Technical FAQs

Collaboration is key. As noted by Fast Company, 95 percent of businesses now recognize the value of collaboration tools, but just 56 percent have deployed these solutions at scale. Part of the disconnect comes down to adoption. Companies must demonstrate that new applications are worth using for staff and stakeholders alike.

The other half of this holdback stems from the concern around secure content collaboration. Organizations need the ability to handle enterprise content management interactions securely across multiple use cases including internal and external business process automation, task lists, reports, dashboards, and document collaboration. As a result, new frameworks don’t simply offer document management in isolation. Instead, they deliver cross-solution, cross-organizational collaboration that’s available anywhere, anytime, for any user. 

Let’s dive into three use cases that show the collaborative potential of one of these cross-solution frameworks, made possible by a partnership between Accusoft and one of its solution partners, TEAM Informatics. TEAM has developed a new product called M-Connect which leverages Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer to extend the capabilities of the M-Files platform, making true cross-organization collaboration possible. 

Triple Threat

Security remains a critical concern for organizations. If data isn’t properly protected, the results can be disastrous for both clients and companies. Emerging legislation around data protection includes mandates for shared due diligence no matter the origin or intention of data use.

As a result, effective content collaboration also includes actionable defense. It’s not enough to simply process information. Organizations must also secure this critical resource, starting first with streamlining. 

TEAM Informatics makes it possible to take control of your content with forms-based workflow automation. M-Files’ metadata solution, meanwhile, helps eliminate the growing security risk of information silos, while document viewing and control with PrizmDoc Viewer lets staff easily view and annotate documents to empower granular access control. With IT risks on the rise, a triple threat content collaboration response is key.

Back to Front

In addition to security, users must be able to collaborate effectively. One way that users gain context is through metadata. Intelligent access to metadata across your content management system paves the way for increased automation and improved results. As noted by Dark Reading, for example, relevant metadata is critical in the fight against emerging information security threats. 

It also forms the basis of practical process automation at scale. Here’s how the three entities work together to provide metadata context securely: 

• M-Files’ intelligent metadata functionality organizes content based on what it is, not where it’s stored.  
• If you want to include users outside of your M-Files ecosystem, TEAM Informatics’ M-Connect provides this capability. 
• M-Connect joins your external users with your M-Files repository, leveraging organized and secure content and process automation. 
• Accusoft’s embedded PrizmDoc Viewer enables users to capture key backend metadata and automate critical processes without compromising visibility.  
• M-Connect allows users to quickly configure interactions and processes in the form of a digital workspace.   

Consider the complex process of vendor take-on, staff take-on, provider or loan application processing and evaluation. Using M-Files, organizations can leverage key metadata to auto-populate forms and assess mortgage criteria. PrizmDoc Viewer, meanwhile, makes it easy for staff to access and evaluate documents to ensure processes are working as intended. This results in complete content control from back end capture to front end completion.

Sharing the News

Automation and protection form the basis of enhanced enterprise content management — but aren’t enough in isolation. To meet the evolving demands of consumers, C-Suite members, and corporate stakeholders, enterprises must leverage collaboration tools that empower both internal and external document sharing, viewing, and editing.

Best bet? Bridge the gap by finding — and combining — solutions that play to their strengths. Start with M-Files, which helps unify content by context, then leverage M-Connect to automate key functions to empower internal document efficiency. With PrizmDoc Viewer embedded inside, you’re empowering secure document collaboration across third parties and delivering the internal ability to collaborate efficiently.

Although it might feel as though time has been standing still for several months, 2020 is finally coming to an end. It’s been a year of unprecedented disruption for many industries, and insurance companies often found themselves struggling to adapt to change. Firms that had the foresight to invest in digital transformation backed by InsurTech solutions, however, proved more capable of meeting the moment and are now poised to thrive in 2021 and beyond.

As the new year approaches, it’s helpful to take a look back at some of the key trends that defined 2020 and created opportunities for innovative InsurTech applications. Understanding the pressures facing the insurance industry will also identify InsurTech projections to watch in the future.

5 Insurance Trends and InsurTech Projections

1. Remote Collaboration

No discussion of 2020 insurance industry trends would be complete without exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected organizations. According to a survey conducted by Deloitte, 48 percent of insurance executives agreed that the pandemic revealed how unprepared their business was for such a disruptive crisis. From the sudden transition to a remote workforce to a shift in risk adjustment factors across the market, insurers have had to scramble to adapt their operations and continue delivering quality services to clients.

With so many employees going remote and customers unable to meet with representatives in-person, organizations that made early investments in digital collaboration tools and automation software were better equipped to meet the challenges of 2020. The industry is expected to make tremendous investments in digital transformation in the upcoming year, whether it’s in powerful document editing and management software, file conversion tools, or secure communication channels that better facilitate true collaboration.

2. Customer Demographic Shifts

Prior to 2020, insurance customers tended to be older, with millennials purchasing life insurance policies at lower rates and often delaying home ownership until later in life. This trend seems to have reversed itself in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, with life insurance application activity growing twice as fast for people under 45 than those aged 45-49. Since many of these younger buyers are first-time applicants, it’s important for insurance agents and firms to make the process as streamlined and easy to navigate as possible.

According to a nationwide industry survey, just over 75 percent of independent insurance agents are age 50 or older and nearly 68 percent have more than 20 years of experience. Having such a long-tenured workforce poses challenges when it comes to implementing new processes and reaching out to potential customers with different needs and preferences than those of earlier decades. In order to remain competitive, however, firms must invest in the right InsurTech solutions to gather data that will give them a better picture of what insurance products and services younger customers will find attractive.

3. Robotic Process Automation

The shift to a remote workplace greatly disrupted traditional workflows. Without centralized offices, key insurance tasks like claims processing and document verification are much more difficult to perform manually. Organizations that had already invested in robotic process automation (RPA) to handle repetitive tasks were in a much better position to thrive in a remote landscape. 

Insurance companies must be able to process a variety of forms during an application or a claim. Having automated InsurTech tools in place to quickly extract data from a variety of sources and carry information over from one form to another not only saves time, but also greatly reduces the risk of human error. For a remote workforce, automation software helps to consolidate complex workflows to eliminate version confusion and enhance collaboration.

4. Artificial Intelligence

Risk assessment and data analysis are crucial to the underwriting process. In a volatile economic environment, insurance firms are under more pressure than ever before to set the right premiums. Although the data is now readily available to make more accurate assessments, sorting through that information manually is difficult and time consuming. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated, the scope of risk can change dramatically in a very short period of time. By deploying artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze risk factors and review potential fraud claims quickly and accurately, insurers can create customized policies and provide more responsive service to their customers.

Implementing AI-driven algorithms as part of the underwriting and fraud analysis process will only be one part of the challenge facing firms in 2021. These powerful tools must have sufficient data in order to make informed predictions. By improving the data collection process with form processing tools, file conversion, and programmatic searches, insurers can provide their analytics platforms the best possible information for analysis.

5. Customer Experience

One of the few positive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic was that it forced organizations across every industry to find new ways of connecting with their customers. The insurance industry has traditionally lagged behind other sectors, tending to lean upon a combination of tradition and legacy infrastructure to engage with customers. But the events of 2020 have underscored the need for a true digital transformation that fundamentally reorients the way firms market, sell, and deliver insurance products. The need has become so evident, in fact, that a recent PWC survey found that 70 percent of insurance CEOs are prioritizing customer experience and user interfaces as their top investment opportunity.

In the coming year, firms will likely continue to invest in technology that makes it easier for customers to research and manage their policies. Whether it’s applications that allow them to submit claims information in a variety of file formats or forms and contracts that automatically fill in commonly used form fields, the core focus will be on making the customer experience as frictionless as possible with a variety of InsurTech benefits.

The Role of InsurTech

Many insurance companies will be looking to upgrade their technology stack and client-facing applications in response to these trends. That creates a tremendous opportunity for InsurTech developers who are creating the next generation of software tools to streamline core processes common to the insurance industry.

Delivering those digital products on a short timeline with limited resources, however, can be quite a challenge for even the most innovative InsurTech startup. That’s why many of them turn to third-party solutions to provide proven functionality that lies outside the scope of their development expertise. 

Features like forms processing, document conversion, and image viewing can be easily integrated into an application using an SDK or API, saving the team weeks or even months of work. This helps InsurTech companies get their products to market faster to meet the digital transformation needs of their customers and keep them a step ahead of their competitors.

InsurTech SDKs and APIs

Accusoft’s family of processing and automation SDKs and APIs provide InsurTech developers with the tools they need to easily plug essential functionality into their applications so they can get back to focusing on their most innovative features. With a variety of deployment options and a diverse set of code-based solutions, we have the flexibility to meet your software’s unique use case and substantially reduce your time to market.

Whether you’re looking to integrate document viewing, collaboration, or processing to your InsurTech platform, our SDK and API-based products can help you deliver the InsurTech benefits your customers are looking for. Learn more about our insurance solutions or contact us today to demo one of our products.

Far from just another tech industry buzzword, artificial intelligence (AI) is fast becoming a mainstay of data collection and analysis for many organizations. According to research by Accenture, not only do 84 percent of executives think leveraging AI is critical to meeting growth objectives, but three out of four of them believe they will risk going out of business if they don’t scale those initiatives.

That fear of being left behind is why 88 percent of companies have already invested in AI or machine learning technology or plan to do so in the near future. With some 175 zettabytes of data expected to be created in 2025, organizations without the AI data processing tools necessary to analyze and make sense of that data will struggle to develop effective business strategies and deliver a competitive customer experience.

It’s a tremendous opportunity for independent software vendors building the next-generation of applications across various industries. In order to deliver on the promise of AI, however, these software solutions also need to provide the tools that allow users to leverage their capabilities to streamline business processes. After all, a powerful AI solution isn’t of much use if it can’t be integrated with existing workflows.

Getting the Most Out of AI Data Processing

The most successful developers understand that AI data processing is only one piece of the puzzle. Their innovative AI technology is driving the car, but they still need the frame and wheels around it if the application is going to take their customers anywhere. That means building the less glamorous, but equally essential technology that helps AI data processing solve everyday tasks.

Take, for instance, document or image management. Organizations that gather data from physical forms or scanned documents need some way of extracting information so it can be converted into a format AI data processing tools can utilize. Manual data entry is both time-consuming and prone to error, so requiring users to transfer information by hand is simply not viable. By building document and image processing capabilities into their applications, developers can greatly enhance the versatility of AI data processing by automating key aspects of the collection process.

There’s also the question of what can be done with all of that data once it’s been gathered. Legal organizations, for example, often need to apply that information to contract creation, while insurance agents turn to it when assessing risk. By combining AI data processing capabilities with document assembly tools and search functionality, organizations can further automate key business processes to improve efficiency. Why painstakingly draft legal contracts or master service agreements from scratch when applications can use automation tools in conjunction with AI to assemble documents with greater speed and accuracy?

Build vs. Buy?

This often presents a challenge for software developers with limited resources. On the one hand, they need to invest as much time and energy as possible into their innovative AI data processing capabilities in order to meet the collection and analysis needs of their customers. But without also providing some way of interacting with and using that data to improve other key tasks, they will struggle to persuade potential users to adopt their innovative platform.

One solution is to build that functionality in-house. For software developers with substantial resources, this might sound like a good option. Unfortunately, the reality often proves less than ideal. Even something as basic as viewing and converting documents can quickly become a massive undertaking that draws valuable developer resources away from the AI data processing capabilities that are supposed to help the product stand out in a crowded market. 

In many cases, the company ends up having to outsource the work or push back key deadlines. Even worse, it may also end up creating more problems than it solves by relying on open source toolkits and libraries. The biggest problem has to do with security vulnerabilities. A recent study found over 2,600 bugs reported in open source projects between 2015 and early 2020. Even worse, many of these vulnerabilities were not formally reported to the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) until well after they were first exposed, giving hackers and other hostile actors time to exploit the security gaps.

The Integration Solution

Developers can avoid delays and security risks by turning to proven SDK and API integrations for their application needs. This is especially effective for complex, but essential functionality like viewing, conversion, compression, editing, and assembly. By relying on code-based integrations that are actively supported, they can ensure that users will be able to leverage their AI data processing solutions securely and effectively.

Rather than building features from the ground up and wasting valuable development resources, independent software vendors can devote more time and energy on the core competencies that will make their application more competitive. That allows them to build more powerful AI data processing capabilities and bring those features to market even faster.

Enhance Your AI Data Processing Application with Accusoft Integrations

Accusoft’s family of SDK and API integrations helps software developers realize the potential of their applications by delivering proven document and image processing functionality. Whether you need document assembly tools to get the most out of your legal AI sifters or powerful HTML5 viewing capabilities to harness the power of risk management automation, our easy-to-implement, code-based integrations can help you realize the full potential of your application’s AI data processing.

Find out more about how the Accusoft development team is incorporating machine learning into their processes or talk to one of our integration specialists today to learn how we can enhance your AI data processing application.

Many organizations utilize spreadsheets to track data and perform complex calculations. Since spreadsheets offer substantial flexibility, it’s not uncommon for a single organization to use them in a variety of ways. For instance, one department might use them for budgeting while another deploys them for risk assessment. Although they can handle complex calculations, spreadsheets are relatively easy to set up and don’t require the same programming knowledge as more specialized solutions. That accessibility has led many organizations to simply convert Excel to web applications using API integrations rather than building new functionality from scratch.

Why You Should Convert Excel Files to Web Applications

Consumers often turn to financial and insurance companies looking for simple answers to simple questions: 

• How many payments will it take to eliminate my debt?
• Will adding another person to my insurance policy change my rate?
• What will the monthly payments on my loan cost based on different interest rates?

To answer questions like these, someone in the organization typically enters the customer’s data into a premade spreadsheet, applies a few conditions using preset formulas, and shares the result. This process could be significantly streamlined by making these calculations readily available as a web application to anyone who visits the firm’s website, allowing both prospective and current customers to get answers quickly while also freeing up time for employees to work on more high-value tasks.

Unfortunately, building a secure, functional web application takes up valuable development resources. A developer could easily spend weeks converting complex spreadsheet formulas into a fully-functional application that integrates into the website or larger platform seamlessly. Even worse, if anything about those formulas were to change (as is often the case with financial and insurance formulas), more development resources will need to be pulled away from existing projects to make the updates.

By converting Excel files to web applications, firms can avoid these problems and provide clients with ready access to the calculations they need. FinTech and InsurTech developers can accommodate this need by building integrations into their solutions that allow users to easily upload and share spreadsheets entirely within an application and without any Microsoft Word dependencies. This bypasses the time-consuming build process and makes it much easier to update the formulas as needed.

Keeping Your Spreadsheets Secure

Of course, making spreadsheets readily available as web applications presents a few important security challenges. Many of the calculations running inside an organization’s spreadsheets are proprietary or contain hidden data that needs to remain private for various confidentiality reasons. That’s why companies are hesitant to simply send copies of their internal spreadsheets to customers or vendors. If those Excel files are made accessible online, there’s an obvious risk that someone could download a copy for themselves or access valuable private intellectual property.

Incidentally, this is also the reason why many firms struggle with sharing spreadsheets even in a collaborative environment. Not only are .XLSX files among the most commonly used file extensions by malware, but granting cloud providers or email servers access to spreadsheets represents too great a security risk for companies in heavily regulated industries.

By converting Excel to web applications, however, organizations can maintain strict access and visibility controls over their spreadsheet files. A good spreadsheet viewer integration will allow users to determine what people see when they use the application and also what information they can access. Formulas and calculations that contain vital intellectual property can be hidden completely. Visitors can be restricted to only editing cells that apply to their information, allowing them to use the spreadsheet without breaking or altering its functionality.

Sharing controls can also restrict what can be downloaded locally. A visitor may need to download or print a copy of their calculations, but they don’t need to download a fully functional copy of the spreadsheet file. Even in a collaborative environment, allowing people to download and edit copies of a spreadsheet can introduce significant version confusion. By keeping everything safely within the confines of the organization’s larger web application, essential data remains as secure and up-to-date as possible.

Other Reasons to Convert Excel to Web Applications

The versatility of spreadsheets allows people to adapt them to a variety of uses. In addition to more traditional budgeting and adjustment tasks, they can also be used for things like calculating survey results, analyzing resource usage, or estimating server uptime. Adding customizable calculators that provide quick results to a website experience can provide customers with important information and keep them engaged. 

Rather than building a specialized app or plug-in for every one of these calculators, organizations can simply use a spreadsheet viewer integration to quickly create one without any specialized coding or development knowledge. When the integration is set up within their solution, they can even customize it to match their branding and make it look more like a designed application than a simple spreadsheet.

Explore the Potential of Spreadsheet Integration with PrizmDoc Cells

Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Cells was originally designed to help our clients securely view and share XLSX files without any third party dependencies, but it’s increasingly being used to help improve customer experiences across a variety of applications. Get a hands-on experience with this API-driven integration to explore the potential of converting your Excel files to web applications. For a more detailed overview of what you can do with PrizmDoc Cells, sign up for a free trial.

As part of our ongoing commitment to supporting the LegalTech industry in its effort to transform the processes used by law firms and legal departments, Accusoft recently sponsored an educational webinar in conjunction with Law.com entitled “Build or Buy? Learning Which Is Best for Your Firm or Department.” Hosted by Zach Warren, editor-in-chief of Legaltech News, the webinar featured Neeraj Rajpal, CIO of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, and Kelly Wehbi, Head of Product at Gravity Stack, a subsidiary of the Reed Smith law firm. 

Together, the panelists brought two unique perspectives to the ongoing “build vs buy” debate, both from the software vendors who provide LegalTech solutions and the decision makers working at the legal firms who make difficult decisions regarding technology solutions.

Build vs Buy: The Choices Before the Decision

Both Rajpal and Wehbi agree that any decision involving building or buying technology solutions has to begin with defining the problem a firm needs to solve. Regardless of whether you’re working with an independent legal firm or a legal department within a larger organization, it’s critical to understand the business problem, existing pain points, and potential value of a solution.

“When you start asking the right questions,” Raijpal notes, “you sometimes come across a situation where the requirements are not very clearly defined and that is a big red flag to me because when requirements are not defined, you’re not solving anything.”

Wehbi shares that concern about the requirements gathering process, pointing out that things tend to go wrong when firms fail to consider both the scope and magnitude of the challenge they’re trying to overcome. “Organizations can struggle a lot when they jump a little too quickly to a solution or to thinking about just what the return would be on a potential new product or service offered.”

It’s also critical to make sure that the firm is willing to accept some degree of change. If existing business processes are unclear or if no one is willing to consider changing how they work, then no amount of technology is going to make a difference. Understanding the culture of the firm and securing the buy-in from leadership is absolutely critical to making any technology integration succeed whether you’re buying a solution or building one from scratch. 

The Pros and Cons of Building LegalTech Solutions

For an organization that has the resources, methodologies, and skill sets necessary to develop a solution that’s specifically designed to meet its unique requirements, building can be a great decision. The key advantage here is that it focuses specifically on the firm’s processes and user pain points, allowing developers to design a solution that is much more targeted than an “off-the-shelf” product.

Benefits of Building

• Applications can be customized to your exact specifications, allowing them to better address your specific business needs.
• Since you manage the solution from end to end, you retain much more control in terms of application features and functionality, how data is managed, and access security.
• Developing a specialized solution creates room for innovative technology that can provide a competitive edge.
• A custom-built solution presents fewer integration challenges, especially when it comes to interfacing with legacy systems used by many legal organizations.

Risks of Building

• Building a new solution from the ground up requires a great deal of time and resources that might be better spent elsewhere.
• Investing in custom software creates substantial technical debt that must be maintained over time and could create integration problems in the future when additional upgrades are required.
• If the new solution doesn’t contribute enough to the bottom line to justify the cost of operations, it could lead to negative economies of scale that make it difficult for the firm to grow its business.

The Pros and Cons of Buying LegalTech Solutions

Not every organization has the development resources to build a customized solution from the ground up. If they’re not ready to make that capital investment, a cloud-based offering may be better suited to their needs. Leveraging a proven, ready-to-launch SaaS solution offers a number of advantages, but could impact how the company makes technology decisions in the future.

Benefits of Buying

• Since SaaS services are usually cheaper and easier to implement, they are often the best option for companies with limited IT resources.
• Cloud solutions are good for solving common technology problems that smaller firms face.
• Already-live functionality means SaaS solutions can be implemented on a faster time frame.
• The cloud vendor handles all building and maintenance costs associated with the platform.
• Since the vendor sets up workflows and integrations as well as troubleshooting, your internal team is freed up to focus on other tasks.

Risks of Buying

• Off-the-shelf solutions offer less customization and control over infrastructure and data.
• Even industry-specific SaaS solutions are built for a general market in mind, so their features may not solve your firm’s unique requirements.
• Since the vendor manages security, customers have less oversight over how their sensitive data is managed.
• Working with a SaaS provider exposes firms to market risk. If the vendor goes out of business or sunsets a product, it may be difficult to repatriate data or transition to another provider.

When to Build

For firms with the development resources that are already using in-house document management solutions to streamline processes, SDK and API integrations are often the best way to enhance functionality. Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Suite leverages REST APIs and advanced HTML controls to provide powerful document viewing, conversion, editing, and assembly capabilities to web-based applications. Our SDK integrations also allow developers to build the functionality they need directly into their software at the code level.

Document Assembly

Law firms need automation solutions that allow them to easily create and manage multi-part, multi-stage contracts. Thanks to Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Editor, legal teams can rapidly identify and assemble sections of pre-existing text into new content that is both editable and searchable. PrizmDoc Editor integrates securely into existing applications and delivers in-browser support to help lawyers assemble assets without resorting to risky external dependencies.

Case Management

LegalTech applications can manage and review cases much more efficiently by integrating data capture, file conversion, and optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities. The ImageGear SDK helps legal teams access case data in a variety of formats without the need for downloading additional files or relying on third-party viewing applications. It can also convert multiple file types into secure and searchable PDF/A documents, making it easy to tag files with client numbers, names, and other identifiable information. Thanks to PDF/A functionality, ImageGear ensures that firms can stay on the right side of federal regulations.

eDiscovery

The rapid transition to predominantly digital documents has fundamentally altered the way legal organizations approach the discovery process. Innovative eDiscovery processes can streamline case management while also protecting client interests. In order to implement these strategies effectively, firms need applications that provide extensive file format support and search functionality as well as redaction and digital rights management (DRM) tools capable of protecting client privacy. PrizmDoc Viewer delivers these features along with scalable annotation capabilities that make it easier for collaborators to proofread, review, and make comments to case files without creating version confusion. As an end-to-end eDiscovery toolkit, our HTML5 viewer also includes whitelabeling support so it can be fully integrated into your application’s branding.

When to Buy

For smaller legal teams looking for broad functionality without development hassles or a new firm taking its first steps toward document automation, it often makes more sense to implement a bundled, buy-in solution like Accusoft’s Docubee SaaS platform.

Document Completion

Docubee makes document management easy with drag and drop data routing. Users can quickly create legal contracts, route the appropriate data to documents, deliver contracts for approval, and facilitate signing with secure eSignature technology. 

Customized Templates

With Docubee, legal teams can create customized document templates and manage them on a section-by-section basis. Individual clauses can be added or removed as needed, allowing attorneys to repurpose document templates instead of creating them from scratch for every client. 

End-to-End Support

Two-way communication support helps firms to build better dockets and negotiate more effectively. Documents can be updated automatically and version controls ensure that everyone is always looking at the most up-to-date version of a contract. Docubee also allows users to prioritize key tasks with collaborative redlining and notification tools.

Long-Term Storage and Security

Docubee stores data for up to six years to meet eDiscovery requirements. To better protect client privacy and meet changing compliance requirements, firms can also set destruction dates for contracts, templates, and case files. Docubee is SOC2 compliant, featuring multi-layer encryption to keep data under tight lock and key.

Hear the Full Conversation

To hear the full webinar and learn more about how legal firms make the difficult choice between building or buying their next technology solution, sign up now to get access to an on-demand recording of the event. If you’re ready to learn more about how Accusoft technology is helping to power innovation in the legal industry by delivering the latest in content processing, conversion, and automation solutions, visit our legal industry solutions page or contact us today to speak to one of our product experts.

Image compression has become such a ubiquitous aspect of the digital world that the average person doesn’t give it much thought. Even when they encounter textbook compression problems, such as running out of space for photos on their phones, waiting on a slow-loading webpage, or working with an overly pixelated image, they may not consider how effective compression techniques could resolve these issues.

Today’s software developers, by contrast, spend a lot of time thinking about how to incorporate better compression solutions into their applications. That’s why they frequently turn to image compression SDKs to help their end users better manage large and highly-detailed image files.

The Enduring Need for Image Compression

Although advancements in hard drive technology and easily scalable cloud storage have reduced many traditional data management concerns, large image files can still pose significant challenges. Many organizations that can’t utilize cloud storage options for compliance reasons or find the cost of those platforms prohibitively high. 

While they may be able to add more on-premises storage easily enough, this option can also quickly become quite costly. Companies often need to procure much more storage than they may need on a day-to-day basis in order to meet redundancy requirements. Scaling physical storage also locks firms into burdensome equipment refresh cycles.

But simply storing images is only part of the challenge of data management. Large files are more difficult to move, even if an organization has a customized solution in place. If images can’t be shared quickly and easily through a secure platform, users may turn to riskier third-party applications.

Image compression alleviates these problems by reducing the overall size of image files. By compressing image files, organizations can maximize their storage potential and share files more easily. Image compression can also improve website and application performance by reducing the time it takes to load images. 

Although there are many different methods of compressing images, they all involve algorithms that use a variety of shortcuts to reduce the overall size of pixel data. In some instances, compression involves the elimination of image data, which can degrade the image quality and make it impossible to return to its original size (lossy or irreversible compression). Other techniques retain the original image data, but can’t achieve the same level of compression (lossless or reversible compression). 

Image Compression SDKs and Your Applications

While there are many compression options available in commercial imaging software, organizations often need the ability to compress image files within their core business applications without any external dependencies. Opening an image file with another program not only takes additional time and disrupts efficient workflow, but it also creates the potential for security risks and version confusion.

Consider, for instance, a medical provider that needs to send a high-resolution MRI scan to another provider. If the file is too large to deliver electronically, someone may try to get around the problem by using another program to compress the scan and then send it as an attachment over email or share it through a cloud platform. Suddenly, the confidential image file has been accessed by potentially vulnerable third-party applications, which creates a serious compliance issue. To make matters worse, the compressed image may not be associated with the patient’s file in the EHR system. And that’s not even getting in the question of whether or not the compression technique used damaged the image integrity!

An image compression SDK like ImageGear allows developers to integrate the ability to compress and convert image files into their applications without compromising security, efficiency, or quality. Optimized, standards-based compression libraries with support of formats like TIFF, PDF, PDF/A, JPEG 2000, JPEG, and DICOM deliver fast compression/decompression capabilities while ensuring that images remain high quality. 

The primary advantage of integrating image compression capabilities directly into an application is the lack of third-party dependencies. This is crucial for software that is gathering and managing image files because it doesn’t cause any workflow disruptions. With an image compression SDK integration, image files can be shrunk down to more manageable sizes programmatically, which aids significantly in automated processes. Since the images are being compressed entirely within the application, it’s also easier to maintain strict version and access control throughout the life cycle of the file.

Image Compression SDKs vs Open Source Solutions

Many developers turn to open source compression libraries when looking to integrate image compression features into their applications. While this often seems like an easy, low cost solution, open source codecs can lead to unforeseen problems over time. Since many of them are not actively maintained, troublesome bugs can go unresolved and security gaps can create serious privacy risks.

One infamous example of this problem involved the widely used “Cornell Codec,” one of the first open source libraries that supported lossless JPEG compression. Developed in 1994, it was quickly adopted by many healthcare applications that needed to compress high-resolution medical images like MIRIs, CT scans, and X-Rays. 

Unfortunately, the codec had a problem. When it compressed images into DICOM files (the industry standard used in medical imaging applications), it produced an error that made them unreadable when they were decompressed. Since the Cornell Codec was an open source solution embedded into numerous applications, the problem went unresolved for many years until Accusoft developed a code based workaround for our customers.

By choosing a well-supported image compression SDK like ImageGear for their application’s compression needs, developers can rest easier knowing that they’re deploying a tried and true solution that won’t create unexpected problems for their customers. Another benefit of a comprehensive image compression SDK is that it will provide a variety of compression libraries that can accommodate almost any file type and use case. ImageGear, for example, supports more than a dozen unique image compression types, including JPEG (lossy/lossless/progressive), RAW, ASCII, and Deflate.

ImageGear: More Than an Image Compression SDK

Image compression is just one of ImageGear’s many powerful document and image processing features. A versatile code-based solution, ImageGear allows developers to quickly integrate image conversion and cleanup features to their application along with editing, annotation, viewing, scanning, and printing capabilities. With support for a huge number of today’s leading document and image file formats as well as medical imaging support with ImageGear Medical, this SDK toolkit delivers the functionality developers need to get their applications to market faster. See what ImageGear can do for your application today by downloading a free trial.

PDFs are everywhere. Vice calls them “the world’s most important file format,” and that’s not far off the mark. The sheer number of documents converted to, from, and often back to PDFs is astounding. The hard truth? They’re also frustrating to work with. Start a Google search with the word “convert” and three of the top five results involve PDFs. 

While this portable document format lives up to its namesake by making it easy for users to attach and send documents across their organizations, PDFs often run into problems when it comes to conversion, collaboration, and communication. While many tools offer piecemeal PDF functionality, they lack a complete cadre of critical capabilities, in turn forcing software engineers to use multiple software solutions for seemingly simple tasks. 

ImageGear offers a different take on the standard software development kit (SDK) designed to help developers maximize their PDF potential. Here’s how it works. 

The Value of PDF Conversion

While PDF conversion is one of the top sought-after functionalities, there’s another area that’s often overlooked: modifying the characteristics of PDFs on-screen. With companies now handling PDFs from multiple sources that may include everything from computer-generated form data to handwritten information and images, it’s no surprise that staff encounter a wide variety of viewing issues.

ImageGear PDF helps solve these problems by allowing users to call the shots on PDF content at scale with features such as:

• Conversion
• Metadata Management
• Content and Font Editing
• Text Extraction
• PDF Watermarking
• Container, Dictionary, and Layer Creation
• 3D Asset Modification

ImageGear PDF also helps improve document processing with document cleanup and advanced optical character recognition (OCR). With the ability to encrypt and decrypt entire images (or part of an image), automatic ImageClean correction of white text blocks, borders, and inverted images, plus intelligent re-sizing, any PDF can be cleaned and made more readable for the user. 

OCR support for almost any document type is also a benefit. This includes those produced on typewriters, dot-matrix printers, ink-jet printers, laser printers, and photocopied, scanned, and faxed documents. ImageGear PDF helps users control and customize multiple PDF variables, making it a fully functional PDF conversion solution for your application.

PDF Pain Points

One of the biggest PDF frustrations? The inability to break apart and combine PDF documents. Let’s imagine you have a massive legal PDF or in-depth medical file. In these circumstances, professionals only need a portion of the PDF, but without the right tools they’re stuck sending entire files when all they need is a single page. In other cases, employees might have a host of related PDFs that are part of the same project, but can’t be easily combined to save space and time.

ImageGear PDF has you covered with the ability to easily delete or insert PDF pages, render pages in a single PDF, split a PDF, merge two or more PDFs into a single file, or even merge specific pages from two or more PDFs into a single PDF. This not only makes a massive difference in time spent working with PDF documents, it helps reduce unnecessary storage and transmission of multiple files. 

Convert PDF: Multiple File Formats for Conversion

Conversion is critical for PDF success. Instead of creating complexity by forcing end-users to stick with original file formats, implementing an SDK with cutting-edge conversion empowers corporate consistency and saves on storage space. ImageGear PDF supports a host of common file formats for conversion including Microsoft Office, JPEG 2000, CAD, and SVG.

Of course, no feature forward PDF framework is complete without robust annotation, redaction, and commenting capabilities. These features make it easy for other users to see exactly what’s been changed, when, and why, along with providing a critical, auditable paper trail to meet evolving compliance and regulatory standards.

PDF Functionality for Your Application

Best of all, ImageGear isn’t designed to replace your current software, but integrate alongside existing workflows. Rather than adding another application to already-overloaded IT arsenals, straightforward SDK integration means everything happens within your own application, making it easy for everyone to find exactly what they’re looking for within familiar territory. Need help jumpstarting your SDK deployment? Check out our full list of ImageGear .NET samples for ASP.NET, CAD, OCR support, and more.

PDFs remain eternally popular and continually frustrating. Solve for document viewing, split and merge, and conversion issues and streamline employee efforts with ImageGear.

When it comes to downloading or viewing documents over the internet, PDFs have long served as a de facto standard for most organizations. Since PDFs are not a proprietary file format, there’s rarely any risk that someone will be unable to open them. However, just because PDFs have become so commonplace doesn’t mean that they all share the same characteristics. For anyone who has ever wondered why some PDFs seem to take so much longer to load than others, the answer often has less to do with connection and processing speeds as it does with the way the PDF’s content is organized.

More specifically, it’s a matter of whether or not the document is a linearized PDF.

What Is a Linearized PDF?

Sometimes called “fast web view,” linearization is a special way of saving a PDF file that organizes its internal components to make them easier to read when the file is streamed over a network connection. While a standard, non-linearized PDF stores information associated with each page across the entire file, linearized PDFs use an object tree format to consolidate page elements in an ordered, page by page basis. When a reader opens a linearized PDF, then, all of the information needed to render the first page is readily available, allowing it to load the page quickly without having to search the entire document for a specific object like an embedded font.

Originally introduced with the PDF 1.2 standard in 1996, linearized PDFs were critical to the format’s early internet success. In order to view a non-linearized PDF, the entire document needs to be downloaded or read via HTTP request-response transactions. Given the bandwidth limitations of early internet connections (often still between 28.8k and 33.6k in 1996), this created a serious bottleneck problem when it came to document viewing. While it was possible to view a document without downloading it, the multiple HTTP requests needed to do so could easily be disrupted if the connection was lost, something that was all too common in the days before reliable broadband connections were introduced.

Non-Linearized vs Linearized PDFs

To visualize the difference between a non-linearized PDF and a linearized PDF, imagine two separate people sitting down to file their business taxes. One person has all of their receipts, invoices, and financial documents scattered across their office, with some stacked in unordered piles, others crammed into unlabeled folders, and even more stuffed into assorted drawers and file cabinets. Finding and organizing all of this documentation would take almost as much time as actually filing the taxes themselves! The second person, however, has all of the records they need stored in a neatly labeled file cabinet, allowing them to retrieve everything quickly and easily.

The first example is similar to a non-linearized PDF, while the second shows how much easier it is for a reader to access the information it needs to render the file. Even better, since each page is organized in the same way, jumping to a different page in a multi-page PDF doesn’t require the reader to reload the entire file. It can simply read the current page and get everything necessary to display the PDF correctly.

Why Linearized PDFs Are Still Valuable

In a world dominated by high speed internet connections, it’s fair to wonder whether or not PDF linearization is still necessary. For small PDFs that are only a few pages, linearization may not be essential, but when it comes to larger documents, linearization can still deliver substantial performance and user experience benefits.

Consider, for instance, a document that consists of several hundred, or even several thousand, pages. Loading that entire document and keeping it cached may be possible, but it’s an inefficient use of processing and bandwidth resources. With a linearized PDF, a reader typically encounters a linearization directory and hint tables at the top of the document, which provides it with instructions on where to locate any necessary resources within the file. After loading the hint tables and the first page, the reader stops the download process rather than opening the entire file. When the user navigates to another page, the reader can quickly reference the hint tables and jump to that page.

This ensures that the reader is only ever loading the pages that actually need to be displayed, which helps to conserve memory, processing resources, and bandwidth. For mobile devices with limited file and cache storage, linearized PDFs are much easier to manage than their non-linearized counterparts. They also provide some protection against network interruptions, which could make it difficult to download and view an entire document.

How to Linearize PDFs

Although the linearization process is well laid out in the current PDF standards documentation, many PDFs are created using software that doesn’t automatically linearize the content. More importantly, some linearized PDFs are “broken” by a process called incremental saving, which saves minor updates at the end of the file, rather than changing existing structure. Over time, too much incremental saving can undermine the effectiveness of a linearized PDF.

The best way to resolve such problems and linearize the PDF is to save a new, linearized version of the file using PDF editing and conversion tools.

Take Control of PDFs with PrizmDoc

Accusoft’s PrizmDoc provides a broad range of document functionality that allows applications to more effectively create, convert, and compress PDF files.

For a closer look at PrizmDoc and to see its powerful document processing capabilities in action, download a free trial today.

Few organizations will view the final weeks of 2020 as a bittersweet moment. In addition to the staggering human toll inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic, entire industries saw longstanding business models upended, forcing companies to completely rethink their relationships with employees, vendors, and customers. The financial services industry was no exception, and 2020 saw FinTech becoming more important than ever as firms rushed to embrace digital transformation in response to the ongoing crisis. Many of these trends appear poised to continue well into 2021 and beyond. 

FinTech Defined

FinTech is short for “financial technology,” but the term itself is applied quite broadly throughout the financial services industry. It can be used to refer to a new generation of non-traditional startup companies focused on building digital tools that allow people to manage their finances in new ways that disrupt established industry practices. The term is also sometimes used to describe the technology itself, however, especially since established financial organizations are investing heavily in innovative applications and services of their own.

FinTech Trends for 2021

Although 2020 is sure to be remembered as a year of unprecedented disruption, 2021 might well come to be known as a year of remarkable adaptation and transformation. Now that organizations have developed innovative digital strategies to navigate a more volatile economic landscape, they must now take up the challenge of putting those plans into practice.

FinTech developers need to keep an eye on these trends as they build new applications and services in order to provide the functionality and performance demanded by the financial industry. Many established firms will be taking a long look at their infrastructure and technology solutions to assess whether or not their current systems are up to the challenge of digital transformation. If their existing platforms fall short, they will need to either seek out new FinTech products with more robust feature sets or explore options for integrating new capabilities into their legacy software.

Top 5 FinTech Trends to Watch in 2021

1. Customer-Centric Applications

The proliferation of FinTech solutions has brought customers to the forefront of every financial organization’s thoughts. Where the financial industry once designed processes and applications to suit their own needs, today they must focus on delivering a high-quality customer experience if they want to remain competitive in a crowded marketplace. The process often begins with reducing friction wherever possible to help end-users get the products and services they need faster. With customers increasingly interacting with the financial industry across multiple channels, FinTech developers must build solutions that strengthen those connections and expand their potential.

Eliminating manual processes, cutting down on external software dependencies, and automating routine tasks will continue to be a major point of emphasis for FinTech applications. Customers no longer have the patience to repeatedly fill out lengthy forms or go through the frustrating process of downloading, printing, signing, and scanning documents. By building document viewing, file conversion, and data capture capabilities into their applications, FinTech developers can provide firms with a unified digital solution that addresses multiple needs and streamlines their customer experience.

2. Digital-First Collaboration

According to an IDG study on the enduring business impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic, about 40% of employees are expected to be working remotely on a semi-permanent basis as of January 2021. That means financial organizations will continue to need digital tools in place to provide secure access to files and facilitate collaboration. Physical documents must first be converted into a variety of digital formats with high levels of accuracy and then made available to remote users without compromising data integrity or creating confusion over version history. 

Without a dedicated solution on hand for viewing, editing, and managing documents, users are forced to resort to a variety of ad hoc workarounds and third party software solutions that can quickly compromise data security and increase the likelihood of errors. By integrating those features into their FinTech applications, developers can help firms keep all of their documents and files safely within a secure infrastructure while still making them available through easy-to-use web-based API tools.

3. Big Data Management

Financial organizations continue to collect huge amounts of data in the course of their business. Some of this data is unstructured and must be processed using powerful analytics tools to identify important trends and potential risks that can help firms make better strategic decisions. But they also gather a great deal of structured data as well, typically from structured forms like loan applications, tax documents, and bank statements. Managing all of this information more efficiently will be an important goal for 2021 because having good data insights is essential for identifying opportunities, optimizing products and services, and automating essential services.

FinTech developers can help improve data processing by building applications capable of extracting information quickly and accurately. Financial data algorithms are quite good at identifying different types of data and sorting it into the proper place for analysis, but they’re often slowed down by documents that are damaged or difficult to read. Thanks to software integrations that provide robust image cleanup, document alignment, and form recognition tools, FinTech applications can ensure that firms are starting with the cleanest possible source data when extracting information for processing.

4. Pandemic Proofing

Although there are several promising COVID-19 vaccines on the horizon, challenges with supply and distribution will keep most companies operating under the same social distancing and remote workplace guidelines they put in place in 2020 for much of the year. Even if restrictions are lifted earlier than expected, the risk-averse financial industry will continue to think about how to avoid similar disruptions by implementing paperless processes and electronic data capture options. Just as retailers and manufacturers are rethinking their supply chain infrastructure, financial services companies must reassess their FinTech applications in light of recent challenges.

Developers can help the financial industry better “pandemic proof” their processes by integrating better document viewing, file conversion, and data capture tools into their software solutions. Not only can they automate traditionally time-consuming (and error-prone) manual data entry tasks, but they can also build in additional functionality to auto-generate data for new contracts and allow people to sign documents digitally to eliminate the need for face-to-face meetings. 

5. Banking Partnerships

Banks and other traditional financial institutions are increasingly partnering with FinTech startups to reach new customers and engage with existing clients over new channels. As Deloitte noted in a recent study, the pandemic has removed many of the obstacles to digital transformation in the financial industry and forced many established firms to pour tremendous resources into their tools and infrastructure. But as banks engage with innovative startups, they will need to find ways to integrate operations and data quickly to remain competitive and roll out new services successfully.

That integration process will be easier if they have flexible software solutions in place that can navigate multiple file types, perform cleanup and conversion, and extract essential data quickly and accurately. Whether they’re building that functionality into entirely new applications or integrating features into existing legacy systems, FinTech developers will play a key role in helping financial organizations accelerate their merger and partnership timetables so they can begin reaping the benefits more quickly. 

Solving Your FinTech Challenges with Accusoft

Accusoft’s collection of RESTful APIs and SDKs provide FinTech developers with the tools they need to build comprehensive content processing, conversion, and automation solutions into software applications. Whether you’re using PrizmDoc Suite to view, edit, and convert documents directly inside their financial applications, capturing valuable financial data from various form types with FormSuite for Structured Forms, or embedding powerful image cleanup, OCR, and annotation tools into your application with ImageGear, our family of software integrations allow you to add the functionality your FinTech solutions need to meet the challenges of 2021 and beyond.

To learn more about how our software tools can enhance your FinTech applications, talk to one of our integration experts today.