Congratulations to ColumbiaSoft Corporation and its visionary founder, Richard Day, on this the company’s 10th anniversary! ColumbiaSoft was founded on September 9, 1998 by Day, former owner and president of PED Manufacturing, one of the nation’s leading producers of orthopedic prosthetics. Day’s vision: to create a new breed of document management that included enterprise-level functionality and performance at a price point that is accessible to any sized business.
In 1998 the document management industry was dominated by a handful of vendors offering solutions geared exclusively towards the Fortune 100. This is also when I also began my career in document management specializing in imaging and workflow automation. My introduction to document management was in working with several of America’s largest insurance companies helping them automate insurance processing workflows. These engagements involved setting up scanning in their mailrooms, where in some instances they were processing over 5,000 mail items daily, and then automatically routing the digital images via customized workflows throughout the organization.
Early in 2001 I was fortunate enough to have been introduced to ColumbiaSoft where I immediately connected with the vision of expanding document management functionality to businesses of all sizes. The time was right! Intel-based PC computers and servers were growing exponentially in power and database engines required to host the technology were making enormous inroads. At that point in my career I had worked almost exclusively on document management systems designed to run on AS/400 mainframe style computers – systems that were financially unattainable to most organizations. I knew first-hand the benefits my previous customers realized using document management and wanted to become part of an organization that has the objective of making this technology affordable to businesses of all sizes.
Now 10 years old, ColumbiaSoft continues to deliver on the vision Richard Day established from the onset. ColumbiaSoft has grown into a recognized leader in the document management industry by providing solutions to many thousands far and wide across numerous industries and countries. With the advances in technologies in software and hardware, even small to medium sized businesses can now implement document management systems at reasonable prices that just ten years ago were seven figure investments. I take my hat off to ColumbiaSoft and all of the employees who work tirelessly to push the envelope of document management!
