Riding the Winds of Change

2020 has been a year like no other in living memory. Record-breaking amounts of wildfires across the whole of the west coast of the USA, the hottest ever recorded temperature in Death Valley, and of course, the COVID-19 pandemic. With this list of catastrophes it would be easy to fall into despair but as Albert Einstein said “in the midst of every crisis lies an opportunity” - and the winds of change have certainly been blowing in the information management market.

For those of us who have been in this sector for a while, it has always felt like an opportunity waiting to happen. We all could see the value of the paperless office, automation, digital transformation, or whatever the latest term for change was called - but for numerous reasons already well discussed in this blog the hockey stick growth just never happened. And then came the biggest shift in working patterns - ever.

COVID Fuels Digital Transformation Work from Home

It sounds crass but the COVID pandemic has possibly been the biggest driver we have ever seen for digital transformation. But it’s no longer called digital transformation - now we talk about remote working. Irrespective of the name (where have I heard that before!) the technology is the same; cloud-based, document sharing, collaboration and communication tools to allow organizations to securely work remotely.

The--almost overnight--need to work from home (WFH) for billions of people across the globe was not just nice to have, but essential for organizations to survive the initial phase of disruption. The easing of procurement processes, and in some cases removal of the need for multiple RFPs, enabled enterprises to purchase solutions quickly - and they did. Vendors across the information management market have been releasing record results despite the global economic downturn, and talking to various analysts on the subject, they don’t see this changing any time soon.

Building Success

AODocs has seen similar patterns across early 2020. Building on the strong growth in 2019 (reported here) the first half of 2020 has seen impressive growth within all parts of the business, with specific strength coming from the AODocs for Life Sciences solution that was launched in late 2019. Two product releases, extensive marketing activity and even tighter alignment with Google have all helped fuel this fire.

And along with financial growth comes recognition in the press and analyst community.

Both Aragon and IDC have recognized AODocs presence in the marketplace in their recent reports, building on 2019 recognition in the Forrester Wave for Content Platforms and the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms (CSP). In addition AODocs have been selected as one of the “Top 10 Vendors to Look Out for in Life Sciences” and as a KM World 2020 Trendsetting Product.

As we have discussed many times, AODocs is driven by its clients, which is why it is so exciting to see the AODocs ranked as a leader on recent G2 Crowd ECM Grid for Q3 2020. The G2 Crowd reports run throughout the year and are based solely on customer reviews and being ranked as a leader by real customers is a true delight ; being ranked as a leader for 3 consecutive reports is an added treat.

And last, but by no means least, AODocs continues to perform strongly with Comparably.com - the employee-focused ratings tool, voted Best Company for Professional Development in 2020.

Looking to the Future

Finally as we look to the future it will be interesting to see how future reports such as the upcoming Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms (CSP) will change as a result of recent M&A activity within the CSP space. This market consolidation comes on the back of the strong growth and the recognition of the ongoing need for remote work as a result of COVID. Expect more consolidation in the coming months as more and more value is created in the sector.

Whatever the future holds, at AODocs we will continue to deliver customer-led innovations with the winds of momentum driving us forward, each and every day.