After a series of losses, things appear to be looking up again at document management company FileNet Corp, which now says it expects to see higher revenues and earnings for its fourth quarter, ending December 31 1997. Revenues are expected to be up 5% to approximately $76m, from $72.6m last time, with income expected to be $5.8m, or 36 cents per share, compared with $3.2m or 20 cents a share in the fourh quarter of 1996. FileNet, which reported nine month net losses of $11.5m last October, says that its international sales, weak in the first half of the year, are now recovering following the re-structuring last August (CI No 3,235). But FileNet’s profitability has also been pulled down by its two major acquisitions in recent years, Saros Corp in 1996 (CI No 2,883) and Watermark Corp in 1995 (CI No 2,710). That left the company with a major integration task between Watermark’s imaging and scanning software, the Saros Document Manager, and its own workflow product line. Filemark says it has now done that work with the launch of Panagon IDM Desktop, a new set of component software previously known under the codename Mendocino. Using Microsoft Corp’s COM component object model technology, the Panagon suite of integrated document management software runs on Windows-based desktops or web clients so that users can access any document from the desktop effectively unifying not only FileNet’s own diverse products but providing access to 200 document formats, including images, text, video and fax. These can then be routed using FileNet’s document-centric graphical workflow tools. The tool is testing at some customer sites now, but is due to ship finally in February, when it will be available in English, French and German, with other language support to follow. Client/server versions are expected to cost between $300 and $800 per user, depending on user volumes. FileNet contiinues to work on the back-end integration of its separate product lines, with further announcements due this year.
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