Enterprises Ready for the Era of Electronic Contracts: Legal Insights and Practical Perspectives from FPT Experts

Amid the strong wave of digital transformation, electronic contracts have become an essential step for businesses to remove bottlenecks in operational processes. To equip enterprises with comprehensive guidance and solid knowledge ranging from legal regulations to practical implementation, the Training Course: Enterprise Electronic Contract (e-Contract) was successfully co-organized by ISTED, VCCI and FPT in Ho Chi Minh City on June 17. The program attracted significant interest from the business community thanks to its practical and valuable insights.

Electronic Contracts: An Inevitable Trend in the Digital Transformation Journey

In recent years, digital transformation has been reshaping the way businesses operate. From human resource management and finance to internal operations, many business activities have been digitized to improve efficiency, optimize costs and strengthen data governance. In this trend, transforming contract signing and management processes into digital workflows is considered an important step, laying the foundation for a paperless operating model.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Nguyen Doan Thong – Director of the Training Center under VCCI-HCM, shared:

“Many businesses have completed the digitalization of most of their management activities through ERP, HRM and other modern operating platforms. However, paper-based contract signing still exists as a bottleneck that disrupts business processes, prevents seamless data flow and reduces the effectiveness of digital transformation investments. Therefore, to complete the digital value chain, businesses need to start by digitizing their core processes, including contract signing and management.”

According to the experts at the program, with a solid legal framework established under the Labor Code 2019 and the Law on Electronic Transactions 2023, electronic contracts now have the same legal validity as traditional contracts. They are no longer an experimental model but have become an essential foundation for businesses to enter the era of paperless operations. Notably, this trend is shifting from simply “digitizing documents” to a model of centralized data management, highly secure digital identity verification and comprehensive process automation.

Applying Electronic Employment Contracts: From the Legal Framework to a 100% Online Signing Process

During the in-depth presentation, Mr. Nguyen Ta Anh – Deputy Director of the Enterprise Digital Solutions Center, FPT IS, FPT Corporation, provided an overview of the legal framework for electronic contracts in Vietnam:

“The legal validity of an electronic contract does not only lie in the final electronic document containing a digital signature, timestamp, data message certification and other required elements, but also in ensuring identity verification, data integrity, information traceability and evidence in the event of disputes. More precisely, it lies in the entire signing journey of an electronic contract.”

Alongside an increasingly clear and comprehensive legal framework, electronic contracts are opening up broad application opportunities for the business community. Human resource management, where contracts are signed frequently, has become one of the strongest application areas for electronic employment contracts. The Government’s issuance of Decree No. 337/2025/ND-CP prescribing electronic labor contracts has established a clear and transparent legal framework, recognizing the legal validity of electronic employment contracts as equivalent to paper-based contracts, while promoting digital transformation in the labor, employment relations and social insurance sectors in line with the national strategy for science and technology development, innovation and digital transformation.

In particular, the milestone of July 1, 2026 – when the Electronic Employment Contract Platform officially comes into operation under the new regulations – requires businesses to fully understand the legal requirements and proactively review and implement them within their organizations. This urgent preparation is a key step to ensure authenticity, optimize processes and minimize legal risks.

To address businesses’ challenges, FPT introduced the FPT.eContract ecosystem – a comprehensive solution for the end-to-end electronic employment contract process in compliance with Decree No. 337/2025/ND-CP, covering: Drafting -> Approval -> Electronic Signing -> Storage. The solution deeply integrates core technologies such as eKYC, Timestamp and multi-layer security, helping businesses to:

• Reduce waiting time by 95%, enabling remote signing 24/7 within seconds.
• Save 80% of printing, delivery and document storage costs.
• Enable intelligent management with real-time signing status tracking and instant data retrieval.

With pioneering experience in implementing electronic contracts in Vietnam, FPT has been accompanying thousands of businesses in resolving bottlenecks in contract signing and management, from legal compliance and operations to data governance. Through these efforts, FPT continues to affirm its role as a trusted digital transformation partner, supporting businesses in building modern, transparent and sustainable operating models in the digital era.