Founded in 2001 and based just south of Salt Lake City, eFileCabinet has a pretty interesting story behind its initial debut.

Back in 2001, the mastermind who developed the company was and still is a practicing CPA who was getting tired of watching his fellow high-priced CPAs walk back and forth in front of his office pushing paper. He thought that there had to be a better way of being able to quickly access data. After doing a little digging, he quickly realized that while some programs did exist that could scan files electronically and then store them either on a hard drive or in the cloud, they were very expensive and cost-prohibitive. Thus, he decided to bring together a couple of programmers and put together a rudimentary program which started scanning the files and then storing them. After seeing his levels of both productivity and efficiency skyrocket, others in his space started asking for a copy of the solution. In spite of the fact that its founder didn’t set out to run a company and was simply just looking to fill a need, the business now has more than 70,000 users -- mostly based in the U.S. -- that leverage its three main products.

Currently, its target audience is mostly small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) looking to go paperless in order to become more efficient. Originally starting out in such verticals as accounting, financial services and insurance, eFileCabinet is now selling its suite to just about anybody who has a file cabinet and is looking to manage their data electronically.

With both the original solution and its SaaS-based sister version that can access key information in the cloud via an array of mobile devices, there is still a segment of the country that is just not comfortable putting all of their confidential data in the cloud. Luckily for those users, eFileCabinet powers both on-premises and cloud models. And if a client does ultimately decide to move to the cloud, the company has a migration path in place for those folks as well.

According to Matt Peterson, eFileCabinet president and CEO, the main benefits a company can see when leveraging eFileCabinet are time, space and money.  Peterson said, “People ask all the time who our competitors are, and we don’t really have any direct ones because we took a different spin on our offering than most. Our solution is much more than just sharing files—it’s about managing and archiving them with a sharing component. It acts as a central repository and can be seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Outlook.”

Image of Matthew Peterson

Further, expenses related to continuously having to buy tons of paper for any firm are reduced significantly and the time it takes to find an important file in a pinch is also cut down.

With users keeping eFileCabinet opened all day on their computer, “We look at that holistic approach as in your entire business is based on data and information, and our goal is to help you to capture and manage your data and then share it without any associated complexity,” Peterson added.

Looking ahead, eFileCabinet predicts that desktop document management systems are headed to the cloud.

“We are starting to get a lot of inquiries in regards to people wishing to go paperless and simply manage their documents. Our solution does just that and more; it allows them to be fully mobile,” Peterson said. “For example, we have a lot of accountants within our customer base and say they get a call from one of their clients who is at a car dealership wishing to purchase a vehicle and first must present the dealer with verification of income. Since in most cases this individual won’t have the documentation needed to drive off in their new set of wheels, the accountant can then tell them how to access it since it is already stored in a shared drawer in the cloud. This 24/7 accessibility is particularly appealing to SMBs who are never off a clock and have clients who demand a continuous stream of information.”

While the company currently has applications on both iOS and Android platforms, it could soon be unveiling a product that can be utilized by Windows Mobile devices. So be sure to keep on a close eye on eFileCabinet.