2018 was a time of tremendous growth at DocuWare. Significant changes include the release of DocuWare version 7 with its fourth-generation cloud architecture, our first customer appreciation week and a leadership transition that went into effect on January 1.
The next phase of DocuWare’s expansion will be led by newly appointed co-presidents, Dr. Michael Berger, who was previously the company’s Chief Technology Officer, and Max Ertl who served as the company’s Chief Revenue Officer. Former presidents Jürgen Biffar and Thomas Schneck will continue to be involved in an advisory role.
“As with any successful company, change and transition is necessary. Therefore, it is with pride and gratitude that we hand over the responsibility to Michael and Max,” former President Thomas Schneck said. “Both have played critical roles in the development and success of DocuWare and we believe there is no one more qualified to lead the company.” DocuWare customers and Partners will get a chance to learn more about their perspectives as the two of them take on their new responsibilities this month.
Forging ahead with DocuWare Cloud
DocuWare continued to demonstrate its leadership in mid-market cloud solutions, with cloud revenues up 112% in the first half of 2018. Over the past two years, DocuWare has seen accelerated success due to its cloud-first strategy.
As John Mancini, Chief Evangelist for the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM) predicted on this blog in January, 2018 was the year of the cloud. “By shifting their IT infrastructure to cloud-based solutions, organizations can now transform their processes to what their business really needs. The result is not just efficiency – it’s daily productivity, employee efficiency, and operational agility,” he noted.
Redefining our solutions as content services
In 2017, Gartner Analyst Michael Woodbridge of Gartner provoked heated discussion in the content management world with a statement in his article, "The Death of ECM and the Birth of Content Services." According to Woodbridge, the descriptor ECM has been replaced by the term Content Services, a strategic concept Gartner introduced in 2016. Content Services covers three aspects of automated information management, Content Services applications, platforms and components.
Industry experts at AIIM explain that “retiring” the term ECM reflects the fact that ECM is an insufficient term to describe all of the “content-y” things people are doing, and how they are approaching them. Content is an active participant in daily decision making and needs to be actively managed as a key asset.
At DocuWare, we’ve embraced this new concept as we continue to develop the capabilities of our solution. Content Services is a way to intelligently and efficiently capture information, send it to the right person, department, or process using digital channels, usually through the cloud. Because Content Services are based in the cloud, they ensure that organizations meet changing compliance requirements with cost effective and scalable solutions.
Getting Customers ready for GDPR
In February, we began preparing our customers for the advent of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which went into effect in Europe on May 25, 2018. This regulation affects any company that does business or has customers in Europe. DocuWare put together the most pertinent information about the new regulations. We developed a GDPR white paper and To-Do List. In addition, we hosted a webinar in March presented by Attorney Dr. Axel-Michael Wagner – Partner in the law firm of PSP/Peters Schönberger & Partner and DocuWare Senior Sales Director of EMEA/RoW Marcin Pichur. DocuWare also distributed an AIIM ebook, “Data Protection and Security – The EU GDPR is Just the Tip of the Iceberg.”
Keeping up the momentum
On June 5 the company announced the availability of DocuWare version 7, the next generation in performance, stability and scalability. The entire platform is optimized to support large organizations while delivering significant improvements to the user interface. In addition to new Active Directory support and handling of significantly more simultaneous users, the interface is measurably faster. For example, searches are quicker by 50 percent, archiving by 35 percent, data indexing by 75 percent, a new workflow engine provides more rapid and reliable workflow processing.
DocuWare version 7 is the foundation for DocuWare Kinetic Solutions. These cloud-based solutions offer preconfigured workflows for common business processes like invoice processing and employee management. These application-like deployments of DocuWare Cloud significantly reduce professional services time while also allowing for a much faster on ramp and therefore higher productivity.
With DocuWare Kinetic Solutions, we solve universal challenges specifically regarding time-consuming manual paper processing in Accounts Payable (AP) and Human Resources (HR) departments. We manage information by predefining roles, access rights, search terms and retention schedules. Customers benefit from the fact that all the discovery research has been done in advance and is already built in.
Recognizing and encouraging innovation
On June 4, DocuWare began celebrating our first customer appreciation week. Each day, we honored one customer and told their success story. Customers received a visit from their DocuWare Regional Sales Director along with a celebratory lunch, a customer appreciation day certificate and other perks.
Our first honoree was Didlake, Inc. a mission-driven nonprofit organization that creates opportunities to enrich the lives of people with disabilities. They provide business services for over 35 federal, state, and local contracts in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington D.C. Among their employment, rehabilitation, and wide range of business function services, their Document Scanning Services department aids businesses in the document management journey to digital-first offices.
Other honorees are: Jamestown Container Companies, a leading packaging solutions supplier with five facilities located throughout New York and Ohio; Marketing Personal S.A., a Latin American company that offers direct sales by catalog for clothing, footwear, cosmetics, and homewares; BioKyowa Inc., a large biochemical manufacturer; and Young Automotive Group, a large automotive business comprised of 15 automotive dealerships located throughout northern Utah and southern Idaho.
30th Anniversary Celebration
In October, DocuWare celebrated its 30th Anniversary. Founded in 1988 as Docunet, today DocuWare has headquarters in Germering and New Windsor, New York with offices in Spain, France and U.K. Our solutions are now available in 70 countries and 16 languages, with over 125,000 users in approximately 12,000 installations.2018 DocuWare User Conference
In December, DocuWare hosted a User Conference in Philadelphia for more than 200 users from around the US and beyond. The attendees returned to their organizations with best practices and shortcuts, along with plans for expanding their use of DocuWare.
At the User Conference, DocuWare received a Buyers Lab Award in the Document Imaging Software Category from Keypoint Intelligence - Buyers Lab (BLI) for DocuWare version 7. BLI is a leading independent evaluator of document imaging software, hardware and services. They reviewed DocuWare version 7 and recognized it for a combination of productivity-enhancing features, value for money and ease of use for end users and IT administrators.
2019 promises to be another successful year for DocuWare. Our product roadmap includes new product features that will be rolled out over the course of 2019. DocuWare’s new leadership is sure to bring a fresh insight that will support our progress during this coming year.
Joan Honig is the Content Marketing Manager at DocuWare.
