Building edocr.com into Techcelerate’s workflow
Manoj
I founded edocr.com in 2007 with few friends and reached an Exit in 2015 to Accusoft, Inc. Jack Berlin, CEO of Accusoft recently asked me three questions, and I thought of sharing them here.
Why did I found edocr.com and what were my hopes for it?
I founded edocr.com in 2007 to allow businesses of all sizes to turn costly documents into revenues. Every time a business produces a brochure, white paper, case study or report, it costs them labour (graphic artists, copywriters, subject-matter specialists and reviewers) whether it’s printed or electronically produced.
Almost all businesses have no clear idea of what the cost was or the actual value generated. Only a small number of key printed documents are distributed to a few customers and prospects whilst few more are leftover in office receptions and given away at exhibitions. A few of electronically produced documents are displayed on the company website. Both get discarded after a short period.
I wanted edocr.com to work harder for these documents, turn them from cost to revenues and eventually profits.
Once published on edocr.com, documents can be shared easily across the web. This allows potential customers to discover suppliers via their documents.
edocr.com tracks how many times the document was read, who read them, and with the reader’s consent, automatically send the contact details to the connected Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system for lead nurturing.
In terms of vision, we wanted to help our users at scale and eventually become the YouTube for business documents.
How do I use edocr.com today?
Of course, I no longer own edocr.com and my interests are vastly different.
Today as a user, I am building a shareable library of quality documents I find with the intention of educating Techcelerate Companies.
Strangely, this resembles the very first project I undertook after joining Merz & McLellan (now part of WSP) in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne as a Graduate Engineer in 1992. I had to catalogue and build an internal library for the Department I worked for. This resulted in me having to write to companies and requesting brochures, white papers, user manuals and catalogues. Today, I am doing the same without much effort at all, thanks to edocr.com
At Techcelerate, I am working with founding teams of technology companies until their eventual Exit. A key part of this strategy is creating a trusted environment for the sharing of knowledge and experiences. Key documents I share contain invaluable knowledge Techcelerate companies can benefit from.
Thanks edocr.com, anyone with Internet access can benefit from the library I am building and not just Techcelerate Companies.
Documents shared on https://www.edocr.com/user/
In addition, we share slides of our workshops with our companies using the same edocr account.
How would I use edocr.com in the future?
Having tested the new eSign feature of edocr.com, we now plan to manage all our agreements and contractual documents safely through edocr.com. The recent fill & sign process makes this easier than using a separate Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application.
We are in discussion with our legal partners Brabners and Aaron & Partners to explore creating a library of legal templates. This would be an exciting development, which will further increase the value we deliver to our Tech Companies.
All this will take a lot more effort if edocr.com was not here. I personally like to thank Jack and the team at Accusoft in continually improving the service and enriching it with invaluable features.