Wading through the myriad of document management solutions on the market can be quite the headache for the office technology reseller, but a document management solution has become one of those menu items no dealer should be without. One of those solutions is Archive Studio from DocuLex, one of the industry’s premier document management providers for the past 16 years with more than 1,000.

Archive Studio is a secure, browser-based content management solution that’s marketed as a server-based product or an on-demand, cloud-based software as a service. Customers using the Archive Studio content management software suite of products receive document capture, indexing, and retrieval capabilities; collaboration; e-mail archiving and compliance; knowledge management; and customized workflow and records retention management.

The program is easily customizable, according to DocuLex, and compatible with Active Directory, plus the developer—API—provides full integration capabilities with other line-of-business applications.

The components of the Archive Studio Content Management Software Suite include:

WebSearch manages document security, process workflow, retrieval, collaboration and policy based retention of indexed and stored electronic files housed locally on a network, in the cloud or remote file server with secure access to the Internet. Common files include scanned documents, e-mail, word processing documents, spreadsheets, large format drawings and more. The electronic files may be easily located by searching document-specific descriptions or a combination of full text key words contained in the document. Proximity searching is also available using visual file cabinet and folder structure methods. WebSearch is the electronic content management component accompanying the document imaging and content indexing programs, Goby Capture, WebSearch Capture and Professional Capture.
Goby Capture is designed for use with digital copiers, network scanners, and Microsoft Office. It allows for walk-up scanning, indexing, archiving, and sharing documents in WebSearch document management software. In addition, Goby offers the integrated capture and indexing capability for MS-Office files such as MS-Word, Excel and Outlook.
WebSearch Capture is available for users who require a simple solution to quickly scan and index documents, making them archived in WebSearch and available on a network or in the Cloud for document management storage and retrieval. WebSearch Capture is on-demand scanning when needed and requires no desktop installation. All that’s needed is a browser. WebSearch Capture integrates electronic capture of paper files, plus content indexing, which produces searchable electronic files.
Professional Capture is designed for use with dedicated scanners or digital copiers. It enables users to convert large volumes of paper to searchable electronic files and fulfills the demands of multiple, complex, imaging projects. Professional offers a variety of image processing and indexing capabilities which streamline and reduce the cost of conversion projects.

David Bailey

DocuLex’s home-grown capture software sets Archive Studio apart from some of the other products on the market, according to DocuLex President David Bailey.

“We started in the capture business before we went into the document management business,” he says. “We wrote our own capture management software, wrote our own barcode recognition software, our own PDF engine, everything in the product with the exception of the OCR engine, we wrote ourselves.

One of the benefits of Archive Studio from a reseller perspective is that it’s an excellent solution for most any type of customer.

“Basically what they want is one product that works for everything,” says Bailey. “If they’re selling to a local government today, some large dealers have reps for those verticals, but they don’t want to carry multiple document management products, they want to carry one, maybe two. So you kind of have to be all things to these industries.”

The majority of DocuLex customers seem to be most interested in using it to improve their workflow versus reducing storage space and going digital.

“Improving workflow has been a pretty good driver,” says Bailey. “To me that’s more of a well-seeded customer who is going to be with us for a long time when they immediately see their process being automated versus somebody who just wants to scan documents to a folder or put documents in a document management system or combine them.”

Meanwhile a growing number of customers are interested in the program’s e-mail archiving, which doesn’t involve paper at all. Here Archive Studio currently supports Microsoft Exchange users.

“Our e-mail archive customers can be on premise with our service installed there or hosted,” explains Bailey.

Archive Studio has evolved since it was first introduced with the most notable enhancement being that it is now 100 percent browser based.

“That has a lot of merit if you compare it to other products that have Web-enabled pieces,” says Bailey. “Users also like the fact they don’t have to switch between platforms.”

For resellers looking to penetrate the healthcare market, Archive Studio has earned EHR (Electronic Health Record) certification.

“Healthcare facilities can now take the DocuLex certificate and apply it to their meaningful use credit requirements,” states Bailey. “That separates us from quite a few of the document management products that haven’t gone through that certification yet.”

DocuLex has their own workflow engine and can design it to do virtually anything a customer would want it to do. They’ve been hosting through the cloud for going on four years now, even before people knew what the word cloud was.

“Probably 85 percent of our customer base has on-premise servers,” says Bailey. “I can’t say hosting is going like gangbusters, but the option is there and we have picked up new customers that want to do it. We have some customers that are hosting our application themselves.”

The DocuLex software is designed to be multi-tenant so the reseller can put multiple customers on one installation with a firewall between customers. At the same time it manages how many gigabytes each customer is using in each library in each department.

“This allows them to regulate the users for each customer,” explains Bailey. “It’s also the same product that goes on premise. What we’ve seen with some competitors is they have this hosted product that’s built for hosting, and if somebody wants it on premise it’s a different package. It looks a little different and feels a little different, but ours is the same package either way. When we’re showing a prospective dealer what we have, that’s one of the things we point out and one of the things they like to hear.”

Asked why a reseller would choose DocuLex, Bailey responds, “They go with a company they can count on. If you take our product and compare it to a dozen others out there, some are browser-based like ours, some our Windows-based, but when it comes down to the feature set there’s probably not a whole lot of difference between one and the other. So what else is there? There’s how well you market the product and how well you support your dealers and customers. So the feedback we get and if you look at the testimonials on our Website, you probably see quite a few from a support perspective. And I think that’s what separates us from other companies.”

Dealers who make the best fit for DocuLex are those with a motivated sales staff looking to sell a solution rather than a box or hardware. It’s also essential they have technical support backing up the sales person, someone who Bailey describes as their ‘go-to’ person and is technically qualified to understand what a network is and understand IIS settings and server software.

DocuLex does its part to help its resellers be successful by providing them with testimonials, referrals, case studies, and demos geared to specific industries. They also help the dealer’s sales reps close the deal.

“Usually they do a demo, and once the demo qualifies the deal our sales reps try to stay involved with the sales person and the potential customer,” explains Bailey. “Once the deal is closed, our support people support them directly and the dealer shares in that revenue. It’s a complementary relationship – the dealersfind the deal, lead the deal to us, and we take it from there. They seem to like that. They want to get out and sell the next deal and not be married to one deal.”