Columbia company Softdocs renovates building, adding 25-30 jobs

More than two decades ago, Mike Murphy, a business form salesman from Winnsboro, realized many of his clients were drowning in documents. Colleges in particular were bursting at the seams with myriad forms, from financial aid forms and invoices to student records that might have to be stored for as long as a century.

First he developed a method for his customers to print their own business forms and customize them with computerization. And in 2001 and 2004 Softdocs, a company he created with partner Robert Satcher, released Doc e Scan and Doc e Fill. The two systems allowed schools, colleges and governments to capture, scan and store documents electronically and replace paper forms with secure, electronic forms and work-flow processes.

In 2014, Softdocs, then headquartered in a nondescript 8,500-square-foot building near Williams-Brice Stadium, released the Etrieve Platform, a browser-based system for organizing and storing documents and other content, creating and processing electronic forms and streamlining common business processes.

“We just kept listening to our clients and updating our product,” Murphy said from the company’s newly renovated 50,000-square-foot headquarters building on Bluff Road, steps from the stadium. “We didn’t dream about all this.”

Softdocs today has 64 employees and plans to add 25 to 30 more in the next 18 months. The present employees include 15 software developers, 10 salespeople and the rest support services, training and troubleshooting technicians, many of whom live outside of the state.

“We have a whole team that never comes to the office,” said Andrew Daniel, vice president of corporate strategy.

But attracting talented workers can be difficult, even though the University of South Carolina graduates many, said Jennifer Wilson, the company’s marketing director.

“They leave,” she said.

The company hopes Columbia’s growing tech industry, underpinned by the insurance claim management and support sector, combined with a more vibrant downtown, will convince home-grown talent to stay in Columbia and attract others young professionals here.

“There was no Vista when I got here 15 years ago,” said Wilson, referring to the capital city’s growing arts and entertainment district.

Through the years the company has grown to about 600 clients in the United States and Canada –even Guam. They are mostly community colleges and school districts.

“Only about 9 percent of our customers are in South Carolina,” said Satcher, who now acts as the company’s chief financial officer.

On Softdoc’s client list are Midlands Technical College in Columbia, all 58 North Carolina community colleges and Central Texas College one of the largest community colleges in the nation, boasting 85,000 students. They even landed California’s Cabrillo College, located in the Silicon Valley - the software capital of the world.

“That was a cool moment for us,” Daniel said

Softdocs newest product, Etrieve, includes three core software systems: Etrieve Content, Etrieve Forms and Etrieve Flow.

▪  Etrieve Content allows schools to organize and store student, vendor and employee documents, forms and other content in an electronic format, eliminating the need for paper files. That helps create a standardized filing structure, while also allowing secure access to electronic files from any device at any time.

▪  Etrieve Forms allows schools to create electronic forms for common processes like financial aid applications and student registration. This reduces the number of paper forms created, maintained and processed throughout the institution.

▪  Etrieve Flow is a work flow engine that allows schools to automate common business processes electronically. From the routing of electronic documentation from person to person, to approval and rejection of forms and content, schools can build work flows that automatically route content through a standardized process, tracking each step and improving processing times.

The company is planning for growth in the future.

Presently it uses only 20,000 square feet of the 50,000 square feet in the former textile mill, which once produced all of the fabric for L.L. Bean tote bags.

And being steps from Williams-Brice, 10,000 square feet of the building is being marketed for indoor tailgating. When the company expands, they’ll just move the tailgating area (and the company’s new basketball court) farther back in the building.

“We’re in growth mode right now,” Daniel said. “And we’re ready to take the next step.”

This story was originally published April 22, 2016 at 4:56 PM with the headline "Columbia company Softdocs renovates building, adding 25-30 jobs."