It was a decidedly different look for DocuWorld 2020, the DocuWare annual partner conference. Because of restrictions brought about by COVID-19, the company decided to do a series of virtual presentations in lieu of its scheduled in-person event that was slated for Orlando, Florida.
Having 1,000 attendees from 25 countries in its June 10 Americas virtual conference (a previous one was held for European partners and users), the presenters underscored the underlying theme of “Digital Transformation and DocuWare.” Max Ertl, co-president of DocuWare (along with Dr. Michael Berger) kicked off the presentation surrounding digital transformation in the new normal by asking the audience a series of questions regarding how they are operating, their position on cloud investments and which areas they would like to see DocuWare make more investments.
Ertl spoke of the common challenges facing all businesses: achieving productivity in the home office, learning which systems and processes are ineffective for a distributed workforce, and seeking cost efficiencies to endure the economic uncertainty. These challenges walk hand-in-hand with a number of predictions made by Ertl. He feels work-from-home policies will change, contingency planning will be prioritized, and workflows will become more digital and structured.
COVID-19 also gave voice to accelerating trends, according to Ertl, namely the proliferation of cloud adoption (and the burgeoning influence of providers such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon). Plus, the increase in digital processes translates into more digital data, and certainly the greater need for its security.
The audience agreed—roughly 37% indicated they are nearly fully embracing the cloud with their data and software, while 31% said they are planning additional cloud investments. Nine percent indicated they would consider cloud investments once the crisis is over and 11% said they are considering investing, but not during the next year. Ertl indicated the results aligned closely with the survey conducted during its European virtual event.
“The question is, where does DocuWare fit into this future?” Ertl posed to the audience.
Evolving Needs
Ertl then handed the presentation off to Berger to discuss how the company plans to address the evolving needs of its user base. He outlined the trends for the digitalization of paper, the automation of structured processes, mobile/remote work and security/compliance. He spoke of the four focus points that DocuWare is committed to—the cloud platform, effective solutions, customer centricity and partner support.
Berger walked through the company’s public cloud ECM platform. DocuWare is approaching 5,000 cloud customers, backed by seamless updates and faster maintenance. The company is improving its time to market by shortening its development cycles.
DocuWare is boosting its ECM platform with version 7.3 including increased data centers, enhanced security, performance optimization (key operations such as store/retrieve/search), and optimized costs and messaging (see below for a complete analysis). Berger alluded to the new single sign-on/digital signatures, intelligent indexing on-premise and electronic invoicing formats, which were the focal point of a later demonstration of 7.3. Future updates will focus on additional languages, better integration capabilities, a new Workflow Designer, more boosts to intelligent indexing and mobile development.
DocuWare is also offering preconfigured solutions for new customers in areas such as invoice processing and employee management. “The focus on the future is to scale into new countries and solutions that meet specific adaptations for these countries,” Berger said.
Reduced Cycle
Berger noted one of the goals is to reduce the sales cycle down to two weeks and enable sales of DocuWare over the phone. Another is boosting the implementation process to a window of two to five days, down from its current level of up to 10 days.
Berger asked the audience where it would like to see DocuWare increase its investments. A total of 49% would like to see “Artificial intelligence in process automation.” Forty-six percent would like to see “Process analytics and dashboards, while 29% opted for “Structured archiving, compliance standards and retention.”
On the subject of customer-centricity and the customer journey—from acquisition to signing a contract, to the onboarding process and early successes and through extensions—Berger noted, “An exciting customer journey is the ultimate goal, so we really would like to make all of our customers and all of your journeys exciting, so that you will be happy with us.” He then outlined several areas in which DocuWare seeks to enhance the customer experience, with enhanced support and partner/user training.
On the final topic of customer support and DocuWare’s partner channel, Berger said, “We are staying committed to our partner channel, which truly understands the end-user’s needs. The environment is changing us and we will help partners adapt to these new situations, which are increasing the know-how of cloud, security and remote workforce.”
Looking back at 2019, Berger noted DocuWare enjoyed 48% customer growth with nearly 1,900 new clients from 15 countries—the largest in the company’s history (with 668 new U.S. clients). The company saw 61% user growth, with about 150,000 users. Growth on the document level reached 68% percent, with 186 million documents managed.
The impact of COVID-19 was evident by the company’s March and April cloud performance, which saw 10% fewer active companies, 15% fewer active people, and 20% less operations. However, Berger was heartened by the uptick in EMEA activity, with a corresponding upward trend in the U.S.
“It makes us happy to see that this crisis will have an end, soon,” he added.
Version 7.3 Breakdown
This week, DocuWare officially announced the
release of version 7.3 of its flagship software. Focused as always on guaranteeing speed and integrity to every
business process, DocuWare version 7.3 boasts compelling new features:
- New web client services set the seal on delivering remote, fast, secure information access:
- Single sign-on gives users secure, fast and convenient one-time login access to all parts of DocuWare like Web Client, Desktop Apps, Configuration and Administration.
- DocuWare Forms have their own area for faster viewing and access.
- Filters for table fields allow entries to be filtered by index fields or other table fields. This time- and labor-saving feature can apply to any process pertaining to storage, index and workflow dialogs.
- New email archiving establishes more flexible storage guidelines:
- Exclusion of embedded images such as logos or other specially defined files from all archived emails means only relevant content is stored and displayed.
- Email attachments saved as individual documents now allow users to store mail text and attachments as separate documents instead of a single, clipped one.
- New configurations promise higher accuracy of information and workflows:
- The new Barcode section allows the creation of individual barcode configurations. These barcodes can be read individually and more precisely, resulting in better document indexing and faster information retrieval.
- Annotation features keep workflows moving. When automatic emails are sent from workflows, users now have the same format options as in the Web Client – a PDF with annotations or a PDF without annotations.
Finally, many features were moved from DocuWare Administrator to DocuWare Configuration, ensuring faster technological updates to every system.
DocuWare Version 7.3 is available in cloud and on-premise versions. DocuWare provides feature parity between deployment options. For on-premises customers, updates to 7.3 can only be made from version 7 to 7.2.
Customers can contact their Authorized DocuWare Partner to implement this latest version.
