DocuWare Group Achieves 24.5 Percent Growth in 2015
Worldwide Growth – Well Above Plan
For the sixth year in a row, the DocuWare Group is able to report double-digit revenue growth. Overall revenues in 2015 grew by 24.5 percent to 34.55 million euro. Aside from new and expansion business through sales of software licenses, DocuWare Cloud played an increasingly important role this past year: the number of Cloud customers grew by 250 percent. At the same time, the company continued to benefit from the successful integration of Westbrook Technologies Inc., which DocuWare acquired in 2013 and has been fully consolidated since 2014.
With revenue growth of 24.5 percent, the worldwide-operating DocuWare Group is among the fastest growing software companies in the traditional ECM space. Well above plan, this growth rate led to revenues of 34.55 million, a significant jump over their projected 30 million euro. This figure includes revenues from Connecticut-based Westbrook Technologies Inc. (WTI), which DocuWare acquired in 2013. Revenues from their former U.S.-based competitor were already included in figures beginning with fiscal year 2014 (27.75 million euros). Sales for the DocuWare Group consist almost exclusively of license revenue, maintenance and support business, and cloud offerings. Project revenues generated by their network of Authorized DocuWare Partners amounted to 150 million euro, growing by 25 percent when compared to the previous year (120 million euro).
250 Percent More Cloud Customers
In addition to their well-established Partner concept, the main factors for this outstanding success can be found in the company’s market-leading technology and pioneering role in the area of Software as a Service (SaaS). With DocuWare Cloud, the ECM specialist offers its customers a true SaaS solution that has the full functionality of an on-premise system. Companies of every size and industry, found all over the world, are typical customers. By the end of 2015, a total of 8,741 users in 240 companies working with DocuWare Cloud filed nearly five million documents. The increase amounted to 250 percent (by 12/31/2014: 68 companies with 3,486 users). The initially targeted number of 200 Cloud customers by the end of 2015 was quickly exceeded.
Integration Successfully Completed
The acquired Westbrook business, which is now fully integrated, contributed to the company’s strong organic revenue growth and increase of operating profit in 2015. WTI had revenues of approximately seven million dollars before the acquisition. In 2015, the integration of the WTI reseller channel as well as the Fortis product line was successfully completed. DocuWare’s solutions were enhanced with important Fortis functionality. In parallel, a migration tool for transferring Fortis data to DocuWare systems was developed. Fortis users can now migrate their existing documents to the future-proof DocuWare platform – either to DocuWare Cloud or an on-premise solution. Nearly the entire Fortis Research & Development team now creates important components for DocuWare solutions in independent Scrum teams.
The Americas Continue to be Number One
With revenues of 19.11 million euro and a revenue portion of 55.3 percent, the North and South American continents continue to be the company’s largest market. The German-speaking market (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) ranks second, with growth of 22.3 percent and a revenue contribution of 27.7 percent (9.56 million euro). As was already the case in 2014, the most successful subsidiary was again DocuWare SARL in France with revenue growth of 32.8 percent, followed by DocuWare Ltd in the UK with 12.6 percent (currency neutral plus 1.4 percent). The Spanish subsidiary, DocuWare S.L., had a lower growth rate than in 2014. The markets which are grouped as “Rest of World” also increased revenues by 20.3 percent to 3.32 million euro. The total number of new customers exceeded 1,000. Worldwide, 1,124 new customers chose DocuWare in 2015; 15 percent of all customers chose DocuWare‘s cloud-based system.
Partner Concept Pays Off
The company’s Platinum and Gold Authorized DocuWare Partners contributed significantly to this success with an average growth of 32 percent. A reworked Partner concept was presented in 2013 and became fully effective in 2014. In addition, a large percentage of WTI sales partners became qualified Authorized DocuWare Partners.