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Adobe recently introduced Adobe Sign, an e-signature solution, and announced integration between Adobe Sign and Adobe Marketing Cloud.
Formerly known as Adobe Document Cloud eSign services, Adobe Sign is designed to bring trusted e-signatures to any organization easily and securely. The integration between Adobe Sign and Adobe Marketing Cloud eliminates manual, paper-based processes and is aimed at easing the way for digital transformation.
Adobe keeps “hearing about digital transformation and how critical it’s becoming as an issue for our customers,” said Mark Grilli, vice president of product marketing.
Companies are concerned that if they don’t transform they might disappear, he said.
“The biggest area of concern is around customer experience,” Grilli said. “A fully digital experience is better than a paper-based one, or one that has gaps and is part digital and part paper. This is a theme we see in the market and we see from customers.”
Citing an IDC study, Grilli said 40 percent of companies on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index will not exist in 10 years. The IDC study also found that 77 percent of organizations reported having gaps in their existing systems that affect the customer experience and 72 percent said improving document processes would increase customer satisfaction. However, 80 percent of document processes still rely on paper, Grilli said.
Adobe Sign works with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Forms, a core piece in the Adobe Marketing Cloud strategy, to help organizations to go completely digital with anything from credit card applications to government benefit forms or medical forms, Adobe said.
This integration enables organizations to provide an end-to-end digital form filling and signing experience for customers on any channel; speed up time-to-market and achieve efficiency savings for forms management; continually improve the user experience with Adobe Target; and analyze and optimize performance with Adobe Analytics, Josh van Tonder, a solutions manager with Adobe’s Worldwide Government group, said in a blog post.
Adobe also is working on supporting e-signatures is Europe and is rolling out new data centers and meeting the legal requirements in the EU as part of a global expansion that will continue through 2016.
In a blog post, Dan Puterbaugh, director and associate general counsel for Adobe, said EU businesses have needed a single e-signature law applied uniformly across all member states, and in 2014, the Council of the European Union adopted eIDAS to meet that need. eIDAS supplies a legal structure for electronic identification, signatures, seals and documents throughout the EU. eIDAS goes into effect July 1, 2016.
“With eIDAS on the horizon, new opportunities are going to arise for all companies doing business in the EU,” Puterbaugh said. “To help businesses seize those opportunities, Adobe has been building out its infrastructure with technology and information assets to make e-signatures as easy and secure to use in the EU as they are in the U.S.”
Adobe has added support and integration for EU Trust Lists and is the first major vendor to do so, Puterbaugh said.”And we’ve ensured that we have the local expertise in place to serve this new EU single digital market.”
Adobe’s new Document Cloud storage integrations with Box and Microsoft OneDrive are aimed at making it easier to access and work on PDF files from anywhere. Adobe also announced new features for its Acrobat DC subscribers.
“Every company and organization should be laser-focused on delivering the best customer experience possible, and the best experience does not involve paper,” said Bryan Lamkin, executive vice president and general manager for digital media at Adobe, said in a statement.
Adobe Updates Document Cloud to Spur Digital Transformation
At the heart of Document Cloud is Acrobat DC, Adobe’s core PDF solution; Adobe Sign, the company’s e-signature solution that allows anyone to electronically sign and send documents from any device; and a host of companion mobile apps. For Acrobat DC, Adobe announced new commenting and annotation tools, new accessibility updates and improved deployment processes.
More than 6 billion digital and electronic signature transactions are processed through Document Cloud each year, including global businesses like AmerisourceBergen, MasterCard, The Royal Bank of Scotland and Verizon, which rely on Document Cloud and Adobe Sign for fast, secure and mobile e-signatures, according to Adobe.
“At Royal Bank of Scotland, we put our customers’ experience first when rolling out new services to make their lives a little easier,” Ankit Chhajer, digital lead for customer experience and sales innovation at the Royal Bank of Scotland, said in a statement. “Building on our broad adoption of Adobe Marketing Cloud, we are now turning to Adobe Document Cloud and Adobe Sign to create an elegant, hassle-free customer experience.”
Adobe enhanced the mobile capabilities of Adobe Sign with the Adobe Sign app for iOS and Android (formerly known as Adobe eSign Manager DC). An updated dashboard and improved Send for Signature workflow enable users to be more productive on any device.
Meanwhile, Document Cloud offers integrations with Dropbox, Salesforce, Workday and more.
Now Adobe has added new integrations for Acrobat DC, Acrobat Reader and Adobe Sign with Box to simplify document workflows, as well as e-signature processes for enterprises. Whether users start from Box or Adobe, with just a few clicks, they will be able to view and edit PDFs without any downloading, and ensure that the latest version is automatically secured in Box, Grilli said.
In addition, users can open Box files directly in Adobe Sign to provide an electronic signature on key contracts and documents, centralizing all updates in Box and streamlining the approval process, he said. Grilli said there are more than 2 billion PDFs in Box today.
“We are focused on building a powerful centralized platform that secures and connects the content that people use every day to get their jobs done,” Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, said in a statement. “With more than 6 billion digital and electronic signature transactions a year in Adobe Document Cloud and Adobe Sign, this is a critical step in helping customers effortlessly share, access and securely manage their information.”
Additionally, new integration with Acrobat DC, Acrobat Reader and Microsoft OneDrive enables organizations to access and work on PDF files stored in OneDrive directly from within the Adobe apps. And iOS users can access PDFs in OneDrive from the Acrobat Reader mobile app via the universal document picker, enabling them to work with PDF files anywhere.
“Adobe is helping companies create 100 percent digital ‘customer journeys,'” said Jon Perera, vice president of product management at Adobe, in a blog post. “We’ve all had to fill out applications or forms online—print them, sign them with a pen, scan them back into a computer and email or upload them electronically—only to be kept in the dark on what happens after they are sent. It’s a waste of time and resources that has gone on for far too long.”