For 30 years, Documentus – formerly under the name of Reisswolf known – the German market leader in the document destruction. However, what about the company, if the digitization displaces the paper from the everyday life?
Documentos-CEO Walter Pass Man
Around lunch time the shredder running at full speed. Black Truck driving on the courtyard of the medium-sized company Documentus on the edge of the city of Cologne, each of them carries eight tons of paper in the belly. Patient records or court documents that contain sensitive data and not simply in the nearest waste bin is tilted may be.
Walter Mann, Executive Director of Documentus Cologne, pulls a yellow safety vest over the Jacket. To enter the shredder hall, he has to face in a narrow glass tube, the safety lock. Everything is hermetically sealed, so that no scrap of paper is lost. On long conveyor belts, mountains of files to run through the hall, at the other end they come out in confetti size, are pressed to bales of hay large square stone and a neighboring stacked. The certificate to the customer to get confirmed that all privacy was destroyed.
Up to 100 tons of paper can be shredded, the plant in Cologne, every day, about 70 people are employed here. All over Germany there are 18 such locations. Together, they shred in the year, over 100,000 tons of paper.
Reger container handling when shredding
“We live by the paper, but it will be less”
At the moment it’s going well for the shredder, tell the passport man. The reason is that The more the company can digitize, the more paper want to get rid of. At the same time, digitisation also means, however, The classic shredder business has an expiration date. Pass the man says: “We live in that paper, but we see on the horizon that it will be less.” The initial skepticism of companies to store their data in the Cloud, to can. And the policy is pushing under the slogan of E-Governance, digitalisation of the public administration of the tax Declaration on the Internet to electronic patient records.
Therefore, the Documentus-group has initiated a radical change. The company now offers a self-digitization. In addition to the destruction and archiving of files Documentus also handles the scanning of documents. With customers to develop bespoke solutions to be designed, such as contracts, and your post paperless can accomplish. At the Moment the digitization at Documentus Cologne, make according to the passport man, about 15 percent of the business – the shredding about half, 35 per cent of the archiving. In the long term, but the Digitisation of services should more than offset the expected decline in the paper business.
Every employee was a rice wolf
With the new business areas also a new Name was needed. From the previous brand rice wolf 2017 Documentus was. Not an easy decision, because as the German market leader in terms of destruction of rice wolf had become in 30 years a real Institution. “Everywhere, where our employees and Trucks got there, it was said, because of the rice the wolf is coming,” says Passmann. “That was our identity.” But the brand is “stretchy”. Rice wolf sounds after destruction, not to the archiving and digitization.
In the shredder! Of the documents, only scraps of Paper left over
To what misunderstandings this caused in part, pass experienced man himself. As of 2009, the Cologne city archive caved in, has been entrusted to the company reisswolf, to bring the historical documents to digitize.
As the staff came to the archives to pick up, so pass man, told a fire Department have said to man: “We save all the documents and then you come with rice wolf in the shredder.”
Pass man has, therefore, actively for the name change. But there were also opponents. At the end of the trademark owner and a couple of sites have not come. That this was possible, is a complex Franchise structure of the company. The regional locations are independent, mostly owner-managed businesses. Rice wolf exists now with a couple of operations and is today one of the biggest competitors of Documentus.
The birth of data protection
The history of the shredder company began in the 1980s in Hamburg, and is inextricably linked with the birth of data protection. In 1977 the Federal government adopted the first version of the Federal data protection act. According to the census ruling of the Federal constitutional court had to be amended, 1990, the amended law came into force.
The merchant from Hamburg, Volker Henning recognized the potential of the new rules. Mass files could not ill unload the homes, administrations and companies on the garbage dump, but they had to properly destroy it. Henning, even in the disposal of waste paper and business waste – started, other disposal companies to recruit. In the first fiscal year, 1986, he already had four partners, which is destroyed under the rice-wolf-Logo files. In 1989, it was officially founded reisswolf Deutschland GmbH. There are now in over 20 countries, rice the wolf offshoot.
Documentus is limited to the German market. The regional anchoring means pass man, was particularly important: No long trails, and a close relationship to the customer. That Documentus knows the needs of the customers in terms of privacy as well, sees pass a man as a Chance to be in the area of digitization start. Between 35,000 to 40,000 customers Documentus in the whole of Germany. Especially medium-sized companies, but also large banks and insurers, hospitals, state and local governments. “And take us, as data protection was,” says Passmann. “As long as the privacy has any meaning, we also have a right to exist.”
Archive of Documentus – 250 kilometers of files store
Today, a truck driver, in the morning IT specialists
Shred in style – in this market, three companies with Documentus share in Germany at the top. The market for digitization is a different Terrain. Here are a variety of innovative Start-Ups are active, alongside international players such as Google and Amazon. Pass man knows that Documentus can no longer catch up the Know-how of this provider. He therefore relies on partnerships. Together with the Telekom Documentus has, for example, developed a method that allows it, contracts, legal secure by digital signature to complete. Pass man explained: We work only with partners that have their data centers in Germany or the EU, where the European data protection basic regulation applies. “Everything in the direction of the United States or India, for us, is a No-Go.”
The farewell from the name rice-wolf was for the company only the first step in a paperless world. Eventually, the shredder is no longer needed, the hall with the pressed Confetti-bales and the archive with the 250 kilometers of files. “Today, I be a truck driver, but in a few years, it will IT, more likely, specialists and consultants,” says Passmann.
Still, he could stand in front of the workforce and with Conviction say: “Everything what we change now, we do, so that your jobs stay as long as possible.”