DocuWorld 2019, held in Las Vegas in May, was an opportunity for the DocuWare team to join forces with its Partner community. The result was three days of presentations on product strategy and company direction, educational sessions and networking.
Presidents of the DocuWare Group, Dr. Michael Berger and Max Ertl, met with Partners who gathered from the Americas and around the world. Jim Roberts, recently appointed President of DocuWare Corporation, DocuWare’s U.S. subsidiary, was on hand to welcome Partners as well. 
In his keynote presentation, Dr. Berger highlighted market trends that contribute to DocuWare’s rapid growth, including the increasing adoption of cloud software, DocuWare’s native web platform and its advanced security which supports today’s privacy and security requirements. He also pointed to DocuWare’s industry leading customer retention rate of 95%.
Max Ertl focused on the State of the Company and reported on 2018 sales results. He noted a marked increase in revenue between 2017 and 2018 and a 92% increase in cloud revenue growth. Ertl also commented on the value DocuWare Preconfigured Cloud solutions. Preconfigured solutions for Invoice Processing and Employee Management are the first of the series of targeted solution offerings. These solutions enable a faster implementation based on DocuWare’s years of experience with these core business areas.
Attendees consulted with DocuWare staff at the Ask the Experts booths in the Technology Pavilion. Representatives from DocuWare included Markus Koelmans, Research and Development; Nicole Moody, Finance; Nicole Smajda, Partner Marketing; and Stefan Schmidt, Solution Management.
New ideas and essential product knowledge
The educational sessions give DocuWare Partners the chance to learn about new features that were added to DocuWare’s latest release, Version 7.1. Partners also participated in product education geared to Sales and Technical tracks. Sales training topics included sessions on moving from on-premises software to the cloud and consultative versus prescriptive sales. It also featured sessions led by Kate Kingston, President of Kingston Training Group. These sessions focused on the different skill sets, terminology and activities need to reach C-level decision makers in a variety of vertical and horizontal markets.
Technical training ranged from tools for integrating business processes into DocuWare Cloud to how to an advanced workflow session that taught attendees to create complex workflows and to how to implement the latest feature such as decision-based input validation and enhanced integration with DocuWare Forms. 
A poolside dinner provided one of the many opportunities for informal networking.
Partners who attended DocuWare were impressed by the value they received from attending the conference. “My favorite part was talking with other partners about which sales techniques are working for them. Although we focus on different markets depending on our location, we learn from each other. That benefits all of us,” noted Joni Goodman, VP of Software Solutions at KeeFORCE. “I also brought my whole technical team this year. They found educational sessions on implementing DocuWare workflow and DocuWare forms and advanced workflow tools were the most pertinent to them.”
Jay Poole, Solution Specialist at the Lioce Group, a company that recently became a DocuWare Partner, agreed that meeting other Partners was a conference highlight. “I learned new ways approach a Document Management sales opportunity. I saw product use cases in action and watched Partners with broader experience than I do, compete in a demo contest,” Poole said. “I have new ideas to bring home like using DocuWare Forms on a tablet to have attendees sign into a product demonstration. This enables potential customers to experience DocuWare functionality before the formal presentation starts.”
Partners returned home with fresh inspiration buoyed by interaction with their colleagues and new product knowledge. We’re all looking forward to next year’s DocuWorld conference.
