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The media company, owning more than 40 publications, was receiving approximately 100 requests per week, corresponding to about 5,000 messages per year and double as many attachments. These Requests for Proposals (RFPs) needed to be classified depending on criteria like vertical market or target audience before being directed to the appropriate department. The challenge was that the RFPs were highly unstructured documents, coming in various formats like email body text or attachments in Word or Powerpoint. The extraction targets were very diverse and, in most cases, with very little context to learn from, making it difficult for state-of-art machine learning systems to deliver satisfactory results.

The bank was looking for ways to improve efficiencies through automation, particularly in the area of credit risk assessment. The complexity in language and structure of wholesale credit agreements made automation difficult. These agreements are complex, 100+-page-documents that are very bespoke because banks use different lending systems. Especially covenants use highly specific, use-case related formulations. Some extractions are straightforward, and the values can be extracted “as is” (no inference necessary), for example: named dates, commitments, rates, parties. Others are more challenging and require fine-grained distinctions between options or covenants (eg redeem deal options, termination options). Here an automation system has to comprehend domain logic based on document structure and relations of extracted items. Pricing-related tables contain many different parameters (applicable margin, interest payment schedules, commitment tables) and it is extremely difficult to automate the extraction of pricing information. This is why the review of credit agreements was still done manually, which cost a lot of time and money to the bank, not mentioning the high error rate of such a mundane task.

The company was receiving between 100,000 and 250,000 customer emails per day in 35 countries. A major challenge with such a high volume of incoming emails was to identify the emails that actually required a response (only 50%). So far, the customer centers spent a significant amount of time sorting out emails that do not need to be processed (e.g. out of office messages, FYI mails, etc.), a task that unnecessarily burdened the teams and increased the costs in the customer centers. The task was further complicated through the use of multiple languages in the emails.

The commercial property insurer with offices worldwide has about 2,000 high value, commercial customers with as many as 30 policies each. The head office creates standard policies which are forwarded to the regional offices and adapted locally. As the company does not use industry standard forms, the binding copies of locally-issued documents may differ from the original in format and content. The process of reviewing the locally-issued policies is done manually and is time consuming. The team responsible for this task spends approximately one third of their time on searching for differences between source policy and final version. So far, this review process could not be automated because of the different file types and formats, and because no tool could understand semantic variations. However, the company sought for an automation solution, as about 70% of the documents still contained errors after the manual review.

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.

GSC Logistics, the largest trucking company operating at the Port of Oakland, was facing challenges due to strict industry regulations. The trucking and shipping industry is highly regulated, requiring companies to store and manage a mountain of paperwork. GSC archives driving logs, hours of service, and daily vehicle maintenance records for over 200 owner-operators who work with them. The company is also required to store quarterly truck inspections and registration documents, driver’s DMV records, license, application, and proof of medical and vehicle insurance. In order to ensure compliance with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) requirements, GSC needed a system to enable them to identify which records were on file and which were missing. The solution also needed to provide information for California Highway Patrol (CHP) audits.

AlphaPet Ventures, a Munich-based start-up specializing in premium pet food, was facing a significant challenge in managing its accounting processes. The company, which handles several thousand orders daily, had a disjointed system for managing incoming invoices. Some invoices were stored as PDF files on servers, while others were kept in paper form and sent weekly to an external accounting department. As the company grew and merged with another start-up, the volume of paper invoices increased significantly, and the storage of invoices in PDF form proved to be inefficient. It became increasingly difficult and time-consuming to obtain an overview of the company’s liabilities, which was crucial for managing its cash flow.

Sebald Cement, a company with around 100 employees, was facing a challenge with their administrative processes. Over the years, the company had accumulated a large volume of files, particularly in the administration department, which was threatening to exceed their filing capacity. The company was in search of a powerful and future-proof document management system (DMS) to digitize their paper-based administrative processes. The aim was not only to reduce the volume of paper and digital storage in their central archive but also to improve the efficiency and transparency of administrative processes. The DMS needed to have integration options with various systems, such as the ERP system Microsoft Dynamics or the accounting program Varial Finanzwesen.

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.

When the dealership decided to expand and build another Lexus dealership in a nearby community, they did not want to dedicate any of the physical space for record storage. They needed to find an on-premises electronic document management solution that would be compatible with their dealer management software, Reynolds & Reynolds, and allow them to transition to a paperless process. The dealership wanted to maintain total ownership of their data and digitize car sales documentation known as a deal jacket, parts and boutique invoices, repair orders and loaner car records.

Bremer Martinsclub, an association that provides a comprehensive range of services for people with disabilities, was facing challenges due to its rapid growth. The organization was dealing with an increasing volume of paper files and longer processing times. Additionally, the establishment of several decentralized branch offices to make their support structures more handicap-friendly added to the complexity. The organization needed a solution to digitize their business processes, manage the growing volume of paper, and provide access from any location. They were looking for a powerful and flexibly scalable document management system that could be seamlessly integrated into their existing software applications, such as Microsoft Access, Outlook, and an accounting solution from Sage.

LGC Hospitality, a leading hospitality staffing company, was facing challenges with their paper-based application and on-boarding process. The company processes paperwork for over 50,000 applicants a year and issues W2 forms for over 24,000 employees. Each employee had to fill out a 54-page application plus additional paperwork to set up payroll. The application was long and asked for the same information in several locations which candidates found frustrating. LGC staff had to spend a lot of time reviewing applications just to make sure every field was filled in and that every page had been signed. It was also very difficult managing, storing, and sharing this information internally, in addition to pulling information for audits.

Moritz of Fort Worth, a privately-owned car dealer group, was facing challenges in managing repair orders and supplemental documents in their service department. The dealership had to comply with each manufacturer’s requirements for document filing, including when date and time stamps are used, and when signatures need to be ink or digital. Failure to fulfill document requirements could result in large fines from manufacturers. Additionally, the dealership had a high employee turnover rate, which meant that they would constantly be training new employees to use the system, so ease-of-use was critical.

Kim Transport Solutions, a transportation service provider in Singapore, was struggling with the management of its paper-based documents. The company was dealing with a steady volume of over 60 paper documents per day, including receipts, invoices, order confirmations, delivery notes, credit records, and printed emails. The documents were often duplicated, leading to a cluttered and inefficient storage system. When customers had queries about invoices, employees had to manually search for the relevant documents in the paper archive, scan them, and send them to the customer. This process was time-consuming and inefficient.

Community Title & Escrow (CTE) is a title insurance company that maintains an archive of every land transaction in Northeast Arkansas since the early 1800s. The company was facing challenges with the manual process of researching property ownership. Documents were geographically indexed in “tract books” that directed employees to numbered boxes or binders to access the physical documents which make up the chain-of-title. As CTE grew and acquired other title companies, manually maintaining all these records became very difficult. The company needed a solution to digitize all information into one searchable database for easy employee access, eliminate manual, handwritten processes subject to error, and speed up the title insurance workflow to quickly meet customer’s title insurance needs.

opta data group, a company that supports healthcare sector companies, was facing challenges with their invoice processing. They received over 3,500 incoming A/P invoices monthly, mostly paper-based. These were recorded in Excel and sent to the responsible departments and locations for approval. Due to a multi-stage approval process and a basic division of invoices into split amounts with allocation of cost centers, the processing times were long. Accounting also lacked any overview or transparency of the processing status during the approval process. Searching for information also took a lot of time and effort.

HB Munters Group, an international company specializing in systems for temperature, humidity, and climate control, was facing a challenge with their document management. They had run out of storage space for their paper documents and were having difficulty locating individual documents. To address this, they began digitizing all of their order documents over twenty years ago. This initially provided some relief, freeing up office space and providing employees with access to important documents. However, hundreds of documents had to be manually indexed every month for later retrieval, a process that was time-consuming and inefficient. In 2009, they decided to enhance their ERP system and revisit their use of the document pool and DMS.

Rawlings Sporting Goods Company, a leading manufacturer and marketer of sporting goods in the United States, was facing challenges in managing custom orders and effectively communicating order information to their vendors. The company needed a solution that could tie custom specifications and artwork back to the original order and share this information with vendors worldwide. The solution also needed to maintain version control and allow document and file sharing with vendors across the globe. The company's customer service team works with clients to create custom products such as apparel, uniforms, sporting equipment and other licensed items. With so much information to manage for each order, it was challenging to keep track of all the details and ensure that the correct information was readily accessible.

Talbot Marketing, one of Canada’s largest providers of promotional products, corporate apparel, and uniforms, was struggling with a manual, paper-based sales order process. The process involved using a manila envelope, referred to as a docket, to collect all documents relating to an order. This included everything from the initial order, to artwork approval, and shipping and invoicing. The docket was then transferred from department to department. This method was time-consuming, prone to errors, and made document retrieval difficult. The management team was unable to effectively manage cash flow, balance workloads, avoid bottlenecks, and ensure no orders were lost or stalled.

JTE Recruit, a recruitment agency startup, was struggling with the management of hundreds of documents daily, including emails, client contracts, and candidate documents. The recruiters stored all these documents on their own laptops, making it difficult to capture much of this information within a central organizational structure. Searching for information was particularly problematic with this form of decentralized storage. As the company grew, it became increasingly untenable to work in this way and both their employees and customer service would suffer for it.

Before the implementation of DocuWare, Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation faced several challenges in their accounting department. The process of mailing completed invoices and accompanying documents to the corporate office for filing was time-consuming and occasionally resulted in lost documents. Staff also spent a significant amount of time searching through files to find paper documents. As a publicly traded company, Cabot is also required to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, which was a cumbersome process with their previous system. The company needed a solution that would streamline their workflows, improve access to information, and help them adhere to compliance standards.

Hydratech Industries, a company specializing in high-pressure solutions, was facing challenges with their document management system. The company had accumulated countless documents over the years from various departments including R&D, Quality Assurance, and Sales. These documents, stored in a simple folder structure on the server, included production documents, technical drawings, emails, and contracts in both English and Chinese. Each project group had its own filing system, resulting in different folder structures and access rights. This led to confusion among employees who often did not know where to find important documents or which version was the most current. Long search times were common and when documents needed approval, large amounts of data had to be sent back and forth by email. Team members often only learned about new documents late on.

Marketing Personal SA, a Latin American multinational company, faced challenges in tracking orders and ensuring their delivery. The company's operations team was responsible for administering new orders, managing issues relating to package deliveries, and responding to inquiries and claims made by advisors. However, tracking was complex, and the shipping costs invoiced to Marketing Personal by the delivery carriers did not reflect effective monitoring of deliveries and inquiries to customers. The Customer Service Department did not have clear and timely information about the various phases of delivery, so they could not give real-time responses to inquiries. They had to rely on projected delivery information and paper documents from the operations team. All documents generated during the transport operation are stored for several years as proof of delivery for payments and as legal back up documents. There are risks associated with manually processing transport documents - they can get lost or damaged making them ineffective as points of reference.

Mercy Health Network, a nonprofit organization operating hospitals and healthcare facilities across 18 states, was facing challenges with its Mercy Clinical Laboratory. The lab, which analyses over 1,800 samples a day from patients across 17 hospitals and 300 facilities, was struggling with a slow and inefficient paper-based system for processing lab orders and billing. The lab contributes approximately $30 million to the hospital’s annual revenue, so digitizing processes was a high priority. The lab needed to speed up the processing time from when a specimen is received to the time it is billed. During the period the lab was looking for a new system, it had $7-8 million in lab work waiting to be billed. The goal was multi-pronged: automate processes; reduce time-to-bill; streamline document sharing between patient access, medical coding and billing teams.

Berwick Retirement Communities, a family-owned company that builds and manages retirement homes in British Columbia, Canada, was facing challenges with its vendor invoice approvals and payments process. With six retirement homes to operate and more being built, plus two head offices in different locations, the process was complex. Invoices had to circulate between different offices, in paper or email form, to collect the necessary signatures and approvals. This led to unnecessary redundancy and complexity, with several copies of invoices being made in different locations. Staff had to call different offices to locate the invoices and ensure all signatures were collected. When vendors called to inquire about payments, Berwick personnel weren’t always able to locate specific invoices and had to contact other offices to track down the missing paperwork.

Young Automotive Group, a premier car sales company in Layton, UT, was facing challenges with its new employee orientation process. The process required all newly hired employees to travel, sometimes from remote locations and out of state, to a specific location to complete paperwork. This was not only inconvenient and lengthy, but also increased the company’s expenses as it reimbursed new employees for travel expenditures and gas mileage. The company was also dealing with cumbersome paper processes for HR procedures, including processing exit interviews when employees leave the company, and managing bonus rewards and other employee benefits.

Criterion Tool & Die Inc., a third-generation family-owned company, manufactures precise components for no-failure industries such as medical, aerospace, and photonics. The company is required to retain documentation about the parts it supplies for the lifetime of the products and instruments due to government regulations. These requirements resulted in thousands of paper documents stored in the company’s facility over many years. The paper and large storage space made locating documents time-consuming and difficult. In addition, the company had to produce all supporting documentation in a timely manner when requested for audits.

Century Fence, a family-run custom fencing provider and pavement marking contractor, was looking to reduce its dependence on paper-based files, speed up workflows, and ensure records were easily accessible. The company wanted to implement a digital mobile solution to provide field superintendents with remote access to project documentation. The solution needed to integrate with their existing ERP and accounting programs and manage documents such as quotes, contracts, insurance, site plans, email correspondence, and more. The company's project folders remain open and active for about three months during the quoting, staging, installation, and billing phases of a project. It was crucial for Century Fence superintendents to be onsite and have quick access to project files during this time.

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.

As Kowalski’s Markets grew and expanded, managing paper accounting records became very difficult. It took one corporate accounting employee 3-4 days a week to type the invoice information into the accounting system. Department managers were also typing the invoice information to compile a weekly report. The process was time-consuming and inefficient, leading to a need for a more streamlined solution.