PRINT
IT
RESELLER.UK
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INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
it and only this person can edit it; Or,
from a replication standpoint, it might
determine that after five years the invoice
is automatically saved to a specific archive
vault.
One other point that makes M-Files
different is that we see ourselves as an
enterprise information management
system. How that differs from some of
our competitors is that we allow an
organisation to manage both unstructured
content – typically Word and Excel files,
images, video, email files – and structured
content – information assets that reside
within a database system, e.g. a CRM, ERP
or accounting system. Metadata serves as
the bridge that connects a structured data
system to unstructured content assets.
So, if I am a sales person and I’m
working on a proposal associated with
a customer contact in the CRM system,
metadata connects the CRM system to the
unstructured repository involved, which is
M-Files, so that proposal can reveal itself
within that CRM system. By associating
the proposal with the customer account, I
can see that there are three or four open
support tickets that need to be resolved
and that the customer has two or three
outstanding invoices – information that
is important to me as a sales person. The
metadata serves as an intelligence layer
that connects systems and gives people
content in context – a 360 degree view of
all the other content assets and processes
associated with this singular asset that
I am looking for. That is something that
makes us distinctive from other players in
our field.
PITR:
What is your target market?
Cook:
Every business, of any size and
in any industry, has documents and
unstructured content they need to manage.
Where we have done really well is selling
into the mid-market, bringing enterprise-
grade functionality to the masses. We’ve
got customers who have a handful of
employees and customers who have
thousands of employees, but the mid-
market is where we have been really
successful.
PITR:
Is M-Files an on-premise or
cloud-based solution?
Cook:
We don’t get religious about
whether customers deploy this on-premise
or in the cloud. We also have a hybrid
solution. So when you take M-Files it’s your
decision whether you want to deploy it on
your infrastructure and have it on-premise
or whether you want to subscribe to our
cloud service or whether you want to have
a bit of both. Regardless of which option
you take, you get exactly the same solution
and exactly the same capabilities.
The vast majority of our customers have
been on-premise, but in the enterprise
information management space we are
seeing cloud adoption at a little over 10%.
We are outstripping the market and at the
moment are seeing 20% plus adoption of
our cloud services.
One of the factors driving this is the
facility to deploy M-Files in a hybrid cloud
environment, so you don't need to rip
& replace if you want to transition from
on-premise to the cloud. You can utilise
existing on-premise systems – CRM,
ERP, what have you – and augment it
with M-Files in the cloud and vice versa
– maybe do M-Files on-premise and
integrate that with a cloud-based CRM.
That flexibility enables our customers to
be more nimble in how they choose to
transition to the cloud.
PITR:
What are the benefits of having
a UK office?
Cook:
We have UK customers and today
we have UK resellers, but we’ve always
managed those remotely. It’s important for
us to have a local presence so we can start
to service those customers, those partners
better.
We have 10 active channel partners
in the UK. The EBC Group is one of our
partners and the Itec Group is another.
Both of these are managed print service
providers, which is historically where a
number of our channel partners have come
from. They are used to selling printers,
MFPs, managed services and are really
looking to expand their solutions portfolio
and move into high growth areas. M-Files
is a great fit for such businesses as they
start to take different types of solution out
to their customers.
PITR:
How many partners would you
like and what sort of partners are
you looking for?
Cook:
We have no hard and fast targets.
What’s really important to us in this first
year is to make sure we find the right type
of partner who can take our product to
market effectively. We are really looking
for new channel partners that have staff
dedicated to selling software solutions
and can deliver those solutions to their
customers.
Our overall strategy is not just to find
the right type of partner with the right type
of skills, but also ones that have domain
knowledge about particular industries and
particular verticals – ones with strength in
depth around manufacturing, engineering,
financial services, the legal market. That’s
where they can really add value to the
M-Files solution and deliver industry-
specific solutions to their customers.
PITR: What do you offer resellers?
Cook:
We offer a great deal of support
in terms of getting up to speed, product
training, sales training. We also have
a great marketing programme in place
– almost ‘a marketing programme in a
box’ – that they can roll out to their own
marketing departments. Our channel
programme is designed to motivate our
partners and reward them for success. They
get great discounts on our pricing and
fantastic margins on software licences, as
well as great opportunities for incremental
revenue around professional services and
delivery of industry-specific solutions.
PITR:
It also gives them an entrée
into a market with a lot of growth
potential. Are you surprised so many
organisations still use paper?
Cook:
I am pleasantly surprised by how
much opportunity there is, by how many
businesses of pretty significant size don’t
have any type of document or content
management solution in place and are
still managing mountains of paper. It isn’t
only small companies, but companies with
hundreds of employees that still haven’t
got round to employing an effective
document management solution. Many
companies do have network drives, folders
and sub-folders but everyone I speak to
realises that this is not a viable solution
for managing documents or their content
going forward. There is a lot of frustration
that comes from trying to manage
information by putting things in folders.
Daily use of M-Files
Mobile Access
You don’t
need to rip
& replace if
you want to
transition fom
on-premise to
the cloud.
It’s important
for us to
have a local
presence.
M-Files
