DocuWare has been awarded for its commitment to “AI at the service of efficiency”. How does that philosophy translate into real results for companies?
AI is not new to us. In 2012 we already patented Intelligent Indexing, our intelligent OCR based on AI and machine learning, which since then helps more than 20,000 clients around the world to automate document reading, with success rates of up to 75%. Therefore, it is easy to demonstrate a quick ROI when a client decides to opt for DocuWare as a document manager.
What differentiates DocuWare from other competitors in the document management and automation sector?
Precisely, and continuing with AI, three years ago we decided to incorporate a new technology: DocuWare IDP, an OCR capable of automatically cutting, classifying and extracting data from a document, even a manuscript. This tool enhances Intelligent Indexing and allows us to combine both technologies automatically for the client, automating the extraction of data in documents by up to 95%, with very reliable data quality. Additionally, customers continue to rate highly how simple and intuitive it is to use DocuWare.
What role does AI play in the evolution of business document management today?
The first thing is to be clear about where AI can help us. In document management, at DocuWare we have it very defined. AI helps us mainly in two ways: in extraction, to improve data quality, and through an internal agent, DocuWare Aura, which allows us to summarize documents, compare them and perform other similar tasks. Of course, we always work within DocuWare and without sending documents to external tools, because for us the protection of data and documents is essential.
Automation is often perceived as complex. How does DocuWare make its solutions accessible and easy to use?
The main thing is to understand the client: what their processes are like, what their bottlenecks are and where they are losing efficiency due to tedious and repetitive document processes. Once this analysis has been carried out, we propose how DocuWare is going to help and, when the client gives their approval, we launch the project together with what we call key users, who are those who work daily with these processes. The objective is for the tool to be fully integrated into the company. Many times, in fact, the users themselves tell us that DocuWare ends up becoming “just another companion.”
What are the main challenges that companies currently face in terms of document management and efficiency?
In Spain, I think that the main challenge in the short term will be the Crea y Crece Law linked to the digital invoice. In addition to the changes related to the format or sending of invoices, for me the big change is that invoice status changes will have to be reported. There will be four mandatory: receipt, approval or rejection, payment forecast and payment made, and there will only be four business days between each status change.
And this not only affects the invoices we receive, but also those we issue, as long as they are between companies or self-employed workers. Here, companies that already have a document manager like DocuWare have a huge advantage, because all this control will be carried out automatically by the system, even accounting for the invoice in the ERP.
The manager defends that artificial intelligence should be used to improve data quality and streamline processes without ever compromising document security.
How does DocuWare help organizations make faster decisions using AI and automation?
When I talk to clients I always explain it the same way: if you have software capable of reading and extracting the most relevant data from invoices, delivery notes or orders, it will also be able to compare them, check if they match and, if so, automatically send the information to the ERP for accounting. And, if they do not match, it will generate a task for the person in charge to review what has happened with the supplier. All this happens in a matter of seconds. As we say in La Mancha, we separate the wheat from the chaff so that the user can focus on what is really important.
Security and regulatory compliance are key for many companies. How do you address this need?
This aspect is fundamental in DocuWare’s product policy. In 2012, when we made the decision to take DocuWare to the cloud – something that many competitors laughed at at the time – we were very clear that we had to do it with the best possible partner. And we understood that that traveling companion had to be Microsoft Azure. Since then, DocuWare Cloud is hosted on Public Azure. Microsoft guarantees us triple redundancy of documents (stored on three different servers and in different countries, all within the European Union to comply with the GDPR), in addition to triple backup.
Thanks to this, we managed to certify ourselves at the SOC2 level of cloud security, one of the most important in the world. When you operate in more than 100 countries, each with different legislation, you need an infrastructure capable of guaranteeing security and regulatory compliance.
What are the main future challenges in terms of innovation and growth of the company?
Here it will allow me to maintain a bit of mystery, as a good worker at a technology company. But I can say that in the coming years DocuWare wants to continue developing its own product. We release two versions a year with significant improvements in each of them. We will continue to incorporate AI into new spaces to improve the user experience. Soon, for example, we will have document anonymization functionalities and we will continue to improve handwritten reading. We are also developing new, more powerful products for larger organizations with different needs.
Looking ahead to 2030, we have set the goal of doubling our turnover and reaching 300 million euros.
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