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Technology Stocks : DOCS - A TURNAROUND PLAY -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sand wedge who wrote (420)	6/2/1998 11:08:00 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1156

DOCSF would do well to spend some time developing compelling business benefit stories to go hand in hand with marketing these solutions. I believe one of the major obstacles in the small legal office arena is one of justification. "we are too small" "we can't see the benefits" "organized file systems do us fine" And if the product is "only" straight forward DM those small firms have a case. DOCSF has a unique opportunity to take its experience in this market and finish the job of fully dominating it. There are smaller competitors nibbling at their heels in the small office market, and occasionally competitors like World Dox (who?) and NetManage (I believe these are the people that have sworn to take "legal" away from PC DOCS...) show up in larger legal opportunities. But, like many markets Legal is a domino effect segment, at least within geographies. Many firms are smarting from Corel's woes with Word Perfect. Many would see value in joining the larger crowd that follows DOCSF in this space. One thing that is rarely discussed on this board is the other subsidiaries such as CMS. In my opinion they do not do enough to lever each others activities. Perhaps this is only true in the sales region that I play in, but I do not think this is the case. They are typically marketing to the same people, and problems or opportunities on either side affect one another as prospects and clients are well aware of the corporate bloodlines. They could do a better job of orchestrating activities and cross selling I am sure. I do think that DOCSF has to continue to extract as much as possible form this area of strength of theirs, but at the same time they need to develop new niche speciality areas that they can dominate and educate the analyst community as well.

To: sand wedge who wrote (420)	6/2/1998 11:10:00 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Respond to of 1156

On a related note, I still believe that while they should continue to exploit traditional areas of strength, they also need to ensure that the marketplace doesn't pigeon hole them. A surprising number of my clients and prospects I run into simply ask IDC or Gartner or Delphi or Doculabs or xxx who they should invite to the RFP table. Depending on the day and phase of the moon you can get different sets of answers from any one of these. If you aren't on 'the list', its possible not to even know about an opportunity. PC DOCS hasn't been doing enough in the last year to stay in these people's faces, and in the industry press. Some trade press seem to actively avoid them. Hopefully this is on the mend. I keep looking over at what FILE has done in 12 months. Incredible marketing engine ramped up over there, making up big time for gaps in the current product line. When all the pieces are in place they will be pretty formidible, and in fact are already.