Ricoh has agreed to acquire DocuWare, the cloud and on-premise document management and workflow automation software business and long-term Ricoh partner.
Ricoh SA was recently awarded DocuWare Diamond Club membership for the fifth consecutive year for being one of the top 10 resellers in the region.
“Ricoh is focused on helping our customers digitalise their businesses,” says Jacques van Wyk, CEO of Ricoh SA. “Business documents bridge the physical-digital divide that enables businesses to digitalise their processes and automate workflows to maximise the customer experience. This acquisition will help us to continue meeting market demand for these solutions and the services our customers require to deploy them.”
Ricoh and DocuWare expect the deal to be concluded by the Southern Hemisphere’s winter of 2020, subject to German and Austrian competition authority approval.
DocuWare will continue to operate as a standalone subsidiary of Ricoh, which will continue to invest in product R&D, and expand its existing partner programme. DocuWare has more than 12 000 customers in more than 90 countries, and a network of 600 partners.
David Mills, corporate senior vice-president of Ricoh Corporation, says: “As a long-time partner, Ricoh understands the power of DocuWare’s channel to deliver document management and workflow automation solutions to customers. Ricoh wants to strengthen and grow this route to market and is committed to helping and learning from DocuWare and its management team.”
Jurgen de Jongh, head of National Office Services in Ricoh SA’s Enterprise Services Group, says: “We are continuing to explore the opportunity in helping businesses, particularly SMBs, in the South African market to digitalise their processes. Document management services are helping enterprises of all sizes to bridge the gap between hardware and software that enables technologies such as cloud, data analytics, machine learning, and more.”
Dr Michael Berger and Max Ertl, both presidents of DocuWare, say: “Having Ricoh as a strong investor and owner gives us the certainty that we can achieve our goals and continue to be a reliable, trustworthy and innovative provider for the entire DocuWare partner and customer community.”
De Jongh says that Ricoh SA’s success in customer DocuWare adoptions is based partly on the close working relationship between Ricoh SA and DocuWare in South Africa.
“David Malan, the regional sales director for DocuWare Africa, is a former Ricoh SA employee,” he says. “Besides the close global co-operation of our two companies and all the benefits that bond provides, we also have an excellent local working relationship that allows us to maximise the benefits we are able to deliver to customers.”