Four major projects
Doxserá® DB, going to beta
Washington Supreme Court’s Plain Language Project
Marketing Revolution
Dilijinz® — The Final Product
Here Comes Doxserá® DB
The third in our line of software productivity tools, Doxserá® DB, allows documents to automatically and intelligently access external databases — SQL, Excel, Access, Outlook, CSV.
Doxserá® DB will be in beta testing before year-end and is expected to roll out in January, 2015.
Just as with TheFormTool PRO and Doxserá® before it, those who’ve seen Doxserá® DB in action say, “This changes everything!”
As TheFormTool’s profile rose in recent months, we heard from more large firms about their needs and priorities. Nearly two-thirds of large law firms don’t use document assembly. Others are dissatisfied with the all-in costs of their current systems, which often must include installers, consultants, and what seems like constant needs to pay for endless upgrades.
Over time we’ve enhanced our software, particularly Doxserá, to answer even the most sophisticated needs of the largest firms and companies. As reflected in increasing frequencies of purchases by large firms, those efforts have been effective.
The one remaining area for significant improvement has been database access.
The ability to reach into an external database of client, product, employee, cost, or other relational information is the holy grail of document automation. With it companies can build systems to manage unlimited numbers of completely individualized decisions and documents. With Doxserá® DB they can do so easily and simply, devolving the power of computers from IT specialists into the hands of the front line employees. With Doxserá® DB, a user can customize one or a million documents, with one or a million variables each, for one or a million audiences, all with just a handful of clicks.
Where TheFormTool is an incredible tool for a single document, and Doxserá® magnifies that power to address scores of simultaneous needs, Doxserá® DB will expand that power a million-fold. Literally.
Customers contact us nearly daily, when will your database product be available?
Another thread in the decision process has been the comments from a number of directions that our software is underpriced, that its price point may be influencing customers to mentally put it in a “toy” category.
Finally, Dox DB may be particularly suited to support a new marketing initiative directed specifically at large firms, priced on a relationship basis. We’re currently building the infrastructure to manage “enterprise-level” sales and relationships.
These points have convinced us to price Dox DB differently and higher than our existing products. Since our costs other than marketing will not be appreciably higher, margins will expand substantially, just as pricing Doxserá as a subscription has increased our customer lifetime value by a factor of five above that of customers for TheFormTool PRO.
We expect Doxserá® DB to be popular with large firms and companies and others with needs to manage significant numbers of decisions, documents, events, or participants.
Marketing with premeditation and intent to dominate
TheFormTool, LLC is in the right place, at the right time, with the right product. Now it’s time to market, to toot the trumpet and honk the horn.
As the most basic tasks have become either complete or at least well-learned, and as the company has accumulated a few nearly priceless resources, TheFormTool, LLC is moving from a “do everything” operation to an organization that’s closely focused on two tasks in particular, marketing and customer service.
Customer service will continue to be a core activity
It has enormous value in both roles, offense and defense, building customer loyalty that can’t be bought while providing invaluable insight into market needs. While those who dream of competing with TFT charge customers $200 an hour for service calls, TFT pushes service aggressively with hundreds of “how-to” articles and videos, a dozen guides and user manuals, including both downloads and online versions, weekly drop-in help webinars, and fast access to live service professionals. The Service Center is the hub of our efforts; you can visit it here.
Pedal to the metal marketing
We’re delighted with our prospects in the solo and small law firm segment and are intensifying the number of marketing messages directed to that segment. But the time has come to expand, up, down, and sideways from that foundation.
Just as was the case with other technologies — the iPhone comes to mind — larger firms are slower to change than the smaller, more adaptive strivers. We’re excited that our software is being tested in two of the ten largest law firms in the world and typically in one or two of the top five firms in many of the forty countries around the world in which we do business. It’s a foothold to build on.
Washington Supreme Court orders family law documents be rewritten in “plain language”
Creating once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for TheFormTool, LLC.
This is a “greenfield” opportunity, where the 1800 lawyers in Washington who focus primarily on family law and the 2000 more who generate a portion of their incomes in the area will need new tools in place in 3Q2015 to power their productivity.
Last May TheFormTool, LLC committed to the Supreme Court’s Access to Justice consortium that it will completely automate their library of new documents in time for their introduction and mandatory use. We’ve already built the technology to allow lawyers to use intelligent documents on the very first day. It is Doxserá.
TheFormTool, LLC is positioned to take first-mover advantage and prepared to absolutely dominate this market, first in Washington then in the rest of the nation.
We’re already converting all 86 new forms, more than 40,000 words, into Doxserá-based intelligent documents. This will allow subscribing attorneys to be instantly productive with the new forms, some of which require lawyers to provide more than 400 variables and will otherwise need several hours to complete manually.
This is an extraordinarily rich opportunity: attorneys will have an immediate and critical need to embrace change. Any delay will cost them real dollars, big-time. This will also create an opportunity to up-charge our products and services on a subscription only basis.
The newly intelligent documents will be bundled only with Doxserá, already a subscription model.
Initial purchase of the documents, the base subscription, will be at a premium, but still amount to only pennies per page, an incredible bargain.
Document update services, though not required, will also add premium revenues.
This video was part of our presentation to the Access to Justice Pro Se executive steering committee in May, where the ten-minute presentation stretched to an hour before representatives of the Supreme Court, Washington State Bar Association, and Access to Justice.
Because Washington is a leader in the federally-mandated “plain language” effort, we believe TheFormTool, LLC can reap a first-mover benefit in the other states. We estimate this segment of the market at more than $8 billion in terms of legal revenues and that TFT could eliminate $1.1 billion of costs every year, benefiting both lawyers and their clients.
Dilijinz® — the beginning of the end
From the very beginning, we’ve had our eye on the ultimate goal, code named Dilijinz®, a nearly magical concept for converting information and intent into action.
In the second part of the video presentation to the Access to Justice group you saw the first public demonstration of how Dilijinz® could make a difference to thousands — millions — of legal consumers. That’s a great start, but we see Dilijinz growing across industries and markets, eventually enabling anyone anywhere to convert any kind of data into useful information, and to make information instantly and simply actionable.
The Plain Language Project gives us an opportunity to accelerate development and rollout of Dilijinz® in a near-perfect environment.
The need is intense.
The partners are credible.
The economics are completely new, to be set by the first mover, but the envelope is extraordinarily wide and the value proposition is awesome.
The attention from others will be intense.
The most difficult technology, the decision engine, is already built. It’s Doxserá®. The next step is to add a web interface. We will do that over the next few months.
With Doxserá DB, we will for the first time actively target the largest firms as potential clients. We’ll use new marketing channels, new business models, and new pricing to meet the expectations of firms that could potentially purchase 1000 or more licenses at a time.
At the same time, however, we are rolling out marketing efforts in five other industries, each with the potential to match or exceed the prospects in law.
We already have customers in each of these industries and are researching how they came upon our software, what influenced their decisions to purchase, and the uses they make of it.
The stories are fascinating:
- A hospital ER where the receptionist uses TheFormTool to get a head start on drug overdose triage even before a doctor becomes available.
- A financial firm that uses Doxserá to price and bid on multi-billion dollar pools of distressed mortgages, where a typo could be fatal.
- An environmental risk mitigation firm that uses TFT to assimilate engineers’ observations of toxicity, compares it with the appropriate regulatory scheme, and writes the site-specific 35 page report in less than an hour.
- Accounting firms that use TFT to write error-proof engagement letters and Dox to generate industry-specific audit interview questionnaires.
- Cities and counties that use TFT to create requests for proposals or to qualify potential vendors.
The list goes on almost endlessly. The market for intelligently and automatically converting intent and information into action is almost limitless.
We are exploiting it now and intend to dominate it in the future.
These are challenging goals, well worthy of the effort and risk.
It’s encouraging that the most difficult phases— developing and proving the software and customers’ judgement of its value — have already been accomplished.