Messages from the CEO

For decades, global enterprises have built massive IT infrastructures out of patchwork solutions. Walk into almost any large organization today, and you’ll find the same quiet crisis: millions spent maintaining separate systems for physical mail, fragmented digital portals, and disjointed back-office processes.

When we first began pioneering OCR and ICR technology over three decades ago, our mission was straightforward: eliminate the hours people spent manually retyping data. Thirty years later, the medium has changed, but the core bottleneck remains. Even today, up to 75% of manually keyed documents contain errors. Recently, however, enterprise capture hit a frustrating new wall. Organizations have been forced into an unfair choice...

If you have been in the enterprise space as long as I have, you know the quiet dread that comes with the phrase "vendor software migration." Right now, organizations worldwide are facing what we call the Migration Blues—trapped on legacy Customer Communications Management (CCM) systems that are falling out of maintenance, racking up costs, and failing to support modern cloud platforms. When you need to push updates across web, email, and print simultaneously, these older systems become a massive bottleneck.

I recently sat in the audience at our Open House Global, listening to Andreas Stemick from BDO. I’ve seen many presentations on digital transformation, but this was different. It was a wake-up call. When Mr. Stemick displayed the data, the room went quiet: Cybercrime is now effectively the world’s fourth-largest economy.

In the global enterprise, the tension between business speed and IT control is often the greatest barrier to innovation. When business departments are tethered to rigid IT release cycles, "time-to-market" suffers. Conversely, when agility is unmanaged, "template bloat" and compliance risks emerge.

In my recent conversations with business leaders worldwide, a clear theme has emerged: a growing weariness toward the omnipresent "hype." We have seen enough AI demonstrations that appear like magic but, in practice, turn out to be little more than a novelty. Real innovation does not happen in a vacuum; it occurs where powerful technology meets the people who lead it strategically.

As this year draws to a close, I want to share a story of true digital transformation that underscores what is possible when strategic vision meets the right technology. We are incredibly proud to have won the prestigious Document Manager Project of the Year Award for the comprehensive project implemented at our customer, Utmost Life and Pensions.

The most valuable asset in your organization isn't in your data centers; it's in the heads of your senior experts. This highly specialized, hard-won business process knowledge—the rules, the workarounds, the "why" behind every decision—resides precariously "between two ears". This vulnerability is reaching a breaking point. As key personnel retire, that wisdom walks out the door.

In my experience, every company faces a document problem. Whether they're stored in archives or flowing in daily through email and attachments, documents are at the heart of nearly every business process. For someone in your organization, managing a claims department or overseeing legal review, the manual effort of sifting through correspondence and due diligence documents is staggering.

Imagine a world where business and IT teams are active creators, with the autonomy to control their content and processes, driving continuous improvement. This isn't a pipe dream, it's a reality with smart design technology. Solutions like Business Designer put the power of application creation directly into the hands of your business team.

In today's noisy digital landscape, how do you truly capture and retain your customers' attention? Every interaction, every document you share, is a crucial opportunity to not just to convey information, but also to build stronger connections and leave a lasting positive impression. It's with this in mind that I want to highlight the transformative power of dynamic visuals.

Excellent News! I'm excited to share that Papyrus CCM has been named a "Luminary" in Celent's latest global report, solidifying its position as the leading solution for insurance business communication. This prestigious recognition underscores our commitment to delivering innovative industry-leading solutions that drive efficiency and customer satisfaction.

With over 1.3 billion people, or 16% of the global population experiencing disabilities and 773 million adults facing illiteracy, it is evident that there is a pressing need for change. The digital divide poses a significant challenge for businesses seeking to reach their entire customer base. Traditional PDF accessibility solutions often require technical expertise.

In today's digital landscape, embracing the cloud is no longer optional. It's the key to unlocking agility, scalability, and unmatched performance. Papyrus is proud to be at the forefront of this revolution, empowering businesses to thrive in the cloud with a future-proof cloud-based platform for corporate customer communication management.

Turning conversations into business transactions with low effort and high quality is crucial to successful business. That's where intelligent forms come in! Imagine business forms that understand your clients' and employees' needs, guide them effortlessly, and don't frustrate them. Process-driven collaboration is typically linked to fillable business forms.

As CEO of Papyrus Software, I strive to open up new ways of delivering business results through operational excellence, unlocking sustainable growth. Operational excellence seeks to increase the bottom line through optimized processes, increased quality and efficiency, and reduced costs. Successfully implementing this requires the right tools.

Excellent news! The global study Intelligent Document Processing Software (IDP) 2023-2024 Market Scape by International Data Corporation (IDC) named Papyrus Software a Major Player. This result was endorsed by Papyrus customers and validated by the high software rating.

Papyrus Software announced on Nov 29, 2023 that the Commerzbank and comdirect brands have selected Papyrus as their next generation Customer Communication and Document Management platform. As one of the largest banks in Germany, with €510 billion in assets.

It gives me great pleasure to share with you that Papyrus DocuFlow has been awarded the 'Application of the Year 2023 Award' by Xplor International. This honorable mention from the Xplor award committee is founded on DocuFlow's innovative approach.

We are at a crossroads of technology in the evolution of business process management. Let me explain: Not everyone is aware that the majority of process executions require leaving the documented 'happy path' of a process for completion.

Sending requests per email with attachments is a type of asynchronous collaboration that we are most familiar with. Attachments can be many and include filled PDF forms, documents and signatures. However, this form of communication is highly manual.

When our company was founded in 1988, we saw it as our responsibility to ensure that software was a profitable investment for our customers, and not just an expense. Documents are at the heart of our customers' business.

This year's Technology of the Year Honorable Mention that awards original concepts and developments leading to a significant advancement in the Customer Communication Management industry, goes to Papyrus Software for its innovative Papyrus Business Designer software.

Since my last letter to you about Blockchain - the better way to e-sign, enquiries about this technology and the Papyrus Blockchain ecosystem have skyrocketed. Most often I was asked why should a company use Blockchain to sign and verify digital assets.

When it comes to digital documents and electronic signatures, it is blockchain technology that eliminates concerns about manipulated or even forged electronic documents. Blockchain is known to make the e-signing process very secure and stable.

How does a company continue to innovate? In recent years, companies have had to quickly adapt in order to win. Digitalization has been a focus, self-service has become much more dominant and ad-hoc changes need to be replaced with better solutions.

How can you consolidate disparate existing document systems which have grown over years, leading to redundancies, inefficiencies, and multiple efforts to maintain document templates for different output channels? A question I get asked very often.

Often, and usually out of expediency, companies tend to implement multiple communication platforms within core applications without understanding that they need to be either consolidated or interconnected.

Organizations have been investing in business document design solutions for decades. In fact, many organizations have invested in more than one document design and formatting system. But this is a double-edged sword.

Are you sometimes missing that one piece of information related to your task that would make it easy? Are your employees hunting for data and switching from app to app to accomplish their work? If so, read on – this message is for you.

Creativity is a great way to solve problems, innovate new solutions and bring purpose to work. We have access to tools and a real opportunity to contribute and create change. Creativity always works better than anything else we could try.

You no longer need to be a programmer to deliver Business Value Streams, but use a graphical user interface instead of writing code. This takes the pressure off the IT department, as even non-technical users can contribute.

In the wake of rapid digitization, some companies often implement quick-win point solutions in their ecosystem that end up being complex puzzles. The challenge of getting everyone to work together effectively skyrockets.

What began in 1988 in the basement of our private home in Austria has grown into a fantastic global organization of experienced professionals, utilizing stable standard software and innovative Framework Solutions created in our four software development centers and three global competence centers.

Most customer service solutions can't keep up with today's customer engagement requirements. Customers want to experience a fast and right response the first time using their preferred communication channel.