In my talks with Adobe EchoSign customers, I hear first hand how our web contracting and eSignature solution is changing the game. Just like video conferencing’s infiltration into business years ago, signing and managing contracts online is becoming second nature to business processes and companies are realizing the benefits.

I’ll be moderating a panel at Salesforce Dreamforce this year titled “Its 2012, Shouldn’t You be Contracting Like it Is?” Experts from Groupon, Electronic Arts, SolarCity and Time Warner Cable will share lessons learned and best practices around web contracting, how their companies have increased ROI in Salesforce and turned their businesses into competitive sales machines using Adobe EchoSign.  Here are the details:

Session: “Its 2012, Shouldn’t You be Contracting Like it Is?”

Date/Time: September 18 from 12:30pm – 1:30pm.

Venue: San Francisco Marriott Marquis

Room: Golden Gate A

Panelists: Groupon, Electronic Arts, Solar City and Time Warner Cable

For more updates on EchoSign at Dreamforce 2012, keep an eye on our blog and the Acrobat, EchoSign and Chatter Twitter handles (#df12).

We’ve entered into a new age of doing business in the cloud and web contracting is playing an important role in accelerating this transformation.

Kevin M. Lynch, SVP and GM, Acrobat and Document Services, Adobe

Twitter: @LynchKevinM

Increasing cyber attacks have led to mounting concern that unsecure government documents could be altered or falsified. To help counter these attacks, the National Information Security Center in Japan partnered with Adobe Acrobat to create support for electronic signatures using the Japanese Government Public Key Infrastructure (GPKI).

The main mission of NISC is to protect the government, but the organization’s other overall mission is to improve the entire security level of Japan. As the first step for protecting electronic documents, NISC implemented PDF as the standard format for electronic documents. “We prefer not to rely upon technology provided by one specific company, but we had no problems supporting the use of PDF files since they are the international standard ISO 32000-1,” says NISC.

NISC believed that the ideal solution would use the existing Japanese Government Public Key Infrastructure (GPKI) for handling certificates. Adobe formed a task force with NISC to work on support for GPKI and publish government official signatures to the Adobe Approved Trust List (AATL). This enables users of Adobe Acrobat X and Reader X to automatically and easily verify the electronic signatures of government officials on PDF files using the GPKI government official certificates.

“Thanks to cooperation from Adobe, we were able to effectively deploy GPKI, which enabled us to increase efficiency without raising costs,” says NISC. “With electronic signatures, we can thwart the intentions of attackers attempting to pull off spoofing attacks.”

Read more about this implementation here:

Akiko Yamamoto, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Acrobat Solutions

It’s that time of the year, the end of summer. The kids are going back to school, traffic is picking up on the freeways, and you’ve watched too many summer blockbusters. But before the weather gets chilly, why don’t you host one more big party for your friends and family to celebrate?

Take our Adobe FormsCentral End of Summer Quiz to find out what kind of party suits you the best. Should you host a pool party, or a garden party? Take our quiz to find out.

And be sure to get our 4 FREE exclusive FormsCentral templates at the end of our quiz, as our way of saying thanks. With Adobe FormsCentral, build forms and gather data faster.

Take our End of Summer Quiz now! 

At BBDO Atlanta, the volumes of documents and assets we manage are pretty staggering. We house one of the largest print production centers in Omnicom’s global network of advertising agencies, so we are responsible for some very visible advertising for big-name clients. Every year, we produce between 18,000 and 20,000 highly refined ad mechanicals — creating and managing over 5,000 assets monthly.

Each ad mechanical we produce is a PDF document that moves through our workflow from start to finish. The entire production cycle is documented using Adobe Acrobat.  We time-stamp, log, and track production responsibilities and review cycles. Review cycles go faster as team members no longer have to decipher handwriting and can layer comments together within the file.

All of our print coordinators then run the files associated with an ad through a customized Acrobat preflight process that vets the mechanical for the requirements of hundreds of different publications. Everything is checked in great detail—ink density, dots per inch, missing fonts—you name it.

Our customized workflow is great because it allows us to take advantage of the out-of-the-box functionality of Acrobat   yet combine it with our own in-house production system. It gives us an enterprise-scale solution at low cost of ownership. Our users have more control and our IT professionals worry less about inadvertent errors.

Now, four print coordinators handle the workflow that previously required dozens of people working multiple shifts. We’ve eliminated the use of third-party software for checking final specifications, boosted the degree of quality assurance and predictability, and we’re getting closer to a paperless environment.

The main competitive differentiator for us is this turnkey automated workflow. It delivers highly repeatable, flexible, trusted outcomes that keep our clients happy. It also provides us with a strong sense of confidence and pride about our production services.

Adobe Acrobat brings a Zen approach to our project workflow; managing the job is easier and our employees are more productive.

Bill Lunsford, DBA, Graphics Manager, BBDO

Read the full story here: http://adobe.ly/O8XiSH

Do you create forms in Adobe FormsCentral that make you proud? Forms that look good, that ask exactly the right questions, that just seem like the perfect forms? Do you ever wish you could share these awesomely awesome forms with the rest of the world?

Well, wish no more: AcrobatUsers.com now has a FormsCentral template exchange, which allows you to upload your designs and share them with other users at the Acrobat User Community. If you don’t make forms of your own, but want to use someone else’s awesomely awesome forms, you can browse through, download and use FormsCentral templates that others have uploaded, and rate or comment on these templates.

The template exchange is a great way to see what others are doing with FormsCentral and to share your work with the FormsCentral community. Go check it out today to start uploading your templates and browsing those that have been shared by others. If you’re interested in learning how to save your forms as templates, take a look at this FormsCentral video.

-    Rebecca Staley, Marketing Specialist, Acrobat Solutions

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about some Adobe Acrobat customers who are taking advantage of the Adobe enterprise license agreement (ELA) and standardizing on Acrobat across their organizations. Because the ELA simplifies the entire licensing process they save time and money. And by standardizing on Acrobat across their companies they’re making deployment, updates, maintenance, and integration easier.

Two large government organizations are also taking advantage the ELA and standardizing on Acrobat. The U.S. Air Force has recently selected Acrobat X Professional as its standard, enterprise-wide PDF software. Using the premier PDF solution from Adobe, the Air Force can create higher-quality content while driving tighter collaboration and productivity, greater security and lower costs across the entire organization.

The Air Force cited several factors that led to adopting Adobe Acrobat as its PDF solution, with a three-year enterprise agreement, covering 600,000 seats. In addition to PDF creation capabilities, Adobe Acrobat delivers peace of mind by helping eliminate compatibility and other issues that drain valuable resources. Adobe Acrobat enables better software asset management and improved patch and update processes, which significantly reduces the effort and cost required to keep systems up-to-date.

Another large government agency, which I can’t name, entered into an ELA with Adobe recently, as well. The department consolidated software licenses for the most current versions of Acrobat X as well as LiveCycle Enterprise Suite, and Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection. They now have a standard PDF solution nationwide.

The ELA enables the department to consolidate more than 400 separate purchase orders into just a handful of annual purchases or renewals. The ELA saves a lot of time and helps to ensure that the latest software is deployed to employees needing it in a timely manner. In addition, the agreement positions the department to secure the lowest, most consistent price for the latest software and technology, creating massive savings year after year.

Using the ELA to deploy PDF solutions across your organization is a smart move and you’d be in good company. Check it out.

Mark Grilli, senior director of Acrobat Solutions product marketing