US forms processing software developer Cardiff Software Inc last week opened a European headquarters in the UK, adding that it will be an office for the German-speaking markets in September as part of its bid for market leadership in Europe.

The privately held San Marcos, California-based company recently raised some $4m in funding from Boston-based venture capitalists Harbor Vest Partners, partly for its European expansion plans and partly for further technological development. It reckons to have a share of around 65%, but clearly trails behind Swedish competitor ReadSoft AB in European markets, where it has to date worked through distributors.

However, Cardiff believes its TELEform product line, which ranges from desktop versions up to the enterprise, positions it well to challenge its Helsingborg-based rival, said its president Dennis Clerke. In addition, said its vice-president of marketing, Robert Weideman, we’re the first vendor to attach data transaction processing from the internet to our product offering.

Having gained a dominant position in forms input from paper (faxed or scanned in), Cardiff presently has its sights on the growing market for digital documents. Its first offering in this space was a module launched late last year, called TELEform Internet, and designed to be bolted onto the largest of Cardiff’s three product platforms, TELEform Elite-Enterprise. This product enables forms in HTML to be processed, and this year Cardiff has added another module for processing PDF documents called TELEform PDF+Forms.

The latter product also inaugurated the company’s strategic alliance with Adobe Systems Inc, whose Acrobat version 4.0 the two are marketing in conjunction with the module to enable the design and automated processing of digital forms, explained Clerke.

Next on the agenda is a module for data capture from mobile devices, called TELEform Digital Ink. This product is scheduled for launch in September, timed to coincide with the next release of the CrossPad digital notepad from another Cardiff partner, Cross Pen Computing Group, a division of A.T. Cross Co Inc.

Clerke said that Cardiff, which was founded in 1991, should register revenue of around $20m this year, up 65% from 1998. It is aiming to float on Nasdaq in the latter part of 2000.