“I think I have a lot of entrepreneurship in my blood and don’t mind putting in the long hours required to make something successful. Especially when I know how big it could get.”

Interview by Kevin Ohashi of KevinOhashi.com

Dan Puuri and Steve Person are the Founders of Docview.  Dan is the managing partner of Docview.  Dan has 21 years of experience working at the Lansing, Michigan Police Department.  His primary responsibility was being charge of Planning and Research and Crime Analysis.  Dan also holds a BA and MA in Criminal Justice.  Steve is the Sales Director of Docview.  Steve has 25 years experience working as a police officer where he achieved the rank of Lieutenant at the Lansing Michigan Police Department.  His expertise is in police, RMS, CAD, electronic crash and ticketing, mobile systems, Planning, Research, Crime Analysis, GIS, and organizational leadership.  Steve won awards from the Bureau of Justice Assistance and a Michigan Digital Government Development award for Best IT collaboration Among Organizations.

Docview works with law enforcement agencies to create digital images of traffic crash, crime and other reports.  Docview also manages and sells these reports to interested parties on behalf of the departments; often to insurance companies and law firms.  Docview solves the problem of physically going down to a records unit to request paper documents.  Instead, parties can simply visit their website and purchase the necessary reports directly and have them delivered instantly.  Docview helps police departments reduce operational costs and consumers get the information they need faster, cheaper and in a digital format.

MO:
Police related web services are not a popular niche in the tech media.  In fact, Docview is the first company I have heard of innovating in the space.  The two of you worked in the police sector for many years (over 41 years experience between the two of you!).  How did you decide to create Docview and what were the steps you took to get started from the idea to your first customer?

Dan:
I owned a paper records storage business and was looking to get into the digital storage of documents.  As I built the idea of being able to offer the solution to current clients Steve came up with the idea of streamlining the process of delivering paper crash reports to consumers.  Next we worked on the business model whereby law enforcement would retain all of their normal revenues from sales of reports, 90% of the work in records would be reduced while the insurance consumers would gain substantial value.  A soup to nuts approach that made everyone involved in the entire process happy.

Once agencies began to come on and loved the idea we knew we had a hit and formed “Docview”.

MO:
You’ve picked up endorsements from 19 police chiefs associations in the US.  Could you tell us about how you market Docview?  What has made it so successful?

Steve:
I knew how important it was to get the backing of associations such as the chiefs and records managers.  In order to get that we needed to provide a grant funding support of traffic safety initiatives within the associations.  This approach gave us positive recognition and further spread the word.  We also gained the value of the associations advertising for us within their states and to their members.

Dan:
This past year we engaged professional marketing assistance who took us to the next level of using social media like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.  We also produce a monthly newsletter and highlight all of the things going on throughout the US related to Docview and its customers.  We look at marketing as a critical ongoing informational push to our current and soon to be agencies.

MO:
What are the biggest challenges or hurdles for getting police departments to use Docview?

Steve:
Working with government agencies is unique and a challenge compared to the private sector in terms of the processes.  Even though we have streamlined the procurement of Docview into a one page setup form it usually takes several steps to gain approval including a records supervisor, their boss, the Chief or Sheriff, their attorney, the city or county IT, the city or county attorney and in some cases a council.  That’s a lot of eyes looking at a program that’s free…   The other challenge is trust.  Police and Sheriffs do not trust vendors so it certainly helps me having years on the job but not all of my sales staff does.  As I mentioned earlier joining and supporting the associations really helps smooth the way in many cases.

MO:
Neither of you have a background in business, where did you acquire the skills to operate and manage Docview?  What were some of the most challenging business problems you have faced with Docview and how did you overcome them?

Dan:
I developed a large records storage and shredding company so I had a lot of business experience before we started Docview.  I think I have a lot of entrepreneurship in my blood and don’t mind putting in the long hours required to make something successful.  Especially when I know how big it could get.  Plus I have had the opportunity to involve my three sons in the business now and watch them grow, gain business degrees, and get the first hand experience of facing challenges and learning to overcome them.

Steve:
My father was the Dean of Business at the Lansing Community College.  I grew up around successful business owners and entrepreneurs.  Even though I choose law enforcement as my initial career I had always wanted to own a business.  The Docview opportunity afforded me that late in my career.  Also, I spent some time on the tactical team and had this never quit mentality instilled in my mind.  I dig in, setup camp and stay until I succeed.  So take that mentality, my dream of owning a successful business, and pare it up with Dan’s ability to steer the ship in the right direction and you have the work ethic and persistence needed to push success forward.  Sprinkle in my abilities to lead organized and successful teams, in this case a sales force, and you end up with a powerful team working toward a common goal.

MO:
Docview started in 2004 and has been growing ever since.  How has your product changed over the years?  What sort of changes do you expect in the future?

Dan:
Paper really dominated the landscape back then.  Now agencies are all moving to electronic crash reporting.  This has created a lot of new costs to us in terms of interfacing but also saved us as we don’t need to index the reports manually.  As more agencies move to the electronic world, we are able to do more with their reports.  Such as redaction of certain fields such as social security numbers and juvenile information.  This would of have to been done manually in the past prior to scanning the reports to us.

We also are expanding our product lines to add more value to the law enforcement customer.  Things like online self reporting help agencies keep their police personnel on the road yet allow citizens to still report minor incidents which are not critical.

MO:
Docview seems like such an intuitive innovation for police departments.  Are police departments using the latest technology available in your opinion?  Do you think there is a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of services government agencies need but tech entrepreneurs are ignoring?

Steve:
We see ourselves more as process streamliners as opposed to innovators.  I saw firsthand how many processes are inside of modern law enforcement.  Most of it is mandated or necessary to prevent liability.  But I also see a lot of process that is simply done because it was performed by the person before the person that’s doing it now and so on.  We look at everything a records department handles and say why are you doing that?  If the answer is because it’s always been done this way then that’s the perfect time to go in and see if it can be done using technology at a cost that makes sense to the agency and the consumer of that process.  Trust me there are a lot of things similar to Docview that we can streamline.

Dan:
Law Enforcement agencies are all dealing with the substantial problem of funding.  They are precluded in many cases from using the very technology that would actually save them money.  These are the opportunities we look to offer solutions for in the form of the Docview business model where we can offer up a solution for free and pass on a reasonable cost to the consumer.  In terms of low hanging fruit technology absolutely.  However, many issues needing to be solved are kept well hidden because if implemented workers may be moved or eliminated.  Thus workers are not encouraged to bring up innovating ideas needing technical solutions.  This is a challenge in government today.