DocuSign Transaction Rooms Signify a Turning Point in DTM

By Jim Lundy

We were at DocuSign Momentum three weeks ago and it was my fourth time attending. A lot has changed since I first attended the event, including the rise of a category we identified two years ago called Digital Transaction Management (DTM). DTM is a growing category, which naturally invites innovation and new entrants. On the innovation front, DocuSign announced Transaction Rooms for Financial Services at Momentum. This blog summarizes some of the impact we think it signifies.

DTM and Transaction Rooms

More than anything, digital business is about speed; it’s about connecting people with information. DocuSign’s Transaction Rooms for Financial Services will help eliminate a lot of the manual emailing that goes on today to sign financial services agreements. The key capability about Transaction Rooms is being able to share multiple documents with multiple people.

Although DocuSign’s announcement was geared specifically for Financial Services, many others outside of Financial Services will want to use these same kinds of capabilities. We expect that DocuSign will make Transaction Rooms available soon outside of Financial Services and Real Estate, which is where Transaction Rooms first got its start.

Advanced DTM

Basic DTM, which is about e-Signatures, is still how enterprises get introduced to DTM. Often, once enterprises get a taste of the success and ease of deploying basic DTM, they want more. Advanced DTM is a concept we introduced last year in our DTM Tech Spectrum. This year we discuss it in our very first Technology Arc for DTM and Content Management. Transaction Rooms is a basic capability of Advanced DTM, and with DocuSign offering this capability, there will be pressure put on others to do the same. That said, there are many new and existing DTM providers that are going much further with this concept.

Innovation and DTM: The Rise of DTM Platforms

A stunning fact revealed at DocuSign Momentum was the over 1300 technology partners that work with DocuSign. This positions them as a Platform play, and Platforms are the biggest trend today in Enterprise Software. Some of the partners who were at Momentum included Box, eOriginal, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and a relatively new partner, IBM. IBM and DocuSign announced that DocuSign will be able to leverage IBM’s growing Global Cloud Network.

Large partners aren’t the only ones who are working with DocuSign. Some of the other start-ups that caught our eye in Advanced DTM include ContractRoom, ThinkSmart, and Intelledox. Stay tuned for more on the growing list of DTM start-ups.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that DTM is a growing category. DocuSign Transaction Rooms for Financial Services marks a turning point—people want to do more with their business processes. If anything, this move will fuel even more innovation from others.

To hear more about DTM and Digital Business, join myself, Jim Sinur, and our great Digital Disrupters Panel at our Bay Area Breakfast – The Race to Digital on May 12th at the Sofitel, Redwood City, CA. Hope to see you there.