Adobe is shaking up the digital document landscape by evolving its Document Cloud to support enhanced digital experiences.
This morning’s announcements, as wide-reaching as last year's launch of Document Cloud, includes new partnerships between Box and Microsoft OneDrive that will enable users to access their documents in these third-party cloud services.
Adobe is also adding new data centers in Europe and Asia-Pacific, and rebranding the Adobe the eSign Manager app as Adobe Sign to make sharing, collaborating and processing documents easier. Adobe Sign is also being integrated with Adobe Marketing Cloud to enable marketers create and sign-off on processes from beginning to end.
Fixing Customer Experience
According to Lisa Croft, group product marketing manager for Adobe Document Cloud, this release responds to demands by Adobe’s clients for tools and applications that will help them transform from document focused enterprises into digital enterprises capable of delivering optimal digital experiences.
“We are focusing largely on digital transformation because that is what our customers are asking for. Organizations cannot ignore it anymore. It’s something that they really have to do to survive in the industry. It is something that is important when they look at how their customers are engaging with them, how they engage with their customers, how available they are across devices, and where their customers expect to engage with them,” Croft told CMSWire.
“It’s definitely something that is challenging for them and that is what we are working for to provide these kinds of experiences for customers.”
Croft said the accelerating pace of digital transformation is forcing enterprises to move quickly. Citing a survey from IDC, she pointed out that 72 percent of enterprises believe improving document processes will increase customer satisfaction, but that 80 percent of those processes are still paper-based.
“We also found gaps exist especially between large systems like CRM, enterprise resource planning and customer or employee approval processes," she said.
“Any time there is a gap it causes a problem with the customer experience and it also effects brand value as well. So fixing a document process has as much an impact on a brand as finding a customer or making sure that a customer is having good experience and that they are happy with their engagement.”
Beyond PDFs
While Adobe’s work in developing PDFs is at the heart of the digital enablement, the Document Cloud extends its mission.
“A lot of business are stuck in a paper world. It's slow, it's risky, it's ineffective and frankly, it’s just plain bad. So businesses are really trying to move to this next stage of transformation in the document space,” she said.
The goal is to make document process 100 percent digital, she added.
“It's kicking PDF’s to the next level. Its making sure that you can get work done on that document, but it’s also about document security and that’s where a large portion of our efforts around Document Cloud are spent. It’s about continuing to creating those highly efficient PDFs and pushing this into advanced digital processes. It’s an entirely new level of document process and processing.”
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Optimizing Digital Experience
She said today’s releases round-out Adobe's digital document experience.
“It’s not just about creating a document but also thinking about why you created that document: does it need a signature, do you need to fill out a form, does someone else need to see it, does it need to be achieved? All of those things are really part of that process and Document Cloud really rounds that process out," she continued.
To provide access to those documents Adobe announced integrations with both Box and Microsoft’s OneDrive.
It means Box and OneDrive users will be able to open and complete essential tasks on PDF files in those storage systems using Adobe Acrobat DC and the free Acrobat Reader. Annotations and edits will be saved back to Box or OneDrive in real-time, ensuring the latest version of the document is accessible and avoiding version control issues.
Users will be able to use the native capabilities of either system with both which will enable users push the PDF’s into document processes from within the systems themselves. It is worth noting here that for Microsoft users it applies to both OneDrive for Business and the consumer-level OneDrive storage.
Salesforce, iOS & Android Enhancements
Within the next month, Adobe also plans to enhance its capabilities in Salesforce. It has already updated its Adobe Sign mobile apps for iOS and Android, along with its integration of Adobe Sign with its Experience Manager Form.
The upgrades are accompanied by an extension of Adobe’s reach in the e-signature space, with new data centers now up and running in Europe in anticipation of a change in EU regulations this July that will enforce tougher governance regulations around e-signatures and data geolocation.
Croft also said Adobe will also setting up data centers in other regions, including one in the Asia-Pacific, that will be specifically for e-signatures by the end this year.
