Industry Leaders Join xDTM Standard Board to Drive Digital Transformation in Europe

SAN FRANCISCO, June 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- On the heels of making the first Digital Transaction Management (DTM) Standard available to the public in March this year, the xDTM Standard Association today welcomed BASF, the world's leading chemical company, and SAP, the world's third largest software company, to its European advisory board. Leading European advisory firms Linklaters and Olswang, and international publishing leader Dow Jones, also joined the effort to bring deep expertise on the evolving digital landscape around the world.

The news comes amid growing momentum behind digital transformation, and cements the importance of having an independent standard to protect and secure online digital transactions that the industry can align with and rally behind.

"All of these organizations are thoroughly invested in digital transformation both as users and as companies that partner with other organizations to drive digital adoption," explained Heather Petersen, the executive director of the xDTM Standard Association.

"As our first European-centric members of the advisory board, we are looking forward to working with the leadership of these organizations to help bring the benefits of digital transformation to companies across the EU. Given the upcoming enforcement of the eIDAS regulation [slated for July 1], this will be an important topic for organizations across the region."

For its part, SAP recognizes the importance of standards, and the impact it can have as part of the Association's board.

"Digital transformation is key to making things easy to use and to implement – concepts that are at the heart of our 'run simple' philosophy," said Kai Jacob, head of global contract management services, Global Field Legal at SAP.

"We're excited to be joining the advisory board and pleased to bring a European perspective to this effort. More trust and transparency in the digital realm is vital and we're looking forward to contributing to the effort to raise the quality bar for digital transaction management."

BASF is using digital transformation to drive its business forward. "With our global business we have a very diverse group of customers. Digital transformation will be vital for us to become more efficient internally, but also to be faster and better in our interaction with customers. We are looking forward to drive this development forward together with xDTM," said Wiebe van der Horst, senior vice-president, Global Process & Enterprise Architecture, BASF Group.

"In the world of news, having secure information systems is mission-critical when delivering high-quality information as quickly as possible," said Jaswinder Hayre, chief information security officer at Dow Jones. "Furthering the digital transaction management standard will be a vital component of our efforts, so we're looking forward to being part of the xDTM Standard Advisory Board in Europe."

The xDTM Standard was developed by the organization's participants over the past two years and was ratified by the cross-industry independent governing board. It provides in-depth guidelines and best practices that a DTM provider should address to create a trusted online environment for digital transactions. It also establishes eight core requirements for protection and availability that a DTM provider must adhere to in order to be compliant.

According to the Standard, the eight areas that a DTM provider needs to address include:

Security – features best-in-class technical protection, highly secure access, and proactive protection policies
Assurance – provides assurance that xDTM transactions are compliant with applicable laws
Privacy – allows a person or company to reveal information selectively, at their discretion
Validity – has a reliable, transparent and verifiable chain of custody, and a digitally signed, tamper-evident audit trail
Availability – ensures that transactions are always accessible and obtainable, high performing during periods of peak use, resilient across disaster scenarios, and free of scheduled offline maintenance
Scalability – accepts increased volume without impacting performance due to ongoing capacity modeling and proactive lifecycle management
Universality – functions across heterogeneous environments/devices and is accessible worldwide
Interoperability – works across collaborative services environments and includes integration guidelines and APIs

Organizations interested in learning more may visit www.xDTM.org.

Media contact:
Judith Vanderkay
xDTM Standard Association
+1 781-876-6208

About the xDTM Standard Association

The xDTM Standard Association is an independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect and empower organizations to transact business online securely. Digital Transaction Management (DTM) is as a category of cloud services that enables companies to manage their document-based transactions digitally, allowing for faster, easier, more secure processes. DTM solutions help consumers and businesses complete transactions faster by automating manual, paper-based workflows for capturing information, payments, and signatures, thus eliminating the hassles, costs, and lack of security in printing, faxing, scanning, and overnighting documents. Organizations who have implemented DTM solutions report substantial ROI, improved security and compliance, and increased satisfaction and loyalty through better end user experiences.

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SOURCE xDTM Standard Association