By Nga Pham

There is no turning back in the race to become a digital enterprise. Paper remains one of the major obstacles to becoming fully digital. Transforming paper processes can provide one of the fastest ways to digitize customer-facing processes that involve contracts. 

First of all, what is Digital Transaction Management? Digital transaction management (DTM) emerged as a category in 2014 as a way to sign contracts faster through an electronic process. Today, DTM is a movement—and business leaders across industries are now leading the movement to automate document-based business processes. 

This blog will walk you through 5 cases of how DTM is creating business continuity in the COVID-19 era.

Healthcare

This crisis has raised a lot of questions about the efficiency of healthcare systems in the US and around the world. Many hospitals now face a shortage of healthcare workers and can’t accommodate the increasing number of patients. What’s more alarming is that 62% of nurses feel regularly burned out in their jobs, while 19% of them consider leaving nursing because they spend too much time entering electronic health records*. This is where DTM can make a difference, freeing healthcare workers from the abundant administrative workload so that they can focus on what’s important: their patients. 

Hospitals that have embraced DTM are no longer bogged down by paper-based processes—they can fully digitize any process that requires forms, signatures, and notes. Patients can fill out new patient and consent forms ahead of time, on their own mobile devices or computers, whenever they want. This allows doctors to access their patients’ data in real time and helps nurses to avoid duplicates in data entry. By leveraging DTM, healthcare workers will spend more time taking care of patients, instead of doing repetitive admin tasks.

On the other spectrum of healthcare, health insurance companies have encountered the challenge of keeping up with a surging volume of claims. DTM platforms can improve the efficiency of claims processing by enabling higher data accuracy and by reducing costs with a fully digital workflow. 

Digital Transaction Management (DTM) tools can enable healthcare workers spend less time on paperwork and more time on their patients

Education

While the coronavirus pandemic may be temporary, its effects will be felt indefinitely. Higher education leaders are realizing that campuses must transform to prepare for future events such as a pandemic, and to adapt to the changing “norms” associated with the digital world. Every year, an average college enrolls approximately thousands of new undergraduates per term. Imagine the administrative workload required to facilitate this amount of students!

Handling such a high volume of paperwork does present a lot of challenges to both faculty and students. A DTM platform’s API can be embedded onto the student portal. Students would be notified whenever they need to submit any documents and be able to sign any forms online. On the other hand, this integration also alerts the admin office when the form is signed, and a completed copy of the document is enclosed in the student’s dashboard. This will not only prevent the students from missing important deadlines, but also improve the productivity of the faculty office. 

Most major universities are hosting classes completely virtually for the fall 2020 semester due to the continued uncertainty of the pandemic. There is no certain future for universities and higher education institutions. It is best to shift towards a digital campus now in order to master digital methods and tools that can make higher education successful, even virtually.

Retail

Retail is changing. Long before the pandemic, there had been an on-going discussion about how retailers can automate their processes. Customers are demanding the power to purchase anytime, anywhere. Creating a digital and personalized buying experience is critical in today’s retail landscape. Now that people are even more reluctant to shop in-store, they rely on e-commerce to make their purchases. This means retailers must speed-up their negotiation and contracting process with suppliers, in order to make the product available faster in the marketplace. DTM can help simplify your workflow with vendors and suppliers, from agreements to purchase orders to invoices. Automating critical paperwork saves time, and reduces human errors and costs.

Once stores resume to full capacity, sales associates are essential to enhancing the customer shopping experience. With seasonal and new hiring, as well as high turnover, the ability to onboard and train new employees efficiently will define the livelihood of retail businesses. DTM can streamline the onboarding process by offering the means to digitally complete offer letters, track background checks, sign NDAs, and store documents. Training documents can also be created and distributed seamlessly, along with performance evaluations.

Hospitality

COVID-19 has disrupted every sector across the globe, and the hospitality industry is one that has been hit the hardest. It’s going to take a long time for people to feel safe to travel freely again. Until then, hotels should be diversifying their sales effort from short-term stays to timeshares and vacation membership.

In order to move forward, hotels had to rethink the ways they conduct their business transactions, especially with shelter-in-place orders and social distancing protocols. A quick and simple sales process will encourage prospective travelers to make purchasing decisions faster. From lead to close, every step must be digitized, and it has to be easy and secure. Hospitality businesses can exceed expectations by executing service contracts, terms and conditions, lease agreements, and waivers safely and correctly, completely online. DTM enables end-to-end digital contracting processes that include efficient workflow, e-signature support, and secure documentation.

Financial Services

The Small Business Association has recently rolled out the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), an SBA loan that helps businesses keep their workforce employed during COVID-19 crisis. Small businesses need this, and they need it fast. In order to speed up this process, participating banks have to find a way to onboard, process, and submit applications for SBA approval. DTM can bring tremendous value to this process. DTM can help banks ensure every task advances to the next stage of the process by automatically generating, signing, and storing documents.

Looking at the big picture, customers now expect to be able to apply for and get a loan fast and effortlessly. However, application processes are usually slowed down by manual paperwork, or outdated technology systems. Financial services providers have increasingly adopted DTM to get ahead of their competition, enabling them to allow borrowers to access and sign loan documents at their own convenience. This will not only reduce loan approval process time and distribute wealth faster, but also empower their employees to focus on building customer relationships instead of paperwork.

Bottom Line

Digital transaction management: the new way ahead for digital business.

DTM goes beyond content and document management. Now is the time for you and your organization to adopt DTM to gain your competitive advantage. The digital transaction management market is getting more exciting than ever with plenty of innovative providers. The key things to looking for in a DTM platform include:

• Core eSignature capabilities
• Ability to assemble a document or a series of documents for signature
• Document routing and workflow automation
• Integration with leading content management and content analytics
• Mobile apps (remote, in-person and offline signing, managing)

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*according to a survey published in 2017 by RNnetwork