Similarities and differences between Chinese and American electronic signature SaaS

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In recent years B The popularity of the end market and the continuous promotion of industrial digitalization , Give Way SaaS The industry has been continuously popular in the capital market , be in SaaS American enterprises of origin , It is favored by the industry .

E-Sign SaaS field , Us native electronic signature SaaS manufacturer Docusign Share price , from 2021 From the beginning of the year to the end of the year, it soared 2 More than double , Become one of the capital markets in the United States SaaS Star stocks . As the originator of electronic signature , It's called “ Tesla in the electronic signature industry ” Of Docusign Red explosion , Let the domestic electronic signature manufacturers use it as a benchmark .

For standard

stay B The United States, where the end market is more mature , The application of electronic signature is earlier , It can even be traced back to 2000 Around the year , And in the listed companies of American stocks ,DocuSign It is the leader in this field .

Early in it 2018 Before officially landing on NASDAQ in , Its valuation level has been only 44 Billion dollars , But after listing , Its maximum market value broke through within three years 600 Billion dollars , Once set a record “ Three years 10 Many times ” Myth . And in the Docusign Behind the rapid rise in market value , It is inseparable from the help of reality in many aspects .

One side , The enterprise performance has maintained a sustained high growth . According to public data , In the past three years DocuSign The average annual growth rate of income exceeds 40%, Much higher than the average of other industries ; On the other hand ,DocuSign Own strength is strong , In the leading position in the industry . According to the data compiled by Orient Securities Research Institute , At present, in the global electronic signature market ,DocuSign occupy 70% About market share , The second is Adobe Only occupy 20% Market share , Only about 10% The market share is shared by other small and medium-sized companies . This high economic growth and the leading Matthew effect , It can also be found in the domestic market .

In terms of time ,2018 Years later, the domestic consumer Internet came to an end , The industrial Internet continues to advance , Give Way SaaS Relevant industries have witnessed rapid development , The electronic signature industry is no exception . According to the 36 From the krypton Institute 《2021 Research Report on China's electronic signature industry in 》 Show , The scale of China's electronic signature industry is from 2016 Year of 8.5 Billion exploded to 2020 Year of 108.2 Billion , The compound annual growth rate is as high as 66.3%,2020 In, the number of electronic signatures has broken through 500 Billion , Year-on-year growth 317.51%. In terms of growth rate alone , Domestic electronic signature SaaS The industry is better than the American market .

From the perspective of leading enterprises , Fada 、 Sign on 、e Such industry giants as Alipay , Occupy the vast majority of the market share of the industry . At present, the top five manufacturers in China's electronic signature market e Autograph 、CFCA、 Digital authentication 、 The total market share of contract lock and law is close to 40%; Segment areas such as e-commerce ,e Autograph 、 Sign on 、 Fada and other head manufacturers , It occupies more than 70% Market share .

All in all , Whether it is industry prosperity or market concentration , Domestic e-signature giants have many similarities with American e-signature giants , This is also a sign 、e Many giants in the industry such as Alipay will Docusign As a benchmarking object .

Different national conditions

From the perspective of business model , There are indeed some differences between China's e-signature leaders and the United States' leaders “ be similar ” The place of . Disclosure of information , Sign on 99% The revenue comes from SaaS Service subscription , Hardly involved in customized business , This is related to Docusign Close to ; and e In the aspect of customer acquisition ability, it is important to sign the treasure , And Docusign There are similarities .

It is reported that , at present e The customers of Alipay basically cover B End 、C End sum G Customers in multiple fields , The customer fission strength is relatively strong . Similar to it ,Docusign stay B The end market has great influence , Its business covers 170 Several countries , It also actively uses its existing resources to enter the government enterprise market , Try to cover more types of customers .

actually , In addition to these “ The surface of the ” In addition to the similarity of , China and the United States have different national conditions 、 Practical differences in user habits, etc , There is a big difference between China's e-signature leader and the U.S. leader .

First , There are differences in user habits . such as , Chinese users prefer to verify by SMS 、 Online face recognition sign electronic contract , And in the “ Mail culture ” Free access to European and American markets , Electronic contract signing is usually done by e-mail , Its authentication and signing mostly rely on e-mail .

secondly , There are also great differences between China and the United States in terms of national conditions . for example , It is also a judicial Agreement caused by commercial disputes , Documents without signature and seal can be accepted by the United States Court , Because of this, American electronic signature SaaS manufacturer , stay B The cost of getting customers in the end market is lower , Companies are pushing B End cooperation can also save a lot of promotion and notarization costs , This is also DocuSign The external driving force of rapid growth in recent years .

But there is no front-end real name authentication in China 、 Back-end judicial notarization and other actions , Unsigned documents are difficult to obtain court support , This is also the Chinese electronic signature SaaS For digital authentication （CA manufacturer ）、 Legal notarization （ Fada ） The reason why they pay special attention .

Commercialization differentiation

According to the latest financial report data ,DocuSign The accumulated global customers of various types have broken through 82 Thousands of families , There is no lack of Google 、 Microsoft 、Oracle And other world-renowned technology enterprises , Its profitability is steadily increasing , And increasingly approaching full profit . But China E-Sign SaaS Enterprises want to do this , Obviously, there is still a certain gap in reality .

One is that the electronic contract involves CA Certification is indispensable in China , Therefore, Chinese e-signature enterprises need to pay higher fees than American enterprises “ cost ”.

As mentioned earlier , As the domestic business integrity system is not perfect , Therefore, in the process of doing business, e-signature enterprises , We must cooperate with the front-end data authentication and the back-end legal notarization to achieve the business goal . If you need to contact the public security department before signing the contract 、 The industrial and commercial department completes the data authentication through face recognition , So as to determine whether the personal information is true and reliable ; In signing a contract, we need to judge the willingness of the signing subject , Sign in the name of another person ; After signing the contract, you need to contact the notary office 、 Judicial identification 、 Arbitration and other institutions , Complete legal services .

therefore , If Chinese e-signature enterprises want to do business more smoothly , You have to penetrate CA Domain or with CA Institutional Cooperation , This makes Chinese e-signature enterprises “ Heavy assets ” The characteristics are particularly obvious . such as , There are many laws in the industry that focus on legal services , And front end layout CA Signature of certification and e Such as signing a treasure, etc. all illustrate this point .

Second, as “ Profit center ” Large and medium-sized customers , For electronic signatures SaaS Their acceptance is not high . Now there are more and more SaaS Enterprises realize that medium and large enterprises , It's just SaaS The key elements for the development of the enterprise at this stage , Key customers are the main force contributing to revenue . But in the current domestic market , Medium and large enterprises are generally worried about data security , Especially the contract transaction information related to the core of the enterprise , Many large and medium-sized enterprises are not highly accepted .

And the consequences of low acceptance , It's China. SaaS Enterprises need to pay more for customer acquisition , There are even enterprises for “ please ” Third party enterprises , Privately store the personal user information that should have been stored on the E-Sign platform , Placed in a third-party enterprise , Thus, the compliance of the platform is greatly reduced , The problems of user information leakage emerge one after another .

On the one hand, there are higher customer acquisition costs and heavy asset operation costs , On the other hand, the revenue scale is relatively low , The result is China electronic signature SaaS Enterprises are generally faced with the dilemma of losing money , This may be the biggest real difference between Chinese e-signature enterprises and American enterprises .

From the open data , At present, domestic e-signature enterprises still haven't passed the loss period , At present, the main leading enterprises are as follows: 、e Autograph 、 Sign, etc , It also mainly relies on external financing for business transactions and R & D investment , This can be seen from the frequent financing activities of several enterprises in the past two years .

Return to

With the increasing number of industry participants , Competition in the industry has intensified , The domestic electronic signature industry has also begun to show a new development trend .

firstly , Enterprises in the industry generally start from the single service of electronic signature , Extend to the whole chain service covering the whole life cycle of electronic contract . From an industry perspective , Electronic signature is not a simple online signature , But it involves digital certificates 、 Identity authentication service , Down to contract storage 、 management 、 Retrieval and other contract preservation services , And electronic document identification 、 A complete set of closed-loop ecological industrial chain, such as judicial notarization .

at present , The electronic signature enterprises in the head are as follows e Autograph 、 Sign on 、 Fada 、 Digital authentication 、CFCA Most enterprises such as Anxin sign have built a full chain service system , Each family has different backgrounds and different strategies , Such as e Autograph 、 Signing is more focused on the intelligent management of contracts , The law places much more emphasis on Judicial Services , Manufacturers such as digital authentication master the core front-end digital authentication technology , It has obvious advantages in identity authentication and identification .

second , The ecological industry has been rapidly promoted . In order to further improve their ability to serve customers , The leading e-signature enterprises have opened up API Integration and integration into the giant ecosystem , To achieve the purpose of improving their own ecological capacity . Such as e Sign and nail 、 The friend 、SAP etc. , France and Microsoft 、SAP、 Mingyuanyun, etc , Sign with Kitasaki 、 Easy to sell 、Oracle etc. , The cooperation between contract lock and pan micro enterprise , It belongs to openness API Interface ecological cooperation ; And leading companies such as Fada are integrated into large Internet companies such as Tencent “ Qianfan plan ” To sell products , It belongs to the second kind .

third , Under the Matthew effect of the industry leader , Some new enterprises have begun to seek differentiation . for example , Cooperation with the national contract filing platform , Create your own industry advantages ; Contract lock attempts to integrate physical signature and electronic signature , Build a signature management and control platform integrating software and hardware , Only the signature service for tool attributes .

On the whole , Whether the electronic signature is fully linked or ecological 、 Differentiation , It indicates that the industry is becoming more and more mature , I believe that in the future, with the continuous enrichment of e-signature service forms , And the introduction of favorable policies for the industry 、 The influx of new players , The domestic electronic signature industry will also evolve a new business model and business form , At that time, Chinese enterprises will also form their own Chinese characteristics .