Today we’re taking this design freedom one step further by adding a feature that we’ve been asked for quite a lot: the ability to line up your fields side by side on a form instead of stacking them vertically. So now, instead of taking up tons of vertical real estate, you can get the same information in only a teeny bit of space. Now, not only will your forms be beautiful and functional, they’ll also be economically designed.

The fact is, most of us in this tech-crazy, content consuming world have many, many different ways to store, save, and savor our information, and we can do it from just about anywhere with a decent wireless or WiFi signal. The mobile platforms we use daily (phone, tablet, laptop) might allow us to get more work done than ever before, because we can do our work in a cab, on a train, or standing in line waiting for our next gadget to be released. But what if we could do our work without subscribing to, say, 21 different applications? What if there was a simple system that we could use to get actual, bona fide work done without taking a voice memo to transcribe later on, or writing an email reminder to ourselves on a tiny keyboard?

Enter Adobe’s Document Services.

We’ve been working maniacally back here at the mothership to support a mobile mode of working that constitutes getting real work done: real contracts getting signed, real forms being filled and sent, real comments made on digital documents – no matter where you are. With Adobe’s Document Services, such as Adobe EchoSign, Adobe FormsCentral, and the Acrobat.com cloud storage system, you can hit the road with nothing but your favorite tablet and be sure that you won’t miss a deal for having left your laptop at home. Here’s just one example: Adobe EchoSign’s mobile app lets you upload documents and send them off to be signed; you can even use the Adobe Reader application to fill out a form and apply your signature to a PDF document before you send it off for another signature with the EchoSign app. Even better, your account activity is tracked even when you’re on a mobile device so no information about the transaction is lost; when you sign into your account from another computer, you’ll see all of your activity has been securely transcribed for your records.

Okay, great, you’re saying; signatures on mobile devices sound awesome. But what if you’ve got a 150-page PDF document that you’re reading or reviewing in Adobe Reader on your laptop, and you’ve suddenly got to leave the house before you’re done reading? No problem: save the document to your Acrobat.com account, and access it from your phone while you’re on the bus to wherever you’re going; when you open the document from Acrobat.com, your place has been saved and you can pick up right where you left off while in transit.

We know how fast things move these days, and we know how fast you’re moving, too; Adobe’s Document Services and mobile applications help you stay on top of things even when you’re only at your desk for 30 minutes a day. Download the free Adobe Reader app for iOS and Android devices, and see how much more efficient you become next time you’re sitting in a waiting room or in a coffee shop. We think you may even be able to delete some of those extra apps.

- Rebecca Staley

Here’s where you come in. From now until December 6, you can submit a nomination for Adobe EchoSign in the “Best Mobile App” category each day. All it takes is a single click, and you can do it once per day.

Hosted by GigaOm, VentureBeat and TechCrunch, the 2012 Crunchies Awards recognize the top apps, companies, innovations and innovators of the year. There’s only a few weeks left to vote, so help support your favorite mobile app for changing the game for contract deals in the cloud by voting for EchoSign today.

If you haven’t tried the EchoSign App for iOS, you can check it out here and start streamlining your business processes today!

That’s how we know that you’ll love this: Sign up for the new FormsCentral referral program. Tell your friends about FormsCentral. When your friends sign up for a new Plus account, you’ll earn a $20 gift card to either Starbucks or Amazon.com – one for each new sign-up. In fact, your newly subscribed friend can have a gift card too!

Does this sound good to you? Of course it does. You don’t even have to have a FormsCentral account to refer your friends; you just need to convince them that THEY should have FormsCentral accounts. Get started by joining our Referral Program here.

You’ll get your very own URL to share with your family and friends and coworkers, and every time someone uses that URL to sign up for a Plus account at FormsCentral, you (and that person!) will earn a $20 gift certificate.

Everyone wins, and everyone gets FormsCentral accounts. What a wonderful world.

- Rebecca Staley

The recently released Adobe-commissioned IDC white paper analyzed the current productivity challenges that IT and information workers face in today’s age of digital documents. The study also identifies opportunities for increasing information worker productivity.

With new and improved PDF editing, cloud services integration and enhanced tablet capabilities, Acrobat XI addresses today’s complex document challenges and the problems that compromise the productivity of information workers and IT departments.

]]> http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobat/hanyaloglu-cmswire-tweetjam/feed/ 0 http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobat/formscentral-team-subscriptions/ http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobat/formscentral-team-subscriptions/#comments Fri, 12 Oct 2012 16:47:30 +0000 Acrobat http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobat/?p=3103 You’re the one in your workgroup that starts all the trends: first, you introduced everyone to the yoga place down the street from the office; now a whole gaggle of your colleagues goes every day during the lunch hour. Then, you put your desk on blocks so you could stand instead of sit at your computer; now all the desks on your floor are adjustable.

Finally, you started using Adobe FormsCentral to create and share your online and PDF forms – and before you knew it, so was everyone else.

We’ve been hearing lots of stories just like this one, and so we’ve decided that we should make it easier and more affordable for you and your whole team to use FormsCentral.

Starting now, you can purchase FormsCentral subscriptions at a discounted rate if you purchase subscriptions for the whole team. Go ahead and set the trend!

For more on available bundles, pricing and info, check out the FormsCentral Team Subscription at https://www.acrobat.com/formscentral/en/pricing/team-pricing.html

- Rebecca Staley, Marketing Specialist, Acrobat Solutions

We’ve added several much-asked-for features that are aimed at making life easier for information workers like you. Acrobat XI features complete PDF editing and export to PowerPoint; touch-friendly capabilities on tablets; sophisticated web contracting with Adobe EchoSign; and forms creation, data collection and analysis with Adobe FormsCentral.

We’ve added features IT people have asked for, too:  seamless Microsoft Office and SharePoint integration, easy deployment, applications virtualization and robust application security to provide a low cost of ownership and sound return on investment.

The new Acrobat XI family includes Acrobat XI, Adobe Reader XI and newly integrated document services, Adobe FormsCentral and Adobe EchoSign.

It’s About Productivity

The explosion of digital documents in the workplace has created new challenges for productivity.  With Acrobat XI we’re taking on the issues that are dragging down individual and organizational productivity.

Each week, individual information workers spend half their time searching, filing, organizing, merging and editing comments, obtaining signatures, reviewing feedback and consolidating data, or collaborating with people outside their organizations. IT departments struggle with integrating and managing a diversity of platforms, devices and services, while trying to protect sensitive corporate IP and personal information.

Information workers are asking:  “How do I do what I was doing before, but work in this new environment?”

And organizations of all types are faced with adapting to this complexity, while driving their businesses forward, wondering: “How do I accelerate revenue, secure my IP and continue to evolve my workers capabilities to meet these new challenges?”

These productivity, collaboration, device and security issues have a significant impact on organizations. We’re calling this the Document Productivity Gap. The key to closing the gap is to recognize  that it is a set of compounding issues, multiple, little things that add up to have a big impact.

We asked IDC to take a closer look at these inefficiencies and the impact document-based challenges have on information workers and IT professionals.  One finding startled me. According to a recent global IDC white paper, sponsored by Adobe, the addressable impact of these inefficiencies on an organization of 1,000 employees is almost $16 million annually.  And those are the addressable gaps – not theoretical nirvana that is impossible to reach, but very realistic, tangible gaps that can be closed today. For example, if we could bridge the gap we could add 21.3 percent to an organization’s resources – or the equivalent of 213 employees for every 1,000 people at an organization.  Even if we recover just half of this productivity loss, it could equal hiring close to 100 new employees for a 1,000 person organization.  Imagine the impact of 100 new engineers, salespeople, marketers or IT professionals?

What “11” Means: Customers Weigh In

With the new release, we have made significant innovations across the desktop and the cloud to address the gap.  We wanted to:

• Enable information workers to unlock PDF content with comprehensive tools for both editing and content reuse.
• Accelerate document exchange using PDF and the web, forms data collection, review, approvals and eSignatures.
• Empower employees to be productive on the go with PDF on tablets and smartphones.
• Mitigate risk and lower IT costs with the most advanced document and application security.

It looks like we’ve succeeded. Acrobat XI has gotten high marks from customers that were in our beta program. These customers are typical of those dealing with the gap.

Security is high on the list for many. Mike Mann, release and deployment analyst at tax and finance consultancy, McGladrey, said, “Our client information is sensitive, so document security is critical. Acrobat XI offers advance document protection capabilities that are easier than ever for our staff to uniformly secure documents.”

Bill Lunsford of BBDO Atlanta likes the speed and efficiency he gets with the integrated services, especially EchoSign. “The new EchoSign features within Adobe Acrobat XI will streamline everyday tasks. These days, no one is going to stand at a fax machine to wait for approvals. Being able to electronically sign a PDF on cost estimates for a project will accelerate go-to-market schedules.”

Yvonne Willis, enterprise applications and project manager at Pillsbury Law, echoed that: “Security is the talk of the town. All of our clients expect the highest level of security, from our documents through our applications and IT environment. Acrobat XI provides key security enhancements that support both users and IT professionals.”

Regarding accelerating document exchange, Saul Morse, vice president of multichannel integration, Palio, said, “Acrobat XI now makes it even easier and faster to create PDF forms and to automatically distribute and collect information with new online forms services available within Acrobat XI.”

But BBDO Atlanta’s Lunsford summed up Acrobat XI best: “I leverage the heck out of Adobe Acrobat because I can cut down on the resources and my IT department loves me.”

Today is October 1. Mark it down as the day we close the gap.

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

Follow Kevin on Twitter: @LynchKevinM

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