This regulation is not difficult to understand. In the past decade of mobile internet development, the electronic signature industry has witnessed rapid growth, but it has also bred some problems. For example, for some electronic signature enterprises, although they have obtained the corresponding CA certificate, their products, services, and other systems are not scientific and perfect, leading to a series of illegal activities.

But this is not an easy task.

Before this, traditional CA institutions focused more on the issuance of certificates in electronic authentication and the identification of certificate issuers, paying less attention to subsequent issues after certificate issuance and lacking corresponding supporting measures. In other words, they lacked experience in specific services, products, and related areas, making their transformation not an easy task.

For the previous execution roles, that is, electronic signature service providers, they are also facing more direct issues. Under the new regulations, electronic signature vendors must possess or "bind" the corresponding CA qualifications to continue providing services to enterprises.

Currently, there are two recognized approaches in the industry: either the electronic signature service provider becomes a CA institution and directly participates in the entire process of identity authentication and digital certificate issuance; or it can only provide technical support, such as software services, but compared to the former, the latter has stronger service restrictions and lower corresponding industrial value.

In other words, the development prospects for electronic signature service providers with CA licenses may be clearer.

Currently, there are two main ways for electronic signature service providers to obtain CA licenses: one is to apply independently, that is, to obtain a CA license on their own and integrate it with their inherent products and service systems to provide integrated services to enterprises; the other is to continue providing services through asset mergers and acquisitions in a "CA + service provider" group.

However, it is understood that the path of mergers and acquisitions has some limitations. "Product integration and organizational integration both require a long time. The approach of asset mergers and acquisitions is feasible, but strictly speaking, there are still certain 'flaws.'" Jin Hongzhou said. "We believe that the best model is for electronic signature service providers to independently apply for a CA license."

This statement is not difficult to understand. Compared to the integrated service model, although the model based on mergers and acquisitions or bindings can solve compliance issues, for the product and service systems, it requires the grinding and coordination of different teams and processes, which means a less than optimal experience for enterprises.

Industry Home learned that in the past few months, after undergoing a series of strict review and certification processes, eSign has undergone a qualification upgrade and recently obtained a CA license issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

It can be understood that with the support of the CA license, eSign can directly provide electronic signature certification services, including signature validity verification and certificate issuance. Compared to before, eSign can now provide a wider range of electronic signature services, forming a complete service chain from user identity verification, certificate issuance to signature verification.

"Although the period for independently applying for a CA license is relatively long and the initial investment is large, once it is completed, true integration can be achieved," Jin Hongzhou told Industry Home.

Indeed, it is clear that with the CA license in hand, the eSign product system presents a more integrated attribute, where the participating entities have changed from the past "CA institution – eSign – enterprise" to "eSign – enterprise". The business scope has expanded from electronic signatures to electronic authentication and digital certificates, providing a better overall service experience for enterprises.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that with the CA license in hand, eSign can also empower the business of enterprise customers and provide trust endorsements. If eSign was previously an electronic contract signing service provider, with the support of CA qualifications, it is gradually becoming a third-party commercial trust service platform, and as it develops, the value of this platform will increase.

Jin Hongzhou said, "We hope to build a global signing network in the future based on such a signing network and the empowerment of the CA license."

2. AI Reshapes the Integrated SaaS for Contract Management

Making Products More Inclusive

To build a global signing network, eSign's products and services need to cover more enterprises, functions, and scenarios. In simple terms, the audience needs to be broad, and the threshold needs to be low.

This is not simple.

Statistics from the Supreme People's Court show that civil lawsuits related to contracts are growing at a rate of 10% per year. Additionally, data from the Judicial Big Data Research Institute shows that there were approximately 15 million first-instance civil cases involving contract breaches over the past five years, 75% of which constituted criminal breaches.

These data indicate that contract breaches are a common and serious problem. Effective contract management can help prevent breaches, reducing the risks and losses they bring. However, signing a contract is only part of contract management.

"Many of our employees spend more time negotiating before signing the contract and managing it afterward." Li Cong found that in the process of serving customers, most enterprises still manage contracts in a relatively traditional way, even if their digitalization is already very advanced.

To solve this problem, eSign began laying out an AI strategy as early as 2019. In 2023, with the surge of AI large model technology, eSign built an AI PaaS platform, integrating multiple leading domestic large models. By fine-tuning the models and leveraging their advantages and characteristics, different AI contract applications were constructed. eSign began trying to empower enterprises to handle some contract tasks based on its multimodal and autonomous learning capabilities.

However, this path is not easy. "We found that large models that have not been trained with domain data, even if we add more prompt engineering and more agents, cannot achieve the desired results," Li Cong said.

There are also security concerns. "Even though these contract data are encrypted on eSign, enterprises still have concerns about data security."

At the end of 2023, eSign decided to train its own large model.

Based on years of contract data accumulation, eSign constructed a set of training data in the contract field through manual annotation, which served as the raw material for large model training. A strict model evaluation benchmark was also defined to quantify the effectiveness of the large model in handling contract tasks.

It is understood that currently, eSign is gradually rewriting the integrated SaaS for contract management based on the self-developed large model. "We plan to incorporate AI capabilities at every task processing node of the contract to completely change the way enterprises sign and manage contracts in the past," Li Cong said, emphasizing the focus on simplifying contract signing, identifying contract risks, and unifying contract management.

For example, in the contract review process, clients do not need any legal knowledge or complex systems. They only need to upload a document, and AI will quickly read the contract and identify its main contents, such as contract type, contract terms, and important fields. Based on the identified information, it automatically generates a review checklist or review rules.

After clicking on the review, users can also customize and adjust the contract review checklist. By clicking on the review, AI will inform users of potential risks in these contracts, and users can modify contract terms based on AI's review suggestions.

The eSign system has 75 preset contract types and over 1,500 review points, which can meet the needs of most enterprises. However, if enterprises have their own business characteristics or review rules, users can also completely redefine a review point based on their needs.

In this process, it can be seen that with the empowerment of AI, contracts are also becoming valuable data assets.

eSign's clients have also provided many positive feedbacks. "After deploying eSign, the overall property collection cost has been reduced by 85%, and efficiency is expected to increase by 300%," said Zheng Kai, General Manager of the Digital Intelligence and Innovation Center of CCCC Property Service Group.

Overall, based on the self-developed large model, eSign is reshaping the integrated SaaS for contract management. While the usage threshold decreases, the product experience actually improves.

It can also be said that with the empowerment of AI capabilities, eSign's products are becoming increasingly "user-friendly." While enhancing the inclusive attributes of the products, it is promoting the transformation into a true third-party commercial trust service platform and building an engine to realize the largest global signing network.

3. Proactively Going Global

Towards a Better Decade for Electronic Signatures

If holding a CA license is the cornerstone for realizing the initial goal, and reshaping the integrated SaaS for contract management with a large model is the engine for achieving that goal, then going global is the direction.

Unlike in the past, due to considerations of industrial security and resilient development, Chinese enterprises are shifting from a passive to a more proactive approach to going global. Luo Xu, founder and CEO of Fenxiangxiaoke, believes that "if an enterprise goes global not out of strategic considerations but out of necessity, the probability of success will be very low."

Furthermore, Chinese enterprises are no longer going global unidirectionally but are interacting with target markets. For example, Saudi Arabia is building a Chinese economic special zone, indicating that many countries around the world are actively welcoming the wave of Chinese enterprises going global and hoping to undertake China's production capacity and business opportunities.

The depth of going global has also changed. Currently, Chinese enterprises are no longer merely exporting brands and products but also culture. For example, the success of the game "Black Myth: Wukong" in overseas markets shows that Chinese enterprises have not only gained recognition in overseas markets but have also achieved in-depth cultural exchanges.

According to statistics, in 2023, over 3,500 A-share listed companies conducted overseas business, accounting for over 66%. Going global has become a general trend.

However, compared to the market share of 60% to 70% held by the leading overseas electronic signature service provider DocuSign, the popularity and market share of domestic electronic signature service providers in the international market still have significant room for improvement.

"If we have to define the success of going global, we hope to successfully build an electronic signature system led by China," Jin Hongzhou said.

In fact, eSign has already taken action. It is understood that as of now, eSign has deployed three major data centers globally. The establishment of these data centers enables eSign to provide more stable and efficient services to customers in different regions, better adapting to the legal and regulatory requirements of different countries. At the same time, it can attract more international customers and promote the construction of its global electronic signature system.

Just as Ji Weiguo, co-founder and CEO of Beisen, said, "To serve foreign markets, it is necessary to have a deep understanding of cross-cultural business scenarios."

A figure shows that eSign has accessed CA institutions in multiple countries and regions, achieving coverage in 63 countries.

It can be perceived that as eSign continues to deepen its globalization efforts, its value as a third-party commercial trust service platform is also increasingly prominent. From China to the world, based on the product and service system honed in domestic scenarios, it provides more compliant, legal, secure, and convenient electronic signature services to global customers.

This also corresponds to Jin Hongzhou's vision of "letting a quarter of the world's population sign contracts with eSign."

Standing at the starting point of another decade for electronic signatures, we can see that regulations are becoming more standardized, technology is gradually maturing, and the market environment is improving. This benign environment also corresponds to a more standardized and reasonable system of electronic signature service providers with quality services.

In fact, this is precisely the reason why enterprises continue to choose eSign and others. Whether it's the CA license, the self-developed contract AI large model, or going global, it is clear that in every wave, eSign has consistently evolved. This evolution involves calm reflection on the industry, product iteration, optimization of the service system, and continuous advancement in strategic direction.

Just as the saying goes, "The era will reward those enterprises that create value." The next decade of eSign is worth looking forward to.

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