logo

GET A DEMO
  • Products
      • veroDocs
      • styleDocs
      • cleanDocs
      • cleanDocs Server
      • compareDocs
      • compareDocs Cloud
      • pdfDocs
      • pdfDocs Binder
      • printDocs
      • contentCrawler
      • contentCrawler Cloud
  • Solutions
    • Redaction
    • Finding Documents
    • Email Security
    • Manage Metadata
    • Document Comparison
    • Document Bundling
    • OCR for Dropbox
    • Legal Software
    • Accounting Software
    • Mimecast
  • Developers
    • compareDocs SDK
    • compareDocs Cloud API
  • Integrations
    • iManage
    • NetDocuments
    • OpenText
    • SharePoint
    • Worldox
    • Other Integrations
  • News
    • Press Releases
    • Events and Webinars
    • Our Blog
    • Infographics
    • Customer Success Stories
    • Industry Guides
    Discover how to produce high-quality work at every stage of the document journey Discover how to produce high-quality work at every stage of the document journey How Travers Smith, one of the world's most innovative law firms, uses compareDocs SDK How Travers Smith, one of the world's most innovative law firms, uses compareDocs SDK
  • Support
    • Customer Support
    • Client Portal
    • myDocsCorp
    • Credit Card Payments
    • eLearning
    • Training Partners
    • Quick Training Guides
    • On-Demand Training Webinars
    • Product FAQs
  • Partners
    • Become a Partner
    • Find a Partner
    • Training Partners
    • Partner Portal
  • Buy
    • cleanDocs
    • compareDocs
    • pdfDocs

IDM Industry Profile: DocsCorp CEO and co-founder, Dean Sappey

15 Mar 2021

Dean Sappey has overseen the growth of DocsCorp into a global provider of software and services for document professionals who use enterprise content management systems. IDM asked Dean to outline the path to developing a global brand with 500,000+ users located in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and beyond.

IDM: How did you come up with the idea for the company?

DS: pdfDocs, which we released in 2003, was all about creating PDFs and editing them, collating them and creating binders and closing books.

At the time, both co-founder Shane Barnett (CTO) and I, had our previous businesses acquired by a solution provider and we were working there as product managers. We had customers who were accountants and lawyers saying we want ways of turning all our documents into a collated set of PDF documents, which we could email to our clients rather than printing them out, which was the old-fashioned way.

So, we came up with this idea for a PDF product, and we pitched it to the management there, and they went ‘Nah, no one will want that’. They were not going to spend the money on it.

So, we decided to leave and essentially workshop three or four different products that were all around allowing professionals, lawyers and accountants to create and work with documents using their tax or compliance products. They wanted to create a Word or Excel document and share it with their client without building a Web portal. So that’s how we came up with the first product,

IDM: Many of the capabilities offered by DocsCorp products in PDF editing and document comparison are embedded in the standard Office suite from Microsoft and Adobe, which are widely deployed. How does an Australian start-up stay ahead in that race?

DS: Firstly, our products are designed specifically for lawyers and accountants. In Acrobat, there are many features that they don’t need; for instance, functions for performing four colour separations on graphics.

Lawyers and accountants need very tight integration between products and their document management system, where they store documents. The major vendors don’t build that integration because it’s too specific a market for them.

We build workflows around our application that work better and are better integrated. Microsoft has a document comparison feature in Word, but it is inferior, it just doesn’t get it right in many cases.

Most law firms won’t use Microsoft Word for contract comparison; they will use a specialist tool like ours that is robust and reliable and gets it right every time. They can’t afford to miss a change between the two documents. So that’s how we compete with Microsoft, we do it better.

Depending on what country you are in, compareDocs is either the No. 1 or No. 2 product for document comparison.

In the case of Acrobat, the workflows and integration of pdfDocs are much better suited to people working in professional services.

IDM: DocsCorp has undertaken two acquisitions in the past 12 months, what is the strategy driving these acquisitions?

DS: While we kept building products, we also began looking at the other things we want to do, and there is only so much we can build at any one time so more recently we have started looking at acquiring other products.

We also have many government organisations and other sectors using our products, around 30% of our customers are outside of the legal and accounting industries. However, legal and accounting is still a major area of growth. Our acquisition strategy is to expand the platform of products we can provide to get further embedded in those organisations.

Customers are increasingly saying to us they want a single vendor providing a whole suite of applications to help do everything relating to creating and managing their documents. We aim to provide all their document tools on a single toolbar.

The first one, veroDocs back in July 2020, was around template creation, allowing law firms to create a document template. It just asks the user simple questions and then creates a document personalised for the particular branch they are working in.

Our most recent acquisition of Docuble allows law firms to restyle their documents to their specific style. Law firms all have their way of using styles, numbering schemes, and templates. For lawyers to do that themselves in Microsoft Word using styles is complex. It needs a specialist paralegal or secretary to do that, and nowadays lawyers don’t have that.

Our customers are also saying they want one vendor and one toolbar in all of their applications, one place to ring for support and one place to deal with licence renewals. So we have been looking at products to add to our existing suite of products that may have proven themselves in a particular country, but have not gone global. We have a worldwide network to do that.

IDM: Is the Microsoft Office suite still the standard for law firms and accountants?

DS: We’ve seen some interest in Google Docs and things like that, and even in Microsoft Office Online, but if you talk to anyone doing heavy-duty document work every day, they are using Office on a desktop PC, and they will continue to do so. They want our applications sitting inside that and reaching out to their document management system.

Our clients will continue to use specialist document management products for a long time because Microsoft does not provide the necessary compliance and certification. Also, organisations with 50 or more staff need specialised document management products that suit their workflows. We do not see Microsoft focussing on those industries because they are too specific.

IDM: In 2020, cleanDocs was enhanced with AI. What are your thoughts on the potential for AI to handle many of the manual tasks in document management?

DS: cleanDocs is about making sure you don’t accidentally email a document to the wrong person in addition to removing metadata. When you’re about to email a document, it can intelligently look inside all of your previously sent items and understand whether you should be sending this.

We’re seeing this take off in government and many regulated industries where if documents are emailed to the wrong person it can be catastrophic. Most data breaches are accidental, and cleanDocs AI can prevent them from occurring. If you email a document to somebody, realise it’s wrong, and then send an email saying ‘Look, I just sent you the wrong document. Can you delete it?’ That document will be read, guaranteed!

IDM: DocsCorp contentCrawler converts image-based documents in content repositories and document management systems to text-searchable PDF. Is this still a big problem for many organisations?

DS: The number of documents being created from some scanning process is increasing exponentially. Most document management systems do not have an inbuilt function to look through those documents and extract text.

It’s not just a problem for law firms and accountants - many government organisations and most banks in Australia have turned to contentCrawler to fix this. We have a cloud version of contentCrawler, which processed more than 2 trillion images this past year.

IDM:  DocsCorp is just one example of an Australian software developer in the document productivity space that has succeeded internationally. Why do you think there are so many? 

DS: I think many Australian businesses have started the hard way with venture capital money. They’ve started from the ground up, so there is a lot more passion from the people building the product.

And very quickly, to be successful, you have to go international. Thus, they are much more open to accepting that different customers in different countries work differently. So rather than saying this is the way you can work, this is how you’re going to use that software, Australian culture is more about saying ‘you work the way you want to work, and we will listen and adapt’. How our software is used in the US is quite different from how it’s used in the UK.

IDM: What advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs?

DS: Just do it! But don’t expect to be widely successful overnight. It will take many, many years of hard work. But if you’re passionate and persist in improving your product, you’ll be successful.

This article was originally published by IDM and is reproduced here with permission.


Related

image

CEO End of Year Message

Weathering the Storm

Dean Sappey Reflects on a Year Like No Other

image

Q&A

International Women's Day

The DocsCorp Co-Founders on gender equality in the workplace

image

News

Dean Sappey explains

Why the redaction blunder in the Paul Manafort case should never have happened

  • Industry Insights: How Technology Can Help Firms Create High-Quality Work More Effectively
  • Improve the document journey: Ensure your content repository is 100% searchable
  • The software integration improving document review workflows
  • Improve the document journey: Publish or file sooner with time-saving PDF software
  • TechnoLawyer Hot Product Report | Prevent Misdirected Email and Data Breaches When Using Outlook
  • Improve the document journey: Streamline the editing and review process
  • Improve the document journey: Create professional documents in less time
  • How a UK Top 100 firm trialed cleanDocs to prevent data breaches
  • How to choose the right PDF binder type in pdfDocs Binder
  • 3 articles you need to read about data privacy in the first 3 years of the GDPR
  • 10 reasons to use styleDocs to manage document formatting, numbering, and repair
  • Need to combine PDFs? pdfDocs makes it easy with Binder Project Mode.
  • How compression software helps you save on cloud storage costs
  • What are the standard parts of a legal document?
  • 7 time-saving pdfDocs features you may not know about
  • Should your business choose pdfDocs or pdfDocs Binder to combine multiple PDFs?
  • How to make PDFs searchable
  • How law firms use compareDocs for document comparison inside iManage
  • Understanding the CPRA: An important change to the CCPA
  • Podcast: Ten Minutes with DocsCorp CEO Dean Sappey
  • Guidelines on creating electronic court bundles for the Canadian Supreme Court
  • IDM Industry Profile: DocsCorp CEO and co-founder, Dean Sappey
  • How you can use printDocs to streamline print management
  • A complete solution for document styles, formatting, and repair
  • What is PDF/A? Unpacking the format designed for PDF archiving
  • How to create electronic bundles that comply with UK Supreme Court requirements using pdfDocs Binder
  • 10 reasons to choose veroDocs for template management and document assembly
  • How to compress or split PDFs to reduce file size using pdfDocs
  • Guidelines on creating PDF binders for the UK Supreme Court
  • Answers to common veroDocs questions | FAQs
  • 3 steps to making a Closing Book with pdfDocs binder
  • 3 tools to help you send secure emails while working from home
  • The Start of An Exciting New Phase with Litera | DocsCorp CEO Message
  • Understanding the CCPA, California’s GDPR equivalent
  • The best way to combine PDF files into a Court Book
  • Automatically prevent data breaches when you use cleanDocs AI for email security
  • How veroDocs simplifies the creation of documents and document templates
  • Rethink What Document Templates Can Do for Your Law Firm
  • 3 ways you can write on a PDF and boost productivity
  • How to create a PDF binder with pdfDocs
  • Seven smart financial solutions in one software suite
  • What I learned from attending four virtual conferences in four months
  • Document productivity - driven from the Ribbon
  • Automatically reduce PDF file sizes within your document management system
  • What common document problems can template management software resolve?
  • Expand your text search capabilities with the new pattern and custom regex searches in pdfDocs
  • New page numbering options in pdfDocs make it easier to comply with Court requirements for PDF binders
  • How to use your PDF file editor to be more productive while working from home
  • compareDocs 3-Pane View report and the simple way it compares document versions and highlights the differences
  • Streamline electronic signatures with pdfDocs and DocuSign
  • 7 legal software solutions that improve productivity
  • Enterprise Software Selection Series: The final steps
  • New feature: Better management of unsupported documents in contentCrawler
  • Enterprise Software Selection Series: Should you include a software pilot program?
  • How to produce USPTO-ready PDF documents
  • How to use templates to create consistent looking PDF binders
  • cleanDocs and RMail integration explained
  • Enterprise Software Selection Series: Start your software evaluation process by knowing exactly what you want
  • How to prepare your data in Worldox for the CCPA
  • Top 10 reasons enterprises depend on pdfDocs for PDF editing and bundling
  • Enterprise Software Selection Series: Keep on track by working methodically
  • Digital workflows that help accountants go paperless
  • A report into enterprise software investment, amid the COVID-19 pandemic
  • Add an electronic signature to a PDF with pdfDocs
  • Enterprise Software Selection Series: Create a clear path to success.
  • Part 1: A straightforward approach to navigating the software selection maze
  • Top 10 reasons why businesses choose contentCrawler to find every document
  • How to add custom metadata to electronic binder projects with pdfDocs Binder
  • New, smarter PowerPoint comparison for compareDocs users
  • The new work habits our Marketing team want to take back to the office, post COVID-19
  • Stay productive and secure during the Covid-19 crisis
  • 10 reasons to choose compareDocs to see the difference
  • Answers to common cleanDocs Server questions | FAQs
  • How to output PDF binders with Bates Numbering as file names using pdfDocs Binder
  • Are Australian businesses better at preventing data breaches caused by human error?
  • What I've learned about myself working from home because of COVID-19
  • Feature Spotlight: Customizing a TOC in pdfDocs
  • Working from home: Finding the silver lining in my new normal
  • How to work with Auto Page Numbering in pdfDocs
  • How to compare selected text with compareDocs
  • 3 ways accounting software can make tax time less taxing
  • How to convert from PDF to Word in pdfDocs
  • How to compare Excel files with compareDocs
  • A Q&A with the DocsCorp Co-Founders on gender equality in the workplace
  • Meet the female lead software developer inspiring change
  • Answers to frequently asked pdfDocs questions
  • Meet the female Sales VP leading an all-female sales team
  • How to compare PDFs in compareDocs
  • A better stylus editing experience with the DocsCorp PDF file editor
  • Travers Smith and DocsCorp Industry Case Study | Briefing February 2020
  • How 76,000 missing files were recovered in SharePoint
  • Top 10 reasons why businesses trust cleanDocs for data protection
  • DocsCorp wants to improve how you write on a PDF with a stylus
  • How to compare two Word documents in compareDocs
  • Ask an expert: How to compress PDFs using automation
  • 3 benefits of combining cleanDocs Desktop and Server to protect your sensitive metadata
  • Answers to common contentCrawler questions
  • How to justify email recipient checking software for your business
  • Document comparison workflows made simple
  • How to remove metadata from PDFs using cleanDocs
  • What you need to know about file compression
  • Answers to common cleanDocs questions
  • How email recipient checking in cleanDocs protects you from emailing the wrong person
Home
  • About DocsCorp
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • GDPR Policy
  • Data Security
  • Accreditations
  • Service Level Agreement
  • Human Rights Policy
  • Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Policy
  • Anti-Bribery and Corruption Policy
  • COVID-19 Statement
Products
  • veroDocs
  • styleDocs
  • cleanDocs
  • cleanDocs Server
  • compareDocs
  • compareDocs Cloud
  • compareDocs Cloud API
  • compareDocs SDK
  • pdfDocs
  • pdfDocs Binder
  • printDocs
  • contentCrawler
  • contentCrawler Cloud
News
  • Press Releases
  • Events/Webinars
  • Industry Guides
  • Case Studies
  • Blog Posts
  • Infographics
  • Watch Our Story
myDocsCorp
  • Support Login
  • Pay2Go
  • myDocsCorp
  • Training Directory
  • Customer Support
  • Product FAQs
  • Find a Partner
  • Contact Us
  • blog
  • linkedin
  • twitter
  • facebook
logo

© Copyright DocsCorp 2021 - All rights reserved.