‘Here in the European market, I think we are in a good position’: DocuWare CEO Dr Michael Berger on the company’s rapid growth

German SaaS company DocuWare is on a remarkable upward curve. As an independent subsidiary of Ricoh, the channel-focused business has found global success providing document storage and automation services.

Incorporated in 1988 as “DOCUNET Gmbh”, the company has become an innovative cloud-based software provider and a leader in the paperless business space. More recently, the company has undergone a significant leadership change, promoting Dr Michael Berger as its new CEO.

Berger has been with DocuWare for almost 17 years, initially starting in research and development in October 2008, before moving up to vice president of technology, and then chief technology officer. He was made a co-president in 2019 and is now finally the CEO.

Remarkably, his time in C-level positions has coincided with rapid growth for DocuWare, both in terms of revenue and partner adoption. The company requests that its revenue figures are not published, but it has been on an upward curve in a number of key areas, such as cloud and partner renewals.

At the time of writing, the business has around 850 partners across 84 countries.

Berger specifically is cited as one of the driving forces behind various innovative product developments, such as the DocuWare Cloud and its Intelligent Indexing.

Though now, with the company under his leadership, the challenge is to continue to push for more innovation, expand its regional presence, and navigate a turbulent global market.

DocuWare eyes channel growth during economic uncertainty

One of Berger’s first steps in tackling those challenges was selecting a new C-Level management team.

At the start of April, Michael Bochmann was made chief product and technology officer; Benedikt Dischinger, the chief financial officer; Uta Dresch, the chief operating officer; and Hermann Schäfer, the chief sales and marketing officer.

“The team was well selected for their different responsibilities,” Berger told ChannelPro. “They are all well-positioned, and the team is really well-experienced in all these areas.

“From my perspective, everyone is really eager to push the company forward, but there are also other teams; it is not that we just push sales and forget the other things and put out products – that is why these people were chosen well, according to how I wish to steer the company.”

Another reason for the changes at the C-level was to add more strategic thinking, according to Berger. While there are still operational changes to be considered, the new CEO was steadfast that strategy was the most important thing to start with.

“The ambition is, for sure, to drive the company with the same speed as it was before, and even more,” Berger said. “The potential is there. In the partner landscape, they’ve seen our potential and what we have done, for instance, with the product from Natifi.AI."

Partner growth is the key for DocuWare and it is heavily investing in different countries and new regions, such as APAC and the Nordics. The company is also keen for more partners in the UK and still has significant interest in the US market, despite the current uncertainty around trading fees.

Berger refers to this as another part of a “global multi-crisis” that many enterprises now face. He stresses the need for strong, reliable partners and agile approaches to business, though as a customer of Microsoft Azure, he is aware of the potential for increased operational costs.

“Here in the European market, I think we are in a good position because we’re a European manufacturer,” Berger explained. “We are manufacturing in the US and we are also hosting in the US, so the US part is not difficult for us, it’s more about the challenges on the European side, how people will react.”

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