HARIBO, a leading manufacturer of fruit gummies, licorice, and foam sugar products, needed to work effectively in all areas to maintain its global market position. This required the use of a modern document management system. The main factors for choosing DocuWare were the easy integration into their IBM System i (AS/400) and the expertise of the nearby partner/ system house. Their DocuWare Partner was faced with a particular challenge: replacing an older DMS and migrating several million documents as smoothly as possible. The requirement profile for the new solution was clearly defined. All documents required for day-to-day business – such as customer correspondence, delivery slips and invoices, purchasing and logistics documents as well as payroll accounting records – were to be captured centrally and made available to authorized employees at the push of a button. The aim was to extend and standardize established workflows in a meaningful way. Further goals included expanding worldwide use with simultaneous connection of all company subsidiaries to the digital archive; a simple data and document migration process; as well as the automatic indexing of all documents. Direct availability of archived documents from the ERP application also needed to be ensured.

Marcon International, a marine vessel brokerage company, specializes in transportation vessels including tugboats, barges, crew and supply vessels as well as ocean towing and smaller passenger ferries. The company maintains a vast amount of information about vessels worldwide. Although only about 3,000 vessels are available for rental or sales at a given point, Marcon actively tracks about 17,000 vessels and barges. Marcon also retains information on about 26,000 archived records for vessels that have gone off the grid. The company maintains a customer database of over 12,000 records and has three people dedicated to adding, updating and achieving this information. Due to the volume of information, Marcon always used an electronic data management system, which was a precursor of DocuWare.

The All Service Group for Facility Management, a company that offers comprehensive services in the field of facility management, was struggling with an inefficient invoicing process. Every month, around 800 work slips for services signed by the customer were collected and sent by the branch offices to the financial accounting department in Bad Homburg. The invoices were then created and printed out in their Sage ERP system. Work certificates were sorted, manually stuffed into envelopes and sent. A lot of time and many documents were lost in the mail. It could take up to 30 days before a service was invoiced. At the same time, the flood of paper was immense, with 30 binders filled every month.

Armonea, a healthcare company that manages 132 facilities and cares for over 15,000 seniors, was struggling with the administration of nonstandardized incoming invoices. These invoices, which did not originate from the main suppliers of the Armonea Group, required manual data entry and transfer to the accounting system Agresso (now Unit4 ERP). This process was time-consuming and inefficient, taking away valuable resources that could be used for other tasks.

Levi Strauss, a global textile company, is undergoing a variety of changes in Germany to meet the demands of their internet and lifestyle savvy customers as well as the requirements of the digital business world. This includes organizational structures that reflect the company's global orientation as well as the introduction of new IT solutions. In 2010, DocuWare was introduced in the OTC department in Frankfurt as part of a pilot project. Over the years, enormous quantities of documents such as shipping slips, invoices and returns had accumulated and needed to be digitally managed in the future. The goal was both to increase processing efficiency and ensure sustainability. After successful implementation, including extensive digitization of old documents, the central European service center in 2015 created a new situation. At this point, the DocuWare installation, which had previously been run locally, was replaced by a cloud solution, to drive further cost savings in the long term.

Maryland Management, a leading property management firm in the greater Baltimore area, was struggling with an inefficient method for storing and transferring tenant applications and leases for processing by the corporate office. The company, which manages around 9,000 units, was facing difficulties in finding a copy of a lease due to the industry's average apartment turnover rate of 41%. Prior to implementing DocuWare, each apartment community was responsible for submitting their credit and leasing applications to the corporate office for review. Once applications were received via courier, it took over a week to process, file and notify the apartment community of the decision. This resulted in new and existing tenants having to wait a long time for notification of their application status.

Adams Fairacre Farms, a Super Farm Market with four locations in New York’s Hudson Valley, was struggling with inefficient, paper-based processes for invoice processing and price comparison. With over 2,500 invoices being processed weekly by 100 managers across different stores, the lack of transparency and efficiency was a significant challenge. The company needed a digital solution to streamline these processes, improve accuracy, and enhance workflow speed.

Mosscare Housing Ltd. is a charitable, not for profit housing association committed to providing a high quality, high value housing service to communities and individuals in Greater Manchester. This includes the City of Manchester, Tameside and Trafford. Mosscare was founded in 1967; today the association manages around 3500 buildings and apartments. All administrative maintenance for managing the properties are handled by the 100 employees of Mosscare. Many of the buildings were previously the property of the city. Before introducing a Document Management System (DMS), about 150,000 pages of paper had been collected in their paper archive. Every Mosscare employee must be able to comprehensively advise potential tenants. To make this possible, all of the company’s documents must be easily retrieved and viewable by multiple employees at the same time – without spending valuable time on copying or searching for documents on a colleague’s desk. Their existing software, Link2 (a housing property management system), should remain in place, and documents should be readily accessible from within this system. Employees work on about 70 computers running Windows 2000. They planned on storing all kinds of information about real estate properties and existing and interested tenants in the DMS system. This means that many different types of documents from a variety of sources would need to be processed. Multiple employees working in different departments would also need to access the information.

SunCoast Blood Bank, a nonprofit organization supplying blood to nine hospitals, was facing challenges with their paper-based record system. The organization used an offsite, secure facility to store paper records. However, record retrieval was slow, information was not searchable, and the long-term storage costs were unsustainable. SunCoast wanted a digital solution providing secure, seamless access to their data as well as sophisticated search functionalities. The organization is required to store donor records for ten years. However, if blood is unusable, that record must be stored indefinitely. If a donor updates the record with travel information or if test results disqualify the blood from being used, SunCoast must immediately amend that donor record and contact the hospital to locate that unit of blood.

Gartner Towing Services, a rapidly growing company in Germany, was facing limitations with its server capacities and lacked an in-house IT administrator. The company wanted to store not only scanned paper documents but also digital documents from its leading IT applications in a well-organized manner. The aim was to use a uniform search term, for example, the license plate number, to display all documents relating to the services provided in the various business sectors at the touch of a button. The company also wanted to make administrative processes more efficient and transparent.

Before the introduction of DocuWare, Mayfair Insurance was burdened with mountains of paper files. A folder was created for each policyholder, containing policy, customer documents, records about insured objects and benefits, and numerous documents relating to claims settlement like assessors’ reports. Over the years, thousands of documents had accumulated. Security concerns were also a crucial consideration for their digital transformation. The company recognized the risk of restricted access to paper documents in case of emergencies like water or fire damage. Therefore, the management decided to introduce a digital Document Management System (DMS) immediately.

BMK Group, a leading manufacturer of surface coatings and impregnations, was facing challenges with its accounting system. The company's bookkeeping was initially outsourced to an external tax consultancy. However, after acquiring a company with its own accounting department, they began doing the accounting work for the entire group. This globally operating department often struggled with incoming A/P invoices, since they were received at various locations and ended up in the accounting department in different ways. Some were scanned and sent by email, others were taken along by employees on their business trips between locations, and many were sent by mail. As a result, documents were often lost or received late, so that they rarely could benefit from early payment discounts.

Ahembo, a beverage company based in the Canary Islands, was struggling with the management of over 300,000 invoices received annually. The company was receiving these invoices in various formats and at different locations, leading to significant delays in processing. Paper documents were often lost, electronic invoices overlooked, and some documents were duplicated, leading to inconsistencies in posting and payment. The company decided to implement an electronic solution to streamline the process and improve efficiency.

Roberts Wesleyan College was facing a storage issue with admissions and registration records stored in file cabinets in the College's main office. Sharing information between departments in buildings across campus and determining whether you were working with the most current version of a document was difficult. The College's management team also wanted to more easily meet privacy requirements outlined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) by limiting information access automatically. Reducing printing and storage costs, as well as help increase enrollment by simplifying the admissions process were their other goals.

Swagelok Manchester, a leading provider of fluid systems solutions, was facing a significant challenge due to the growth in documents for all of its paper-based administrative and logistical processes. The workflows were becoming increasingly time and cost-intensive. Managing filing was costing 30 minutes per day, per employee. The company had to put in weekend hours to tackle the out-of-control paper archive every quarter. The management team realized that it was time to take action and decided to implement a digital solution to manage the growing volume of documents.

The German Red Cross in Ulm, Germany, was facing a significant challenge with document management. The organization, which provides a broad spectrum of services including emergency rescue, home care, donor management, and accounting, was dealing with a high volume of documents. Each year, about 65,000 documents needed to be securely stored. The documents were collected in binders and placed on shelves in the offices of various employees. Older documents were stored in fireproof cabinets in the basement. However, space was becoming increasingly tight as the organization had nearly doubled its revenue in the past five years, leading to an increase in the number of records. Searching for older documents was particularly problematic, requiring employees to dig through the cellar and even climb up ladders to reach certain records. Additionally, the process for handling invoices was inefficient, with multiple copies of each invoice being printed and filed separately.

Propel Schools, a federation of not-for-profit charter schools, was facing challenges with their invoice approval process. Each school in the federation ordered and received their own supplies, but approvals were handled by a central business office. Invoices, packing slips, and purchase orders were sent there for processing through inter-office mail. The Accounting Department matched the purchase orders and packing slips with each invoice and made a copy of invoices needing approval. Then the documentation went back into inter-office mail to be sent for approval. Many invoices needed multiple approvals, so the documents were often passed from desk to desk. This process was time-consuming and inefficient, leading to delays in invoice approval and payment.

Sigma Financial, a premier full-service financial broker dealer, was facing several challenges related to document management. Every morning, the mailroom staff had to open 100-150 overnight envelopes containing 220-250 sales forms that were 8-10 pages in length. The 'original' was sent to the Compliance department for approval, and once approved, the form went to the Sales Processing department who sent the 'original', via overnight mail, to the appropriate fund company. The 'copy' was sent to the Commissions department, where the information was manually input into Sigma’s commissions program, giving the rep credit for the sale. The 'copy' was then filed by rep’s name in Sigma’s dedicated file room. Most of the records stored there needed to be kept on file for seven years and a few document types needed to be stored indefinitely. Processing a sales form was at least a two-day process. Average document retrieval time was anywhere from 10-15 minutes per form and usually 20-30 forms were accessed daily. Retrieving, refiling and just keeping track of pulled files was made even more difficult because all of Sigma’s corporate employees had access to the file room. Furthermore, Sigma was running out of room and would need to add additional filing space and personnel.

Due to the company's growth, the central accounting office faced the daunting task of filing and storing mountains of paper, which was quickly becoming harder and harder to store. For example, incoming invoices are received at each of the six stores. Before the introduction of the DocuWare document management system, the invoices were copied and mailed to headquarters, where they were sorted alphabetically and by store. Unfortunately, from time to time some of these parcels got lost and most of the documents need to be stored for seven years. IKEA decided that a document management system would provide the solution they needed.

BEGO, a dental company based in Bremen, Germany, was facing challenges with its document management. The company had to meet strict requirements for production, research, and development, as well as administration and information management. Businesses in the dental sector must satisfy extensive obligations for documentation. BEGO was spending large amounts of time searching for documents and related day-to-day paperwork, especially when customers had follow-up questions. Filing the various documents was quite labor-intensive. They were running out of space for document storage. Inquiries, invoices, delivery notes, and offers were all kept in traditional paper files, and the filing cabinets were overflowing. They were eager to save on the labor and expense that it took to maintain their unwieldy files.

Value Place, an extended stay economy hotel chain, was struggling with its accounts payable (AP) process. The company was manually keying AP invoice information into their MAS 90 accounting system, routing the paper documents to the correct personnel for approval, then physically filing the paperwork. This process was time-consuming and prone to errors, with documents often getting lost or misfiled. The approval and payment process generally took two to three weeks, due to mailing invoices around the country for approval. Value Place planned to migrate its accounting information from a MAS 90 to a MAS 500 system and needed to implement a document management solution that could be completely integrated and rolled out with the new accounting system.

DAF Trucks, a part of the American company PACCAR, was facing a significant challenge in managing its accounting department. The department was overwhelmed with paperwork, with an average of 50,000 outgoing invoices printed twice a month and forwarded to internal processing points and around 1,000 worldwide trading partners and service offices. The situation was even more complex when processing the 450,000 incoming A/P invoices received per year in both paper and EDI format. The audit chain involved three checkpoints: receipt of goods in the warehouse, checking that everything in the order was as expected, and that the invoice had the correct price. However, in about 20 percent of cases, at least one of these checkpoints was not fulfilled, leading to about 90,000 cases per year where employees had to consult with the relevant specialist department and send copies of invoices by post to branches worldwide tracking down the information.

Jaya Apparel Group, a designer and manufacturer of clothing for high-end boutiques and large department stores, was facing several challenges. The company was able to process orders electronically but had no way to store and manage the information other than printing it out and filing it in banker’s boxes. This paper intense process meant that important information contained on documents such as customer PO’s, pick tickets, bills of lading, invoices, shipping tallies was difficult to retrieve. Researching receivable payment discrepancies was a complex process that was often so cumbersome that the company was unable to refute customer claims. The company needed an electronic document management system to improve their workflow by routing documents through a multi-step process, without using email. The solution needed to integrate with their AS/400 based ERP system and be able to automatically index and archive EDI transmissions, as well as serve as an archive for hand-written documents which would be scanned and imported.

The healthcare system has reached an impasse with vanishing government support, escalating costs, aging demographics, and the expense of keeping up with medical progress. This has forced everyone working in the field to find innovative new ways to improve workflow processes. Feldkirch Regional Hospital in Vorarlberg, Austria, recognized early on the need for modern IT systems. By 1995 they had already implemented the Patidok electronic Healthcare Information Management System (HIMS). However, maximum efficiency is only reached with a HIS when paper-based documents are fully integrated into the electronic information flow. Therefore, they decided in 2002 to completely convert to electronic patient files. A basic requirement of this was the addition of an electronic archive.

BUTEC, a leading consulting firm in the areas of environmental protection, quality management, and workplace safety, was facing challenges in managing its growing volume of documents. The company's increasing client base and a trend towards providing long-term consulting services led to a surge in information. Searching through their paper archive became increasingly tedious, leading to duplicate efforts and long retrieval times. Even the creation of a central filing process was not enough to alleviate these issues. The company needed a solution that could efficiently manage their documents and provide a flexible knowledge pool.

Culinaire International, a hospitality management company, was dealing with a large volume of paper flowing through their central accounting office. Each of their remote locations was sending a weekly FedEx package with copies of accounts receivable and accounts payable documents for processing. This workflow was inefficient and costly. After evaluating outsourcing accounting functions or finding a basic digital document repository, Culinaire realized what they really wanted was a more robust solution that had search functionality, optical character recognition (OCR), digital workflow, and the ability to automate indexing and eliminate paper filing.

Before the introduction of a Document Management System (DMS), each branch of the Arab Islamic Bank (AIB) had its own paper archive. This led to inefficiencies as customer service staff often did not know which customer documents were already available and which ones were still needed. This resulted in customers often being asked multiple times for the same information or the documents had to be requested externally. Given that AIB conducts hundreds of transactions every day, this led to significant delays. Another challenge was the approval of documents across departments. Contracts and applications are reviewed by various departments, and the shifting around of paper documents, especially between a branch and their headquarters, was inefficient.

Rebel Refrigeration, AC & Plumbing, a service provider based in Las Vegas, was already partially paperless with its contractors using iPads and digital invoicing in some business areas. However, certain aspects of the operations still required printing invoices on paper. When the lockdown order due to the coronavirus pandemic was issued, the company's office had to close. The employees were working from home, but they couldn’t access the paper documents in the office, and processing fell behind. The company needed a solution to switch to digital to ensure business continuity and operational integrity.

Norbert Dentressangle, a leading company in the Spanish logistics sector, was facing challenges with managing over 90,000 paper records per month. The company was struggling with the time-consuming process of registering, storing, and retrieving documents. The process was so labor-intensive that two full-time employees were dedicated to handling incoming documents. Additionally, customer inquiries and requests from external offices led to further delays and inefficiencies. The company needed a solution that would not only reduce the time and cost associated with document management but also improve customer service by providing easy access to the document pool.

As a growing practice treating more and more patients every year, LVCC spent a lot of time and money filing and storing patient records. Each new patient meant more records to process, track and store. Not only are patient records difficult to manage due to their large sizes, but because LVCC is required to keep these records on file for seven years they were forced to keep the overflow in an off-site storage facility. Another problem for the office was the labor-intensive task of having the daily patient records prepared for the doctor. Given the number of patients and records, it was becoming difficult to retrieve the files. Additionally, the center’s fax machine generated a large amount of paper-based information that needed to be managed. Each day the office received requests for medical records, referrals, prescriptions and EKGs for its patients.