Our own Ali Hanyalogu recently participated in a CMSWire Tweet Jam on Social Business. You can find a recap of his take on the subject, along with the questions posed by the CMSWire team, in the Storify post below. Let us know your thoughts, and enjoy!
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
October 1 marks a major milestone for the Adobe Acrobat business. We’re launching Adobe Acrobat XI. Acrobat XI software with cloud services is a powerful new solution that rises to today’s complex document challenges for creating, consuming, sharing and securing PDF content across devices and platforms.
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:
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
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!
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