Adobe Enterprise Blog

Hi, I'm Will Cawthorne, Pre Sales within the Enterprise team in the UK and this is my virgin post on the Enterprise blog. So no pressure. J

I was recently asked to represent Adobe and present at a fantastic seminar run by a great partner in Denmark, Dafolo. The subject of the Seminar? 'Process Management in Practice'. I learnt two key things from this event:

1. The Danish language is hard. I mean really hard. Seriously.
2. That process management a seriously hot topic, not just in Denmark, but everywhere.

This first issue I can't do anything about. French at secondary school tested my cumbersome language skills to the limit; Danish is certainly beyond my capabilities.

The second issue however is something that Adobe can do a lot about. Adobe LiveCycle is at the cutting edge of where I believe process management is be going and is the key to fixing a lot of currently unsolved problems. Let me explain a bit more.

While in Denmark I had a conversation with a product manager from Scanjour, a partner of Dafolo who told me that in the past few months they had conducted a survey of 25 customer organisations within Denmark, 24 of whom stated that they intended to focus on make their processes more efficient in the coming year. 24 out of 25! The problem is that whilst many organisations have spent a not unsubstantial amount on Business Process Management or BPM, they have only scratched the surface of what I believe to be a complete process automation solution.

Whilst most BPM applications allow you to shift data or tasks from one person, department or queue to another, how many consider the most important element of the process; the customer or citizen? Adobe LiveCycle understands that there isn't a 'one size fits all' approach to process management and provides a complete suite of functionality that exploits the automation of processes and documents outside of the firewall.

Still have to use paper forms or require a physical signature? LiveCycle offers 2D barcodes for forms to enable the automatic capture of data from the form with no rekeying dramatically reducing processing time. Perhaps your processes can be changed by using electronic forms on or off line? LiveCycle Forms allows you to create forms and deliver them through the ubiquitous PDF and Flash technologies as well as conventional standards like HTML. How much time could you save your processes by pr-populating your forms with data you already know or automatically extracting it into your backend systems? Maybe you deal with 3^rd parties or partners. LiveCycle can give you Digital Signatures to speed up the signing off process and again reduce turnaround times. All of these features underpinned by LiveCycles own Process Automation features.

The point is, process management is more than just shifting data or tasks around organisations; it's about extending beyond the firewall. Using features like 2D barcodes, Digital Signatures, Forms even Collaboration Services to significantly shorten the process life cycles, and all of these features - and more - are part of Adobe LiveCycles box of tricks.

Indtil næste gang as they say in Denmark!

-   Will

This week we launched Connect 7.5 - the latest version of our web conferencing solution. Amongst the many new developments in this version was the announcement that the number of people who can participate on a single web conference has risen to a staggering 80,000 - the largest of any web conferencing provider.

This is a stadium-busting number of people which would fill some of largest venues in the world - a statistic which was noted by a number of observers.

This 'stadium' analogy got me thinking about just what 80,000 people really looks like and how you can put that into context.... Well fellow fact fans, after a little desk research (and the wonders of Google) I have some answers. You'll be interested to know that when packed to capacity - as it will no doubt be this weekend - Twickenham Stadium holds 80,000 fervent, rugby-loving enthusiasts. In addition to this the new Olympic stadium for London 2012 is expected to hold 80,000 people, willing on our Olympic hopefuls.

These stadiums are outperformed in the UK only by the new Wembley Stadium which holds 90,000 fans. They are all however, dwarfed in comparison by the Rungrado May Day Stadium in North Korea which holds a whopping 150,000 people, although I'd rather not speculate on what they watch there.

For non-sports fans the magic 80,000 number crops up elsewhere too... the population of The Isle Man - give or take a few - is 80,000 men, women and children. So if they wanted to, every resident of the Isle of Man could now join an Adobe Connect conference session and communicate, share ideas and collaborate with one another from the comfort of their PC.

Of course that's a fairly unlikely application for Connect.... But where the extended conferencing capacity will prove invaluable is for brining together large groups of individuals from multiple locations, for example large company webinars, distance learning lectures or large-scale corporate training sessions.

Connect 7.5 of course also has many other new features and benefits, including improved integration capabilities with other audio conferencing providers and enhancements to security and compliance functionality.

But for me though, the idea of an Acrobat web conference uniting the whole of the Isle of Man is still an irresistible proposition... watch this space!

Ben Forsaith

Hi,

A key piece of successful rich internet application (RIA) design  is ensuring that the application meets the needs of the end user.  User experience design therefore plays a key role in any RIA implementation.

George Neill is a member of Adobe's Technology and Experience Innovation group.  With over 20 years experience as a designer he has an extensive understanding of users' needs and behaviours, and a deep insight into how that understanding can be applied pragmatically to create innovative experiences that achieve clients' business objectives.

This months talk at the Enterprise RIA User Group is on the 18th November and will be given by George.  You can register for the free talk here.

Hope to see you there...

Ben Forsaith