April 30, 2012 Old Saint Paul’s to Receive Stair Lift from Software Pioneer

LONG BEACH, CA (Laserfiche)—April 30, 2012—When Nien-Ling Wacker, CEO of Laserfiche, visited Old St. Paul’s Scottish Episcopal Church in Edinburgh last year and saw congregants being carried up the steep outdoor steps to attend service, she started thinking about people helping people.

The thoughts and images stuck with her, and a few weeks later, Wacker found herself back home in Long Beach, CA, reflecting on the life of Robert “Bob” Gilchrist, a native Scot who helped set her company on the path to success.

“We envisioned software that served as an ‘auxiliary brain,’ providing secure storage and instant retrieval of documents,” Wacker said. “Bob’s vision for our company was such a radical departure from where we were. With his wise advice, he helped us make the paperless office a reality.”

Gilchrist, a business coach for high-tech entrepreneurs, first directed Wacker to stop selling hardware and software and focus just on developing the company’s promising document management software. Next, he suggested the company develop a value added reseller (VAR) channel to distribute, install and service that software. The VAR channel permits Laserfiche to sell software through a global network of resellers that interact directly with customers, offering a personal touch in a highly competitive, multi-billion-dollar industry.

It took a few years—and four million Laserfiche users on five continents—before Wacker would come to fully appreciate Gilchrist’s revolutionary advice. Yet it was more time than Gilchrist had. He died in 1996 at the age of 57, leaving Wacker to think about him from time to time as she watched the company he played an integral role in building continue expanding beyond what either of them ever envisioned. A heart transplant and the subsequent amputation of both legs stalled Gilchrist’s own meteoric career path, but never affected the optimism which Wacker credits as much as his entrepreneurial insight for building her corporation.

On April 30, Wacker will join Edinburgh-based Laserfiche reseller Tom Flockhart of Capital Solutions to present Old Saint Paul’s with a £40,000 (US$64,000) gift that will allow the 200-year-old church to install a platform chair lift that will help those who need it—just as Gilchrist helped a company that needed it some 20 years ago.

“When Bob was alive we still weren’t in a position to fully understand or appreciate how much his guidance and friendship meant to us and our company,” Wacker said. “We’re hoping now, that in its own small way, this gift lets people reflect a bit on Bob and the importance of helping others.”

Since 1987, Laserfiche has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—use Laserfiche® software to streamline document, records and business process management.

Laserfiche distributes its software through a worldwide network of value-added resellers (VARs), who tailor solutions to clients’ individual needs. The Laserfiche VAR program has received the Five-Star Rating from Computer Reseller News/VARBusiness magazine.

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