With so many solutions providers looking to capture the hearts and minds of imaging equipment dealers, even the best known names can become somewhat ubiquitous after a time. With that premise in mind, we thought it would be helpful to reintroduce readers to DocuWare, a company that has been providing integrated document management systems to more than 100,000 users in over 70 countries for the past 20 years. The Germany based company has a U.S. subsidiary located in Newburgh, N.Y. That subsidiary is responsible for all activities in North, Central, and South America.

DocuWare is also what the company calls its integrated document management solution that automates business processes by managing any type of document, regardless of format or source, in a central document pool. Those can include paper records, letters, faxes, drawings, PC and other electronic files as well as e-mail. DocuWare also supports all types of electronic signatures. Using the Internet, the central document pool is available at any time to any authorized user, no matter where they are located in the world. DocuWare’s target markets are small and mid-sized companies, government agencies, and departments in large organizations, making this solution ideal for the independent dealer channel.

                                       Tom Schneck, Docuware President

With that background, ENX recently spoke with Thomas Schneck, President of DocuWare AG to get a better understanding of the company, its products, the opportunities its products presents to independent dealers, and how dealers can be successful selling document management.
How’s business?

Schneck: We’re up about 25 percent in the U.S. compared to last year, and worldwide we’re going to be up 10-15 percent compared to the first quarter of last year.

Any thoughts as to why business is up, especially in this economy?

Schneck: What we’re seeing on the copier side is that a lot of our partners realize that selling document management is more important than ever as they get pushback on the hardware side, so they really need to take time and suggest solutions to their customers. They’re focusing more on DocuWare, which is resulting in higher sales.

Let’s talk about some of your partnerships with OEMs. Can you fill me in on who your primary partners are here in the U.S.?

Schneck: We have a relationship with Toshiba and we have a pilot going on right now with Konica Minolta. And we have connectors, meaning we go directly into the machines, with Xerox, Ricoh, and Sharp. We also have a relationship with eCopy on the connector side.

Why do you think these partners find DocuWare a good fit?

Schneck: There are two aspects to it. One is on the product side. A lot of OEMs feel that whatever they recommend to their dealers should be a good fit across the board. DocuWare is versatile and scales extremely well, which allows the copier dealer to go into any organization and company regardless of size or vertical industry. They can go from a small dentist’s office all the way up to a Fortune 500 company. The other aspect is our go-to-market strategy. The OEMs realize that copier dealers want to move more into solutions sales, but are looking for a partner who can provide a blueprint to their dealers on how to do this. This is something we’ve developed over the years, almost like a franchise system where the dealer gets everything from us—a training system with elearning and classroom training and a structured sales process that focuses on prospecting and identifying the right customer, presenting the concept to the customer, and closing the deal. We’ve developed tools based on best practices of what we have seen in the sales process and we give those to our partners and say, this combined with our training is a good way for you to get started without reinventing the wheel because it leverages what has worked for other dealers around the world. That combination of a strong product and a successful go-to-market strategy is what attracts not just the OEMs, but also dealers.

How can dealers be successful marketing a DocuWare solution?

Schneck: First, we recommend having a field specialist as well as a technical specialist that dedicates at least 75-80 percent of their time to DocuWare. That allows them to create a confidence level with their customers and close a document management deal. That’s definitely been a success factor for those companies that have dedicated one or two people. Second is a sales manager or owner who makes sure that their down-the-street sales reps and major account reps see an incentive to provide leads to the solutions teams. The ones who do it right have a compensation system in place where it’s exciting for the sales reps to bring the solutions team into the customer. This also leverages the existing customer base of a dealership. The third piece that we see with dealers who are successful is that they are continuously engaged in marketing activities, such as lunch and learn seminars and telemarketing. As long as you have a good marketing plan in place and execute it, that is what provides the foundation for continuously being successful.

What would you say is the biggest challenge to selling a document management solution?

Schneck: It’s easy to create interest for document management. Most customers and prospects say, yes it’s a great idea, but the challenge is turning interest into desire and a deal. From a sales standpoint, the most difficult thing is creating a sense of urgency with the customer so they’re not waiting another quarter or another year before implementing a document management system. That requires explaining the concept of document management and how that solution would work for them. The other part is showing them the benefit and translating the benefit into an ROI and showing them how this has an immediate impact on their bottom line.

In what areas might an end-user see that immediate ROI?

Schneck: Many of our implementations are in financial departments, so we really try to speak with the CFO of an organization. What we explain to the CFO is that a document management system can improve their accounts payable so they can take advantage of early payment discounts and do a better job of collecting accounts receivable. We show them how to drive down purchasing costs. With a document management system they have much better purchasing procedures and can take advantage of special discounts that a manufacturer might offer. We really go into the heart and soul of the financial aspects of an organization and show them how a document management system might make them a better company. The CFO seems to be the catalyst for the decision making within an organization, so once you get the ear of the CFO, that opens up the door to IT and the CEO.

Obviously dealers have a number of options when choosing a document management system. What makes DocuWare stand out from the pack?

Schneck: Most dealers already have some experience in the document management world that unfortunately, for most of them, was negative. They took on a document management system four or five years ago and probably 80 percent weren’t successful with the product. So there’s some frustration and some unanswered questions for a lot of dealers. What we bring to the table is a strong, versatile product. The other part we see is that when they went to market, they didn’t have the right people, or didn’t have a good understanding of what was the right setup— who should the solution guy report to, should you integrate that person into your overall sales strategy, and what are the best marketing efforts to excite your customer base. This is something we learned from looking at the best dealers worldwide. We give our dealers feedback on what has worked for others and have structured that and put that in our training and marketing programs, and I don’t believe there’s any other vendor who has what we’ve developed.

How has the DocuWare product evolved during the past 3-5 years?

Schneck: It’s become much more Web centric so a lot of functionality that used to only be available in the Windows client is now available in the Web client. This allows you, for example, to do workflow across the borders of an organization and between a vendor and a customer. The other piece is electronic documents. Word files, Excel files, and e-mail are becoming more important. When we started out it was very paper centric. The third part is on the integration side. DocuWare is now available with all kinds of different SDKs and interfaces and is able to connect to all kinds of third-party applications.

You recently introduced Solution Finder. Tell us about that and how that helps dealers and end-users.

Schneck: It’s all about showing a customer the benefits. Nobody buys any kind of IT or document management solution just because it’s a hot technology. They want to see what they get out of it and the payoff. Solution Finder is an online tool that can be hosted by one of our partners. The prospect goes through a few short steps online and at the end Solution Finder creates a list of benefits so they can see exactly what they can expect out of a document management system. The prospect can even print this PDF benefit results if they wish. At the same time, it also creates a lead sheet for the dealer who can identify the specific person from an organization who went through this process, and then they could follow up. It’s kind of an assistant that helps dealers get started in that conversation with the prospect about the benefits of document management and the ROI.

What kind of sales cycles can dealers expect when they introduce a customer to a DocuWare solution?

Schneck: The typical sales cycle is three to six months. If there’s an existing relationship, it’s more of a three-month period. If it’s a cold call where you have to first establish a relationship, it’s more of a five-to-six-month sales cycle.

Once a customer is interested and the dealer starts setting them up on DocuWare, how long does it take for the average organization to get comfortable and start taking advantage of all the benefits?

Schneck: Typically DocuWare goes live within a two-week time period, including installation and training. The copier channel likes that quick turnaround time. They don’t like projects that take forever to implement, but rather they want to go in, install it, and move on to the next project. We also feel that our market, the SMB space, is not willing to accept long implementation cycles. They want to be up and running in a short time period. Our whole product is geared to that.

One thing we didn’t talk about was managed print services and how dealers can leverage that as a way to sell document management to their customers.

Schneck: What we see is a lot of dealers who got engaged with managed print services a year ago are viewing this as a stepping stone into document management. The reason for that is that they are already in analysis mode with their customer and are talking to CFO’s about general costs of document solutions within their organizations. It’s almost a natural next step to talk about document management. For us it’s an interesting catalyst how all these companies that were engaged in managed print services are now looking at the next wave, which is document management.

If I were to talk to you a year from now, what do you hope to be telling me about how the past year has gone and what’s next for DocuWare?

Schneck: I would hope that when we have this conversation a year from now that we are continuing to grow. We definitely want to be growing the company in double digits. If you look at the SMB space in the U.S. there are 600,000 companies with between 25 and 500 employees and only 15 percent have a document management system. The market is wide open and I think the copier channel has a tremendous opportunity as they pretty much have this whole market covered. If owners and management in those dealerships see the value in document management, they’re going to reap the benefits for years to come.

Scott Cullen has been covering the imaging industry for a variety of publications since 1986. He’s been a contributing editor to ENX since 1998.