A need for more affordable, easy to use yet full-featured PDF editing software has been growing rapidly within financial services firms during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a report by Foxit Software.
Paul Jackson, EMEA channel director at Foxit Software, said its report, Powering PDF Users in Banking and Finance, shows that global demand in financial services, as in many other sectors, is expanding at an “extraordinary rate”.
“Most companies don’t realise the amount of paper they are using and the amount of time their employees spend dealing with paper documents,” Jackson (pictured) said.
“The average office worker, for example, uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year and spends 30-40% of their time each day looking for information kept in filing cabinets.”
According to Foxit, the rising need for remote working, often with globalised teams, on top of a need for greater sustainability and reduced paper-based workflows means intuitive PDF solutions are in high demand. Poor solutions, meanwhile, can hinder the adoptiong of new ways of working and collaborating within and across teams.
“During Covid-19, the requirements for digital interaction with customers and employees have increased rapidly. It is now more important than ever to easily share and work on documents,” Jackson said.
To help organisations grappling with how to maintain business continuity and keep employees engaged through current tough times, Foxit Software is offering its PDF solution Foxit PhantomPDF Online for free until 31 December 2020.
Jackson said that Foxit is at the forefront of PDF technology, with some 560 million users worldwide from SMBs to enterprises implementing paperless offices.
Additionally, paper manufacturing produces greenhouse gases and requires many litres of water (it takes five litres to produce a single sheet of A4) and can increase deforestation and landfill requirements. This is despite the “best recycling efforts”, notes Foxit Software.
According to the vendor, although going paperless can seem daunting, organisations can find the ROI attractive and easier to achieve than initially thought.
“By transitioning to digital documents, businesses can save a lot of costs — eliminating paper, plus the cost of printers, copiers, ink toner, filing cabinets, and the like, and replacing them with low-cost computer storage,” Jackson said.
“Digital documents at the same time help streamline workflows and collaboration, and improve document security through encryption, rights management, and audit trails.”
Foxit PhantomPDF is a PDF editor that allows users to interface with their scanners to convert paper documents to PDF, run optical character recognition (OCR)) and compress document sizes — all at the same time. The result is a fully searchable, editable document optimised for filing via enterprise content management systems or digital archives.
Further, different documents and file formats – whether paper-based or digital – can be combined into one standard file format. The PDF eitors also help users replace paper forms with interactive PDF documents that are easy to fill out or update, saved as a digital record that enables data to be extracted into a centralised repository.
(Image of Paul Jackson courtesy of Foxit Software 2020)
