Resellers looking for a document management solution have plenty of options. Since 2010 there’s been another option worth considering from MaxxVault LLC, a company that provides electronic document management solutions for small, medium, and large companies in various vertical markets. What resellers and end users have found appealing about MaxxVault is that it scales as needed from a modest feature set within a single department to a full enterprise-wide solution.
If you’ve visited their Website, www.maxxvault.com, you probably know that already. If not, here’s a recap of their three key document management products:
MaxxVault Enterprise – This solution captures documents from any source, including scanners, MFPs, e-mail, and line-of-business software. Documents and data are stored in an electronic document management system and accessible from the desktop, the Web or from within an organization’s other business applications. Documents are organized based on index criteria, making them easier to find through quick searches. They’re also secure with multiple options for controlling access and features. The access and activity for user and the history of each document is traced throughout the entire system. MaxxVault also has strong workflow and integration tools. Features like Desktop search, Share Point Connect and MaxxLink are reasons why many customers select MaxxVault.
MaxxCloud – This solution hosts an organization’s documents in a data center that is accessed via secure connections over the Internet. All the traditional document management essentials are included, such as: search, retrieval, security, document manipulation, workflow, records management, and access auditing. Customers can host their own, private Cloud, or lease equipment in MaxxCloud’s facility, receiving direct access to an IP backbone providing high-speed Internet connectivity and dedicated infrastructure. Data back-ups, software upgrades, and regular IT maintenance are performed on a continual basis.
MaxxDocs – Designed for up to 30 users, MaxxDocs is a document management solution that captures documents from scanners, MFPs, network folders or from any application via virtual printer driver. Once captured, documents are indexed and securely stored. Documents stored in MaxxDocs can be manipulated just like a paper file with notes, highlights, and redactions. The software supports Kofax VRS, and Kodak Capture Pro technology. Once imported, image files become fully text searchable documents via the MaxxDocs OCR scan station. With the latest version of MaxxDocs, users searching for documents can search by index value or through the text in electronic and scanned documents. Further document identification is now available using Bates numbering, a key capability for legal applications.
MaxxVault began designing its document management solution in 2008 and brought it to market in 2010. Leading the company is CEO Bruce Malyon, a 20-year veteran of the document imaging industry and software business. A good portion of his career was spent at Liberty Information Management Solutions where he served in various capacities, including Vice President of worldwide sales and marketing. During his tenure at Liberty he was deeply involved with the project management team and worked closely on the development of the product and its feature set. But his specialty is sales, particularly in the mid and enterprise markets. That’s why he describes his role at MaxxVault as a “selling CEO.”
Bruce Malyon
“Where my industry expertise has come into play, and what’s helped MaxxVault grow quickly, is our focus on the mid to enterprise market,” explains Malyon. “The meat and potatoes or sweet spot of our business is in the $20K to $50K space,” adds Malyon. “We still have a lot of new clients coming in on the entry system and we’re seeing a big movement towards the cloud.” Yet, the larger enterprise market is responsible for some 15-20 percent of MaxxVault’s business and they compete well against some of the biggest names in the industry, including Hyland Software, Perceptive and IBM Content Manager.
It’s a huge challenge getting a new business off the ground, especially in the crowded document management space, but Malyon saw a need, and clearly he was right on target.
“The fact that we came out of the gate and did over $2 million in our first year in the channel was pretty impressive,” states Malyon. “We went from beta software with a couple of test clients, to ramping up in the first year and having over 200 clients in the first 12 months.”
The business continues to grow even though Malyon wasn’t completely satisfied with MaxxVault’s 15-20 percent year over year growth in 2011 even though CEOs of plenty of other companies would have been thrilled by those numbers. This year is shaping up much better with year-over-year growth at 37 percent through July.
As a document management solution the differentiator for MaxxVault is its simplicity.
“I’m not a developer,” explains Malyon. “I want our interface and our product model simple. I’ve sold document management for a while so I know what’s technologically possible and what sells. I’m more of a visionary and understand where to lead so we can have a desirable, easy-to-use product.”
The key to an easy to use system is to create one that is no different than what already exists. “For MaxxVault, I wanted solid line-of-business and business software application integration; I wanted the easiest to use SharePoint integration tool; I wanted something that would allow any user to search from their desktop,” says Malyon. “We have achieved all of those with our software releases in 2012. My ultimate goal at MaxxVault is to get it on every desktop in a company and have nobody know that they’re using a document management system.”
That’s the strategy for MaxxCloud as well.
“Even with cloud-based solutions people hate leaving their desktop or leaving Outlook,” says Malyon. “We’re building in more integration so you don’t have to leave your line-of-business to get to your workflow or to scan or retrieve a document.”
It comes down to having a robust product.
“That’s one of our biggest differentiators,” states Malyon. “There are definitely cost-effective solutions in the entry market but they aren’t as robust.”
Developing a product that was successful from the get go took some serious investment and Malyon reveals that more than $7 million was invested in product development.
“It costs a lot of money to bring software to market and to implement at several new clients,” he says.
Eighty percent of MaxxVault’s business is channel driven, primarily through MFP dealers. The rest is direct, mostly legacy accounts transitioning from other platforms or in regions where MaxxVault doesn’t currently have a reseller. At this point they have approximately 75 dealers in North America and eight outside of the country. Malyon reports the company is looking to add dealers, but prudently.
“I don’t want dealers everywhere and I don’t want dealers tripping over one another,” he says. “One of our advantages over some of the other players is they have dealers everywhere. I want to be more selective.”
The ideal partner for MaxxVault is a dealer with multiple locations that’s not currently involved in document management or is unhappy with their current document management vendor. Through July of this year the company has signed up 13 new dealers and is on track to add another 30 by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, MaxxVault continues to build on its platform. They handle a lot of online forms currently and Malyon reports that one of every three deals has a customized, mini front end where MaxxVault builds some type of portal or e-forms app that ties into the MaxxCloud server.
“Where we’re going – from a development standpoint – is to finish building into MaxxVault what I call ‘Level One e-forms’ which is a tool where you can quickly build any type of form template. With e-forms, no paper is required and the data entered can be shared directly with other business applications to avoid duplicate data entry.”
“Where we’re going as a company is more towards platform as a service (PaaS). We’re going to be a delivery system to get these documents into a service like Google docs or Amazon Cloud or an online CRM tool. One area where document management companies can’t compete is the cloud storage that an Amazon or Google offer. No one in our industry can compete with Amazon charging just 11 cents a month per gig.”
As the product evolves into a PaaS solution, customers won’t need to rely on a vendor like MaxxVault to customize and configure everything. From an administrative standpoint, users will have the ability to enter the system through an admin portal and create new searches, security protocols, workflows, etc. Even from the cloud and via a mobile device, administrators will be able to monitor and adjust MaxxVault for peak productivity.
As the office technology industry takes off into the cloud, it begs the question: are reseller dealers ready or not?
“Dealers aren’t ready to sell this yet,” contends Malyon. “Again, I think it’s evolving because a lot of BTA dealers and copier dealers are still focused on paper and print, and what most people don’t realize is that as much as 80 percent of information has nothing to do with paper/scan anymore. People are still going to print documents, but it’s really coming down to e-forms, electronic PDFs and Word documents that they need to manage on their networks and e-mail.”
That’s an area he says most traditional document management companies don’t play. “Even though MaxxVault is a document management system, I look at it as more of a platform in general because we’ve been able to successfully launch four other vertical products built on the MaxxVault platform,” maintains Malyon. These other solutions include a purchase order request system (MaxxRequest) and a municipal office license and certification system (MaxxClerk).
If one can judge a solutions provider by the company they keep, then it is worth noting MaxxVault’s alliance partners, including Sharp, Kodak, HP and Samsung.
The reason those companies align with MaxxVault is because MaxxVault understands the channel.
“We have a deep understanding of how the MFP channel works,” says Malyon. “One of the things they want is to be able to sell something, walk away, move onto the next client, and get the next copier deal. We understand this and that’s why we do almost all of the technical installation services for the majority of our copier partners. We give them the option to do first line support but don’t penalize them if the call comes to us first. They still get a percentage of the support revenue even if they don’t ever take a support call.”
The industry seems to be noticing what MaxxVault is doing and just last week BLI selected MaxxVault Enterprise 5 as their Summer 2012 “Pick” award as “Outstanding Document Management Solution.”
Looking at the rest of the year, Malyon takes a conservative stance, expecting to see 35 percent year over year growth continuing for the next six months. “Last year we had three big $200,000+ projects. This year we had a solid first half and we are expecting even better numbers for the second half of 2012. MaxxVault can go from a conservative number of 35 percent growth estimates to maybe even 60 percent growth this year based on a few larger projects closing. But I’ll say 30-35 percent—that will make my bank happy.”
Malyon expects to continue for another 18 months or so as a selling CEO before bringing additional senior talent on board. “By that time we’ll have the right mix of recurring revenue and strong dealers that will carry us through any new bumps on the sale side.”
