Better PDF for Business

The single greatest challenge to streamlining document-based processes in business is the fact that there are two incompatible dominant electronic document formats—Microsoft® Word and the Adobe portable document format, or PDF. Both of these formats are pervasive because they each deliver value within different phases of the document lifecycle—Microsoft Word is a superior tool for creating and sharing documents, while PDF has distinct advantages for the sharing and storing of documents. Microsoft Office provides millions of corporate, government and academic professionals a rich environment for document creation and collaborative authoring. Unfortunately the editable Microsoft Word file format is not well suited for electronic publishing and online document storage. On the other hand, PDF has expanded from its traditional roots as a design and pre-press tool to an electronic file sharing standard providing business users with a format that is well suited for the distribution, viewing and archiving of documents. Nearly every professional office environment uses Microsoft Word and PDF at different points during the lifecycle of a business document. The incompatibilities of these two dominant formats create inefficiencies. The pervasiveness of Microsoft Word (400 million) and Adobe Acrobat Reader (500 million) gives rise to the need for document management solutions that enable the seamless movement of documents between the two dominant formats. This may sound simple enough, but the many challenges to finding the right solution for your organization can be daunting.

Cost of Manual PDF Conversion

Average knowledge worker salary = $80,000

• 1/3 of productive time is spent recreating documents and information (Coopers &Lybrand);

• 5% of that time is tied to PDF productivity issues (ScanSoft estimate);

• Yields a PDF inefficiency cost of approximately $1,300 per year, per employee; and

• If PDF files could be automatically converted into Microsoft Word—complete with text, columns, tables and graphics—a 500-person organization could recover as much as $650K annually in lost labor.

Nearly all business documents are created and edited using Microsoft Word because it augments powerful authoring capabilities with efficient revision tools. With Microsoft Office, teams of people can easily participate in the creation of documents because changes and comments are tracked automatically. However, the recipient not only has the ability to change the document, they can also see hidden information within the source file itself. For example, the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word retains the draft's or drafts' text and data in the Word document, providing others with a way to learn perhaps more than the author really intended to share.

Sharing documents as PDF overcomes this issue because the conversion of Word and PowerPoint files into PDF "flattens" the document, stripping it of hidden and potentially sensitive information in the process. This is just one of the reasons that PDF has become a popular way to share and store business documents. Sharing electronic documents as PDF provides professional offices with other significant benefits. PDF documents are compact and easy to e-mail, can be universally viewed on the Web and print just as if they came from the original application. PDF files have compressed file sizes, password security, 128-bit encryption, and support watermarks, bookmarks, hyperlinks and more. PDF files also allow others to view and print a document without the need for the original authoring application. This is especially valuable for sharing documents from highly specialized applications, such as photo editing, layout, CAD, drawing, accounting and contact management. The portable document format (PDF) has indeed become the digital equivalent of physical paper. With over 500 million downloads of Adobe Reader, and more than 1,200 vendors delivering solutions based on the industry standard, PDF is certainly pervasive. PDF does things that you can't do easily—or at all—with the Microsoft Word (.doc) and other source formats.

• PDF files can be smaller than the original file. Converting PowerPoint and other formats into PDF often enables the sharing of documents that otherwise would be too big for e-mail servers that have size limits on attachments.

• PDF is less susceptible to viruses than other formats. Word and other applications can carry harmful viruses that are not as easily attached to a PDF file.

• PDF "flattens" a document. Converting to PDF removes hidden information contained in the source format, adding an important level of security to sensitive documents.

• PDF is not an editing format. PDF enables business documents and forms to be shared in a way that prohibits changes to the original.

• PDF documents look the same online as printed. Web pages will print differently from browser to browser and system to system.

• PDF documents can be secured more easily than other formats. The ubiquitous Adobe Reader and growing number of third-party PDF products enable the use of secure PDF documents.

• PDF allows others to view documents without needing the authoring application. While Word, Excel and PowerPoint are ubiquitous, drawing, CAD, accounting and other specialized applications are not. Sharing as PDF removes the dependency of the recipient to have, and know how to use, specialized applications.

What Business Wants in PDF

ScanSoft conducted a survey of business professionals, and found that 44% felt that being able to create PDF files from Microsoft Office was "extremely important," with an additional 28% saying that it was "important." In the same survey, 33% felt that creating PDF files from other PC applications was extremely important, with an additional 34% stating that it was important. If more than 60% of business professionals surveyed have a strong need for creating PDF, why are fewer than 10% of business desktops empowered with the ability to create PDF files? In the survey, ScanSoft discovered that business users wanted a solution that has the price, features and performance designed specifically for office professionals. Existing solutions, including Adobe Acrobat Standard ($299) and Adobe Acrobat Professional ($449), had robust features needed by design professionals, and lacked features needed by business, such as converting PDF into fully formatted Microsoft Word documents. Fortunately, the file format for PDF is an open standard, meaning that companies that want to develop PDF solutions independent of Adobe can do so. This has led to an ever-increasing number of PDF products; many designed specifically for professional office environments and priced to enable PDF on every business desktop.

Turn Your Paper into Gold

Using paper is a real drag—one that reduces personal productivity, increases operating costs and inhibits an organization's ability to excel. This, of course, is not news. Industry experts have told us for more than 10 years that billions of dollars are spent each year manually routing, storing and managing paper-based processes. Over those same 10 years we have seen a growing number of organizations leverage dedicated production document capture systems to process contacts, loan applications and invoices. But what can be done about the larger problem? What can be done to automate the tons of paper used by every office worker, in every office, every day? Until recently, significant technology barriers have made it impractical for organizations to put paper document routing at the fingertips of every office worker. The need to acquire and connect scanning devices to each worker desktop was costly, limiting access to desktop scanning to specific departments or job functions. Some organizations tried to apply comprehensive distributed production capture products to address the problem, but quickly found that the cost of training every office worker in complex "batch classification" and "metadata" constructs made the proposed solution unworkable. In the mid 1990s, advances in network infrastructure (the Internet), desktop clients (browsers) and application connectivity (TCP/IP) combined to make digital document sharing a universal productivity tool—via e-mail, the Web and more. A parallel can be drawn today in technologies and products that have come together to finally allow every organization to "turn paper into gold." These include advances in:

1. Network infrastructure

• Universal scanning via network multifunction devices

• One-button "Scan-to-Desktop"

2. Desktop clients

• Easy-to-use office productivity applications, integrated with Microsoft Office

• Paper and PDF document conversion solutions—for document repurposing, OCR indexing or archiving

• PDF-based document annotation and assembly tools

3. Application Connectivity

• Drag & drop document routing—to people, applications and devices

• XML data sharing

• Affordable document management

Digital copiers and networked multifunction devices—yes the ones you already own—deliver the power of document capture to every worker. Easy to use and affordable desktop applications, such as ScanSoft PaperPort and OmniPage, add the desktop capabilities needed to make scanning easy and productive, while Microsoft Office and PDF provide the formats needed for collaboration, publishing and archiving. The paperless office has arrived.

ScanSoft Solutions

Challenge #1

Address the historical incompatibility between the two leading electronic document standards, Microsoft Word and PDF, which causes unnecessary and costly manual re-keying of information and slows down the document creation process.

ScanSoft solution #1

PDF Converter, a utility created through a collaboration between ScanSoft and Microsoft that instantly converts existing PDF files into fully formatted Microsoft Word documents, forms and Excel spreadsheets. Challenge #2

Deliver the ability to create PDF files to every business desktop—affordably.

ScanSoft solution #2

ScanSoft PDF Create! is the fast and reliable PDF way to enable PDF creation from any PC application, with the price, features and performance that allow it to put the power of PDF on every business desktop.

Challenge #3

Replace manual paper processes with electronic documents—but without the expense and complexity usually associated with paperless systems.

ScanSoft solution #3

ScanSoft PDF Converter Professional is a complete solution for creating, converting and editing PDF documents. It enables form filling, document assembly and annotation—as well as digital signatures.

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ScanSoft Inc. is a publicly traded company (Nasdaq: SSFT) with offices around the world. With nearly 1,100 employees, ScanSoft is the market-leading supplier of speech and imaging solutions that are used to automate a wide range of manual processes—increasing productivity, reducing costs and improving customer service.