Encompass 2016: Square 9 Looks to Shake Up Document Capture, ECM Markets

Stephen Young, Square 9

“We’re living in the age of digital wealth,” Square 9 Softworks CEO Steve Young told an audience of the company’s reseller partners and customers at its Encompass 2016 event in Clearwater, Florida, on Wednesday. “Information is the basis for wealth and power,” he said. “In fact, information drives success for the five wealthiest companies, led by Apple,” he added.

Why is this important to the dealer channel? It may not be enough to just sell hardware anymore. Printers and copiers are now key components of companies’ bigger business systems, including workflow, document management, and business process management (BPM). Customers now want full solutions that include hardware, software, and integration with their ERP systems. Such solutions allow companies of all sizes to incorporate data captured from invoices, SoWs (Statements of Work), and other documents into workflows so that it is immediately accessible and actionable. “Workflow and BPM are the driving forces behind most new projects,” said Young. Customers see them providing significant returns in cost reduction through process automation.

Dealers who can offer full hardware/software solutions have a competitive advantage over those who don’t, and not just because they can address the needs of customers looking for a full solution from a single provider. There is significant follow-on revenue in the form of professional services and maintenance and support. Square 9 is projecting 22 percent growth in software licensing for 2016, but 39 percent growth in professional services revenue. Those services might include integration with ERP or creating templates to enable automated data capture. Square 9 partners have the option of performing these services themselves or referring their clients to Square 9, although for a smaller margin.

“Our challenge at Square 9 is to provide our community with new choices that allow them to capture, transform, and monetize inbound information,” said Young. That includes capturing data when it arrives, transforming it into useful information, putting the data in motion and context so that it has real value, and making it accessible for decision making.

Square 9 has made some changes to its product line to better meet the challenge, starting with data capture. “The capture industry needed to be restarted,” said Young. Data capture is a critical part of BPM, but has become more complex with multiple capture points such as MFPs, scanners, mobile, and email. It was a $3.2 billion market in 2015 and is expected to reach $4 billion by 2019. However, growth at the enterprise and mid-market level has slowed, but the fact that SMBs are buying capture systems at a higher rate suggests opportunity for dealers.

To better position it, Square 9’s GlobalCapture is now available as a standalone product or as part of the GlobalSearch platform (formerly known as SmartSearch). “It allows you to choose the best ECM or capture platform to use,” said Young. He believes that puts GlobalCapture in a better competitive position.

Perhaps more important, pricing is no longer based on page count. “There’s nothing worse [for a customer] than at the end of a busy period having to stop dead because the page count ran out,” said Young. Customers also have three options: GlobalCapture Convey is the simplest solution for companies wanting to get started with basic capture. GlobalCapture Convey Plus adds automated document classification, template-driven OCR, and rapid forms learning. GlobalCapture Production Server provides “unlimited” scalability.

Young cited the growing popularity of Square 9’s C2 cloud option, especially among SMBs. A focus for Square 9 in 2017 is to deliver “like for like” functionality in both the cloud and LAN (on-premise) versions of its products. That includes a new web home screen design option to better match that of the LAN version, an updated viewer, and improved I/O.

Affordability, especially for SMB customers, was another theme of the event. “Document management had been unreachable [for some companies],” said Young. “[Our products] still scale from $2,300 to $250,000.” Dealers can make the total solution even more accessible by folding it into the equipment lease, he added. To Young, giving SMBs enterprise-class document management solutions shows the democratizing effect of software. “We feel we’ve played a role.”