DOCUMENT IMAGING SOLUTIONS

WHI TE PAPER
Making PDF Work in the Ofce
Create, Convert, Collaborate and Securely Share PDF Files
White Paper | Making PDF Work in the Office White Paper | Making PDF Work in the Office
3 2012 Nuance Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. 2 2012 Nuance Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary .......................................................................................................................... 2
The Original Portable Document ...................................................................................................... 3
PDF for Business .............................................................................................................................. 3
Innovations in PDF Technology ......................................................................................................... 4
Choosing the Best PDF Solution ...................................................................................................... 6
The Bottom Line ............................................................................................................................... 7
Executive Summary
Since its debut in the early 1990s, the PDF format has become the de facto standard for electronic
documents. While engineers, publishers, and printers were the earliest adopters and pushed the
format to its technical limits with rich media and 3-D content, the general ofce worker now comprises
the PDF-using majority.
Despite this shift in use, most business PDF solutions include text and graphics, and very little else.
The typical business user needs to view PDFs, edit/update existing PDFs, create PDFs from paper
or electronic source les, and in some cases, control security settings. Additionally, the use of PDF
documents for forms, regulatory compliance, and electronic archives is expanding the need for
knowledge workers to digitally sign PDFs. In short, the requirements around PDF in the ofce have
evolved from simply enabling users to view and share this document format to letting every user utilize
the PDF format in their everyday document processes, just like .DOC, .XLS and .PPT les.
Enterprise decision makers need to nd cost-effective, complete solutions that enable knowledge
workers to create, edit, and convert PDFs to Microsoft

Ofce les. Furthermore, PDF software is

becoming a requirement for every desktop, resulting in a need for exible licensing programs akin to
Microsoft Ofce that can help an organization attain predictable, controlled budgeting goals. The best
vendors also offer support, knowledge base self-help on the web, and enterprise deployment tools
to maximize an IT departments efciency in managing the ow of business-critical PDF documents
throughout the company.
The Original Portable Document
Even a visionary such as Adobe

co-founder John Warnock couldnt have predicted how his idea of

the PDF le format would become the standard for electronic documents in todays world. In 1991, his
team unveiled what was then called IPS (Interchange PostScript). It became PDF (Portable Document
Format) two years later in Acrobat

1.0.
Making PDF an open standard in the 1990s opened the door for any company to create powerful,
affordable PDF applications designed with the needs of various types of business users in mind. This
helped pave the way for the adoption of PDF as an electronic document standard within the walls of
private corporations, government agencies, and universities around the world.
PDF for Business
What always made PDF a exible, powerful format still holds true: it can be viewed and searched
onscreen in the same layout as it appears on paper. Or it can be printed. And in todays world, users
rely on the PDF format to save and access stored documents in the Cloud without concern that the
document will look different as it moves from the desktop to the cloud to smart phones and tablets.
PDF is the only le format that truly serves these purposes. In the business world, PDF is the electronic
standard in which data lives. Contracts, catalogs, marketing materials, correspondence, order forms,
proposals and nancial reports are just a few types of business-critical documents that become PDFs
during their lifecycle.
A Coopers & Lybrand study determined that knowledge workers devote a full third of their productive
time re-creating documents and information, and in its own research, Nuance determined that 5% of that
time is dedicated to particular PDF challenges, such as difculty accessing content stuck in PDFs. Using
these numbers, Nuance estimates that a 500-person organization could recover as much as $650,000
annually in knowledge-worker labor costs by giving staff an accurate, easy-to-use PDF solution.
WHAT THE AVERAGE KNOWLEDGE WORKER NEEDS
Every ofce worker has a PDF viewer available to them. The ability to view PDFs, however, does not lead
to more productive workers. At a minimum, most workers require at least the basic tools to create and
edit PDFs. This saves time and money, and it even conserves natural resources. Instead of wasting time,
paper, and postage/courier fees by mailing traditional paper communications, it is more productive to
click save as PDF in a word processor, email the resulting le, and move on to the next task.
Examining the typical organization, department-specic PDF needs can include:
Human Resources creates electronic forms such as vacation requisitions, benets
administration, and employee review documents. Staffers also need a straightforward
paper-to-PDF conversion (including paper forms to llable PDFs) tool that doesnt
require programming skills.
Sales creates documents including proposals, offer sheets, and order forms. Any
document too complicated for email can be created and delivered more efciently with
PDF. Sales staffers also need conversion and editing tools to quickly extract content
from PDFs and remix it into new documents. Sales also relies on cloud technology to
store and access important documents on the go.
White Paper | Making PDF Work in the Office White Paper | Making PDF Work in the Office
5 2012 Nuance Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. 4 2012 Nuance Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Marketing uses PDF to create robust collateral material incorporating multimedia
elements such as video and audio, and can assemble PDF Portfolios for press kits,
catalogs, and presentations.
Engineering circulates its designs for review as PDFs, because their renderings
are created in design applications whose proprietary le formats cant be viewed on
customers and colleagues computers.
IT manages large numbers of desktop installations of PDF tools deployed via servers.
They need network tools and connectivity to popular document management systems
such as Interwoven and Microsoft SharePoint. Where Acrobat and Reader are
installed, this department also must contend with the applications large size and plug-
in architecture, constant polling for being the default software on end-users machines,
as well as contacting Adobe for updates and cross-pollinating into button bars in other
applications (Microsoft Word, for example).
Finance and Legal trafc heavily in invoices, purchase orders, contracts, and
transcriptions, passing them among customers, courts, banks, and regulatory
authorities. They need creation toolsincluding Bates Stamping for ofcial records
and conversion tools to gain access to legacy PDFs for which the original les have
been lost. Legal also needs redaction, or the ability to automatically block out data from
certain documents.
Records Management takes steps to create searchable electronic archives of
documents from all of the above departments. Those PDFs can remain accessible
to the parties who need to see them. This helps the organization to meet regulatory
mandates and saves warehouse space to boot.
Innovations in PDF Technology
PDF software has kept pace in a business world that requires global collaboration, 24/7 access to
vital information, and solutions that appeal to an increasingly mobile workforce.
For example, to take advantage of all the benets of Cloud technology, PDF solutions must be able
to connect workers to the cloud by enabling them to save documents to todays most popular cloud
services such as Evernote

, Dropbox

, and more. With this anytime-anywhere access to their most

important documents using the web or their own mobile devices, employees can improve productivity,
increase access to critical information, and accelerate the overall speed of business.
Additional available PDF functionality now includes advanced editing capabilities that convert and
display documents as a fully editable document. This functionality enables more efcient editing using
word processor-like features. It also helps users save steps related to converting, saving, and opening
les in a word-processing application especially if users plan on re-creating it as a PDF anyway.
Other new enhancements even include integrated speech recognition, enabling users to create notes
quickly and accurately in PDF les by simply speaking their thoughts instead of using a keyboard.
PDF SOFTWARE CHOICES
While many knowledge workers would like to enjoy the benets of PDFa secure electronic document
format convenient for sharing informationthe cost of full-featured PDF software remains a barrier to
widespread PDF use at many corporate, government, and educational sites, especially because the
cost includes a lot of features the average knowledge worker does not use.
There are a variety of tools to select from, and determining the right tool is largely dependent on what
feature set is most important to business users. Options range from simple viewing and PDF creation
to advanced conversion and editing. A good rule of thumb to use is the more prevalent that PDF usage
is in your business, the more robust tools should be deployed.
MAJOR CATEGORIES OF PDF SOLUTIONS
Readers. Hundreds of millions of users download and install Adobe Reader because it is free, stable,
and works across platforms (even many varieties of Linux

), in many languages. PDF Readers do just

that allow workers to open and read PDFs. Some may allow minor mark-up capabilities and the
ability to save and print les. Adobe Reader comes preinstalled as the default PDF viewer on many
desktop and laptop computers.
Creation-only. Users who just want to create PDFs from electronic les have choices that typically
reside with the printer drivers at the operating system level. Most of these do not offer ne control over
le size or security settings (such as password protection and do not allow printing) that knowledge
workers typically need. More full-edged PDF creator applications such as Nuance PDF Create address
these needs, and also offer robust tools to make searchable PDFs out of scanned paper documents.
Viewer/Editors: These tools enable PDF editing and allow for adding and updating text and remixing
of pages, as well as adding and subtracting pages and batch conversion. While other PDF editing
programs exist, only Adobe Acrobat and Nuance eCopy

PDF Pro Ofce can view all the latest content

that can be put into a PDF, such as XFA forms data, Flash, and video.
Converters: PDF conversion software lets users extract the content from a PDF and utilize it in other
applications. For example, a PDF of a spreadsheet may need to be converted to Microsoft Excel to
perform edits and re-calculate. Conversion back into Microsoft Ofce applications can be difcult, as
many products cannot maintain accuracy of layout and remix the PDFs content when ported back
into Excel, for example.
Online conversion services are also available, but offer varying quality (i.e., with variable amounts of
control over document settings and with layout in the resulting document more or less true to the
original) and require trusting a third-party website with the original application le as well as exposing
documents to security vulnerabilities in transit to and from the site. A proven desktop application,
Nuance eCopy PDF Pro Ofce offers best-in-class conversion to Ofce applications, maintaining
delity to the original PDF even in hard-to- convert graphics such as tables. It also enables users to
save documents to todays most popular cloud services for increased collaboration and access to
critical information.
Complete Solutions: The most robust tools do it all: PDF creation, conversion, editing and more,
including security features, digital signatures, integration with scanners and advanced searching.
White Paper | Making PDF Work in the Office White Paper | Making PDF Work in the Office
7 2012 Nuance Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. 6 2012 Nuance Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Choosing the Best PDF Solution
With so many choices at varying price points in the market, its sometimes difcult to choose the right
PDF software for an organization. Factors to consider include features, cost, licensing issues, and
vendor support.
The decision process includes four main steps:
1. Determine the need. Regardless of the department they work in, most employees
need to create, convert, edit and share PDFsfrom both electronic documents
and paperand edit and share them. They may also need password security,
digital signatures, cloud capabilities, collaboration, PDF/A support for archiving, and
conversion back to Word and other Ofce formats. Some will also need forms and
redaction features, while the IT staff needs to be able to manage each desktop at the
server level. For the most part, to get the full return on PDF investment (using it instead
of paper and saving printing, storage, and waste costs associated with it) each user
will need a complete PDF solution that covers all of these needs.
2. Count the costs. PDF freeware has a great upsideits free! Initially, that is. It
also represents hidden investments, such as little or no vendor support, le bloat,
and forced installation of productivity-draining adware or pesterware that forces
employees to repeatedly click upgrade later boxes before they can get work done.
The different editions of Adobe Acrobat are the most feature-laden PDF solutions,
but they are also the most costly off-the-shelf authoring tools. They contain many
specialty features (such as preight for publication design in Acrobat Pro) that most
ofce workers will never use.
When it comes to PDF software, especially during economic slowdowns, budgets
become a determining factor in choosing a PDF solution. Many businesses try to
nd a replacement for Acrobat that costs less, resource-wise, than freeware. Nuance
eCopy PDF Pro Ofce offers the features business users need at a price that makes it
affordable to put PDF software on every desktop.
3. Look at licensing and deployment. Look for software with licensing models that
can accommodate growth without spiraling out of control, cost-wise, or incurring
unplanned costs at inopportune times. Beyond the single-user box, group-licensing
models can include a site license, which covers every seat in the organization.
Open licensing comprises a set number of seats at a volume discount. Both make for
predictable budgeting, without surprise bills in the middle of the scal year. Beyond
these concerns, if youre installing a PDF solution on more than a few desktops,
consider whether the vendor youre considering offers tools to enable IT staffers to
manage the process from the server level.
4. Get the support you need. Another decision factor is the support and online help
that come with a PDF solution. Nuance offers a deep, searchable self-help knowledge
base on their web site and technical support plans on a per-call or unlimited basis.
The Bottom Line
Nuance eCopy PDF Pro Ofce is the only PDF tool other than Acrobat that can view and create PDF
Portfolios as well as forms in XFA format, and it supports PDF conversion from more le formats
than its main competitors. Its paper-to-PDF text conversion is based on Nuances OmniPage Optical
Character Recognition (OCR) enginea well-established product known for being one of the most
accurate on the marketwhile most other PDF vendors must license someone elses OCR engine.
If your organizations budget dictates that you must segment PDF creation and conversion among
different groups of employees, Nuances exible license plans offer budget control and exibility.
Nuances web site knowledge base helps end-users quickly nd answers to most of their questions,
and also offers best practices to improve productivity. And tight integration with enterprise-class
MFP scanning software like eCopy ShareScan

make paper-to-digital process improvements easier

than ever to achieve.
These choices offer immediate relief from the high costs of Acrobat
eCopy PDF Pro Ofce offers redaction, Bates Stamping for legal use and regulatory record keeping,
support for Digital Rights Management, compliance assurance with PDF/A, and many network
deployment tools, as well as tech-support plans that give IT departments the means to efciently
roll out and maintain PDF use throughout the organization. It also includes a full-featured PDF viewer
that can show all types of content that can be put into a PDF (Flash, 3-D renderings, etc.)negating
the need for switching back and forth into Adobe Readerand the most robust array of PDF editing
features in eCopy PDF Pro Ofce.
Furthermore, its integration with Microsoft

SharePoint, Hummingbird

, Interwoven

, Open Text, EMC

Documentum

, Xerox DocuShare

and Therefore document management systems, as well as

CaseMap

from LexisNexis

, will help organize the sea of PDF les owing through your network, and
make them accessible for managers, recordkeeping, and regulatory mandates.
Nuance leads the way toward bringing the productivity of PDF to your organization. That holds true
whether your business has one employee or 10,000, thanks to the licensing and support plans
available. Join the ranks of thousands of businesses that have already chosen Nuance for their most
vital IT projects. While the business world is unlikely to achieve a truly paperless ofce in our lifetime, a
less-paper ofce is within reach through Nuance eCopy PDF Pro Ofce.
About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance Communications, Inc. is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses
and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience
more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share
and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuances
proven applications. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.
DOCUMENT IMAGING SOLUTIONS
Copyright 2013 Nuance Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. Nuance, the Nuance logo,
eCopy, PaperPort, and ShareScan are trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its afliates
in the United States and/or other countries. All other brand and product names are trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective companies.