PaperWise digital imaging has impact on many individuals

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Dan and Shelley Langhofer say that once they found a piece of technology and a customer base they believed in, there was only one logical next step take over the company. |ret||ret||tab|

In May 2000, the Langhofers acquired the PaperWise digital document imaging company from corporate giant Bell and Howell. |ret||ret||tab|

Digital document imaging is not new technology, but it is a new concept to many businesses, according to Dan Langhofer, president of PaperWise. Langhofer said that with his company, digital document imaging allows a user to take any hard-copy document, scan it and store it digitally in PaperWise's document storage system. |ret||ret||tab|

Any stored document can then be retrieved instantly using a computer equipped with a standard Internet browser. |ret||ret||tab|

Once scanned, the stored documents are also encoded at a PaperWise Data Center to protect against document loss in the event of a calamity. |ret||ret||tab|

"Companies manage information that they gain from many different sources, from e-mails to invoices to spreadsheets," said Shelley Langhofer, vice president of operations. |ret||ret||tab|

"Our technology makes those documents available at all times within the four walls of the business," Langhofer added.|ret||ret||tab|

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Beginnings|ret||ret||tab|

The couple's experience with Paper-Wise technology began when both were working at a large refrigerated trucking company. "Dan had a strong belief in the technology and what it could do," said Shelley Langhofer. "He also had a very strong belief in and attachment to the customer base. I knew he wanted to get involved with the company to help make it what he always knew it could be." |ret||ret||tab|

Dan Langhofer said he was thinking about buying PaperWise from the very beginning. "I can recall thinking back in 1993 and 1994 that owning PaperWise would be cool," he said. |ret||ret||tab|

Acquiring a publicly traded company is part business headache and part career highlight, according to the Langhofers. "It's a tough thing, acquiring a company from a multi-billion-dollar corporation when you're a little guy in southwest Missouri," Dan Langhofer said. "But I only had two goals I wanted the technology and I wanted the customer base." |ret||ret||tab|

After several months of meetings, the Langhofers had both and were ready to establish PaperWise in their own right. Their work was cut out for them. |ret||ret||tab|

"Assembling a team of state-of-the-art engineers is not an easy task," Dan Langhofer said. "We built the team from the ground up, in Springfield." The post-acquisition goal wasn't to set the world on fire in the sales department, he said, but rather "to do two things rewrite the product from the ground up and keep the existing customer base stable.." |ret||ret||tab|

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The PaperWise system|ret||ret||tab|

Having accomplished both goals with the 2001 release of Version 5 of the PaperWise system which includes both hardware and software for digital imaging the Langhofers have their sights set on expanding into new markets.|ret||ret||tab|

PaperWise also increased their on-site staff substantially, which meant moving to bigger quarters in Springfield. The company's new facility in the Woodhurst Office Complex has separate areas for development and sales and administration, as well as a training lab for educating new PaperWise users. |ret||ret||tab|

PaperWise is already at work on Version 6 of its system, as well as a shrink-wrapped retail version of the software for household use that should be available by early 2002. "For anyone who has a PC," Dan Langhofer said, "we can provide a scanner, and when a client scans a document, the data is stored at our data center." |ret||ret||tab|

Recent PaperWise clients include Commercial Insurance Underwriters in Springfield, the Texas Department of Health in Austin, Texas, Eastville College in Dallas and Zions Insurance Agency in Salt Lake City. |ret||ret||tab|

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Goals|ret||ret||tab|

The Langhofers have two goals for PaperWise. "We want to create an awareness, especially to local businesses, of what the technology can do for businesses of any size or type," Dan Langhofer said. "We also want to make digital document imaging possible for businesses of every size and level of capital. Now businesses of all sizes can afford our product." |ret||ret||tab|

Shelley Langhofer added, "We've made it into something that will help all businesses, from a single user in a one-person business to 800 seats at a single company, to multi-national businesses. We want PaperWise to be a household word in terms of document and information management. We want it to be a product that's on every computer desktop." [[In-content Ad]]