Technical FAQs

In the finance industry, managing and securing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is a task of paramount importance, given the stringent regulatory landscape and the vast volumes of sensitive customer data handled daily. The introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in financial content management systems is a game-changer, offering a more efficient, secure, and compliant way of handling PII.

By utilizing AI-powered integrations, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and large financial institutions developing in-house solutions can transform the way their applications protect private information in the finance sector.

Tackling Regulatory Compliance with AI

The finance sector operates under a complex regulatory framework with compliance standards specifically tailored to the protection of PII. Traditional manual approaches to adhering to these regulations are not only time-consuming but also fraught with the potential for human error.

AI steps in as a crucial tool for ensuring compliance. By automating the process of compliance checks, AI reduces manual workload and minimizes the risk of non-compliance, thereby safeguarding financial institutions against potential legal and financial penalties.

Managing Massive Data Volumes

Financial institutions are custodians of enormous volumes of customer data. Manually identifying and securing every piece of PII in this vast data ocean is an uphill task.

Here, AI becomes indispensable. With its capacity to process and analyze large datasets efficiently, AI, through machine learning algorithms, can swiftly identify and categorize PII. This provides a scalable and accurate solution to manage and protect large volumes of financial data.

Securing PII in Complex Ecosystems

The finance industry relies on intricate, interconnected systems, with PII often being shared among various entities. Ensuring the security of this data across such a multifaceted ecosystem is challenging.

AI technologies offer a unified approach to PII protection. By implementing consistent security protocols across various financial systems, AI ensures a holistic and integrated strategy to safeguard sensitive information.

Introducing PrizmDoc’s AI Capabilities in Finance

As the finance industry evolves, it’s crucial to introduce innovative solutions like PrizmDoc’s new AI capabilities. Combined with PrizmDoc’s industry-leading redaction features, these tools stand at the forefront for identifying and flagging sensitive PII within financial documents allowing for streamlined reviewing and redaction before sharing documents with other departments.

User-Friendly Functionality

PrizmDoc’s AI functionalities are accessible via APIs, allowing for the creation of workflow automations that are both efficient and secure. Additionally, user interface tools extend AI functionality to end users, making it a practical tool in everyday financial operations.

Streamlined Workflows

Incorporating PrizmDoc’s AI into financial content management systems transforms the landscape of financial operations. This technology streamlines workflows, significantly reducing operational bottlenecks and paving the way for faster and more effective decision-making processes. Additionally, it significantly improves the efficiency of handling and managing financial documents.

Enhanced Security

A key aspect of PrizmDoc’s AI is its enhancement of data security, a critical factor in protecting sensitive customer information. This integration plays a pivotal role in ensuring improved compliance with regulatory standards, a vital requirement in the finance sector. Above all, it elevates the overall quality and reliability of financial services.

PrizmDoc AI Redaction Keeps PII Secure for Financial Applications 

The integration of AI in financial content management systems, especially with advanced tools like PrizmDoc, marks a substantial stride towards more efficient, secure, and compliant financial practices. As technological advancements continue at a rapid pace, the role of AI in reshaping the future of financial data management is becoming increasingly prominent and indispensable. By incorporating PrizmDoc’s AI capabilities into their FinTech applications, developers can offer end users the ability to manage documents more efficiently without putting PII at risk.

FinTech adoption continues to accelerate. According to Wealth Professional, almost 40 percent of finance firms now prioritize the adoption of FinTech frameworks, even as new-to-market startups disrupt the status quo. 

However, spending alone isn’t enough to deliver streamlined and scalable FinTech processes. As noted by David Linthicum, Chief Cloud Strategy Officer at Deloitte in a recent protocol piece, firms now face the challenge of creating “high-quality, repeatable data processes with the profusion of systems involved in generating data” while simultaneously integrating unstructured and semi-structured data sources into existing processes.

At the front lines of this fundamental framework change is digital documents and business process workflows. Let’s dive in, and look at some of the biggest frustrations facing the finance industry, the solutions they need to streamline digital processes, and how Accusoft’s ImageGear can help redefine digital document delivery.

FinTech Framework Challenges

By leveraging data-driven techniques and digital-first processes, Forbes notes that it’s possible for even startup firms to differentiate their service delivery and compete with huge financial brands — but only when digital document processes align with on-demand performance expectations. 

Consider common use cases such as loan origination, credit applications, or mortgage approvals. Many FinTech firms now target client pre-approval within 24 hours rather than the days or weeks required by traditional finance corporations. The problem? As digital document processes naturally scale, so does complexity, creating a practical paradox around three key challenges:

• Speed — As noted above, many FinTech firms are looking to disrupt incumbent efforts by reducing approval times and increasing customer satisfaction. As the number and type of digital documents required for timely approval expands, disparate processes conspire to stifle speed. Consider a loan origination requiring identity verification, income confirmation, and current debt load documents for pre-approval, all of which are in different file formats, forcing firms to use multiple software solutions and slowing their progress.
• Security — Cybersecurity and compliance are critical for FinTech firms to succeed, but both requirements come with rapid scaling complexity. For example, a recent FDIC document lists more than 200 types of Compliance Information and Document Request (CIDR) forms which must be customized for each financial use case. The result? Increased document processing volumes drives increased complexity and opens potential security gaps.
• Consistency — Digital data consistency is critical to ensure accurate approvals and assess potential risks, but contrasting document processes create the ideal environment for human error. Despite best efforts on the part of employees, the more manual processes introduced into FinTech functions, the greater the chance of misplaced assets or data conversion mistakes.

Streamlined Structure Solutions

To bridge the gap between FinTech potential and fast-track document processes, companies need solutions that deliver four broad benefits:

• Document Conversion — FinTech firms now face a diverse range of documents that often frustrate efforts to unify key data. Here, integrated conversion functionality is critical to ensure employees have the tools they need to quickly convert key documents without having to open multiple applications and manually move or manipulate data.
• On-Demand Annotation — Speaking of data, it’s also essential for staff to collaborate on key documents, especially as many FinTech firms embrace the remote work revolution. Advanced annotation tools that allow asynchronous collaboration are essential to ensure employees always have access to the most current document version and administrators can easily determine who edited documents, when, and why.
• Digital Compression — As digital documents become the de facto financial standard, storage space is at a premium. This is especially problematic for larger document types such as PDFs, which are often preferred by FinTech firms for the ability to easily control access, editing rights, and collaboration. Uncompressed, these PDFs can quickly overwhelm even enterprise storage systems, forcing companies to either spend more on cloud services or invest in bigger datacenters. Reducing PDF size both saves space and helps companies streamline document sharing.
• PDF Manipulation — While read-only access makes PDFs ideal for FinTech firms that need to share specific information without introducing security risk, adjusting and editing these documents in-house often requires multiple applications and increased employee effort. Even more worrisome? Staff encountering functional limits may opt for free, online applications that could compromise document confidentiality.

Practical Process Performance

ImageGear is designed to help FinTech firms both overcome current frustrations and help future-proof financial frameworks by combining disparate document functions into a single-source application and improve overall performance. Standout features include:

• Complete PDF Control — ImageGear provides a single-platform solution for PDF manipulation and control. Developers can easily integrate an SDK that enables application users to create, edit, view, and print PDFs from within the confines of existing applications, create searchable PDF documents, or flatten acroforms to remove file interactivity, all while automatically conforming to the PDF language standard.
• Secure Signature Verification — Secure digital signatures now form a critical component of on-demand FinTech forms processing. If companies can’t accept and verify client signatures, they’re not able to deliver speedy approvals and meet evolving consumer expectations. ImageGear allows companies to ensure that electronic documents are authentic. It uses encryption to verify that the information  has not been altered and is coming from a trusted source.
• Agile Annotations — Making changes to PDF files is easy with ImageGear. Staff can quickly add text, lines, hot spots, encryption, rich text, images, or even audio as needed to ensure documents are complete, accurate, and ready for approval.
• Comprehensive Conversion Options — To deliver on the promise of FinTech performance, firms must be able to quickly and easily convert and combine multiple file types into a single PDF and convert PDFs as necessary into other file formats. ImageGear empowers developers to integrate a way for application users to quickly convert documents to PDF, create PDF/A files from raster images, and convert scanned pages into PDF searchable text using advanced optical character recognition (OCR). Annotations marks can also be converted as needed into XML files for enhanced auditability.
• Substantial File Size Reduction — ImageGear enables file compression of up to 45 percent to save valuable storage space and utilizes automatic analysis to determine optimal compression operations for best-fit results.

Ready to embrace the future of FinTech and redefine digital document delivery at scale? Start your free trial of ImageGear today!

The software development industry is changing more rapidly than ever before. With new technology hitting the market on a regular basis, software vendors need to become flexible enough to adapt to the top coding trends if they want to remain competitive.

After a tumultuous 2020, the industry has seen a number of key trends emerge in the first half of 2021. Here are some of the top coding trends worth watching in the second half of the year.

Top 5 Coding Trends of 2021 (So Far)

1. Open-Source Evolution

Developers have been turning to open-source solutions for some time now as a quick way to integrate new features into their applications. While there are a lot of great benefits to using open-source code, it’s not always the simple solution that it appears to be. Substantial work may need to be done to implement the specific features an application requires. More importantly, open-source solutions rarely offer much in the way of support or security updates, and there can also be complicated intellectual property issues to consider when incorporating open source code into a proprietary application.

That’s why many innovative developers are using stable open-source solutions as a foundation for creating more feature-rich software SDKs. For teams building new applications, it’s often much easier to implement one of these integrations because it will require far less configurations and additional coding to get up and running. They can also get the benefits of dedicated support and not have to worry about whether their new integration will create any legal issues down the road.

2. UX Design

With the proliferation of Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms and the widespread use of open source development resources, it’s becoming easier for organizations to find the applications that suit their business needs. What they can’t always find, however, is a solution that’s easy for their employees and customers to use. That’s why the quality of an application’s user experience (UX) is quickly becoming a key differentiator in the software market.

Rather than implementing UX features at a later stage of the coding process, developers need to consider how users will interact with their solution from the very beginning. Software needs to be intuitive and easy to implement out-of-the-box. This applies equally to end-user products and developer-focused SDK integrations. No one has time to struggle with software that’s difficult to use. If a solution proves too cumbersome and hard to implement, customers will likely turn to a competing product that offers a better user experience. The more time developers spend considering their software’s UX, the better they’ll be able to adapt it to customer needs in the future.

3. Responsive Mobile Support

For many years, there was a somewhat artificial distinction between mobile software development and desktop development. But in a world where half of all internet activity comes from mobile devices, no developer working on web-based applications can afford to consider their software “just” for desktops. Just as website designers have been building pages that respond dynamically to different screen sizes and control interfaces, developers must also account for the unique characteristics of mobile devices.

The unique characteristics of mobile screens present specific challenges regarding the application’s user interface (UI). Simply providing standard desktop controls is bound to result in a frustrating mobile experience. Mobile responsive applications can accommodate touch-specific controls (such as pinch-to-zoom) without compromising the desktop experience at the same time. Developers must think about what kinds of devices their software solutions will be used on if they’re to build features and tools that will truly benefit their customers.

4. API Integrations

Today’s developers no longer need to build every feature their application might require from scratch. Thanks to a new generation of web API technology, it’s easier than ever to find software integrations that can quickly and easily add vital features without having to dedicate weeks of development time to building them. Understanding which web application features can be incorporated via a REST API helps development teams to focus their limited resources and time on the truly unique features that will help set them apart from the competition.

Utilizing web API technologies can streamline sprints and shorten development time significantly. That’s because much of the “trial and error” work of building a new feature is eliminated. Rather than designing and testing new capabilities for months, developers can simply implement a tested and proven web API integration within a matter of days. That helps to keep budgets under control and development schedules on track to make targeted launch days.

5. Remote Work

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world in early 2020, many software developers transitioned to a remote workplace arrangement. As other industries begin to tentatively return to the office, tech workers seem to have become quite accustomed to working remotely. According to a late 2020 survey conducted by Indeed, nearly half of participants reported that they now have the option to work remotely on a permanent basis, with 95 percent of them planning to do so. Perhaps even more telling, however, was the finding that 60 percent of tech workers are willing to take a pay cut in order to keep working from home.

Software vendors will have to accommodate these expectations if they hope to remain competitive when it comes to finding and retaining talent. Project managers should not expect work patterns to go back to the way they were before the pandemic. They will be better served focusing on how to organize remote work efficiently and how to provide the resources developers need to be productive while working from home. Transitioning to a more remote workforce is also allowing organizations to tap into a much broader pool of talent, which will help to bring more diverse voices and experiences into the development process.

Keeping an Eye on Future Trends

The software development teams at Accusoft are always looking ahead to see where today’s coding trends are leading the industry. That’s why we’ve been building easy-to-implement, lightweight SDKs like the free-to-use Accusoft PDF Viewer alongside our stable of versatile API solutions like PrizmDoc Viewer. We also continue to make ongoing improvements to our products to provide a better user experience for customers.

Our collection of software integrations can help development teams keep up with today’s top coding trends. Whether you’re looking to quickly integrate new features into an existing application or are looking for the right tools to support your next project, we have the API and SDK resources to keep you on-budget and on-time. Check out the Accusoft Resource Center to learn more.

ISVs, corporations, and SaaS solutions all have the same immediate digital transformation needs in common; they all need to bring forth technologies that improve both the customer and employee experience. The challenge is building and launching these technologies quickly, efficiently, and within a scalable, sustainable model. Product managers and development teams are all evaluating options to assist with meeting stakeholder demands for quality, while also meeting the need for speed to market. Enter the hidden value of third-party software integrations.

The secret life of APIs

Digital transformation is an ever-increasing priority for all businesses as well as an initiative that is seeing a surge in funding. In a recent State of the API Economy 2021 report by Google, 56% of enterprise leaders say APIs help them to build better digital experiences and products. Leaders are also finding value in focusing on an API-driven strategy, and 52% say APIs accelerate innovation by enabling partners to leverage digital assets at scale. 

How API Integration Works

At a very simple level, an API consists of code that allows two separate technology systems to communicate and interact with one another. It functions as a translator and messenger; delivering user requests and data from one system to a completely separate system. This effectively allows an application to utilize the features and data of other applications without having to build out that functionality from scratch.

For example, the Uber ride-sharing app connects customers to available drivers within a specific area. It does this with a combination of smartphone geolocation and accurate maps, but the Uber app doesn’t have mapping capabilities. To get those features, it connects to Google Maps by way of an API that allows the Uber app to access the relevant navigational data and use it to connect customers to drivers.

Another key function of APIs is their ability to automate key processes and connect legacy infrastructure to newer technology systems. Data can be collected in one system, for instance, and “pushed” into another system automatically. This not only eliminates the complicated (and error-prone) task of manually transferring data between different systems, but also allows users to build a workflow in an application they’re already accustomed to, without having to learn an entirely new system. 

More importantly, since APIs allow newer technologies, devices, and legacy applications to talk to each other, they provide firms with substantial flexibility when it comes to adding new platforms. Purchasing new software doesn’t mean throwing out existing tools, which significantly reduces the risks associated with technology investments and upgrades.

The cost savings with API Integrations

When you purchase a third-party API integration you’re gaining more than additional functionality for your application. You also gain access to a team of developers and support specialists who are here to assist you from POC to deployment and beyond.  Leaning on the specialization of a third-party vendor allows your developers to focus on application enhancements and release your product to market faster. Ultimately saving your company valuable development time and realizing product revenue faster.

Interested in learning more?

Could your business benefit from an API led digital transformation strategy? Schedule a consultation today, to learn more about the document management API integration options available from Accusoft.

The EU has taken this priority a step further than just suggesting companies and organizations increase data protection – since 2018, they’ve mandated and enforced specific requirements through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Given the broad parameters covered under GDPR compliance, ensuring the standards are met can become a time-consuming, stressful and ongoing issue if not resourced properly.  The parameters go beyond the protection of personal data and go as far as requirements, to prove security measures are set in place.  

Who Needs to Maintain GDPR Compliance?

While often only associated within the European Union, the requirements and legislation of the GDPR extend as far as all “entities who are offering goods or services to anyone residing in the EU (even if those services are provided free of cost).  Any global business either has to become compliant for all of its users/customers or be able to accurately identify EU residents and enable compliant systems to handle only that subset of the customer base.”

GDPR requires companies to know the following as related to personal data:

• What personal data is being shared 
• Where it is being shared 
• How it can be deleted at a moment’s notice if necessary

The GDPR also highly encourages that an organization designates an employee to be the point of contact and in control of the data security processes and systems to maintain compliance.  A first step to having an effective process in place is choosing the right tools with security features to protect data being shared within the company.

Managing Risk through Secure Document Viewing

As risk management becomes an essential part of strategic planning, the importance of IT security and data encryption skyrockets to the top of priorities for most companies. GDPR suggests encryption as a means to manage risk in file sharing but does not outline explicit instruction.  With PrizmDoc™ Viewer, companies gain added data security, aligned with GDPR compliance, in document viewing and sharing without heavy client-side installations or downloads. 

PrizmDoc™ Viewer is created with Multi-Level Data Protection including:

• 256-bit AES encryption 
  • (Advanced Encryption Standard) is an international standard that ensures data is encrypted/decrypted following this approved standard. It ensures high security and is adopted by the U.S. government and other intelligence organizations across the world.
• Configurable user permissions add a strong measure of privacy and protection to document content.

A Simple Path to Secure Document Sharing

Remote work or not – collaborating on a project today means sharing documents among many colleagues to finalize a document, project, or presentation. To do that with security in mind, organizations are cobbling together tech stacks to meet their productivity needs along the way, and several different file types can come across their desks in a single day.  

PrizmDoc™ Viewer integrates into your current application to render and display a multitude of file types with high fidelity and speed.  The ease of use features include:

• Flexible use across many platforms
• A self-hosted version that resides on any organization’s servers
• Empowers developers to provide their users with responsive file viewing
• Search and redaction can be easily turned on/off

PrizmDoc Viewer is also designed to run on all devices with a zero-footprint viewer that makes it easy for employees to work where and how they wish. The white label services give an organization the flexibility to brand and customize while gaining peace of mind in data security.

Open and View an Image Securely the First Time

While documents have a range of formats from Word, PDF, spreadsheets, and more – images are often more of a culprit when it comes to difficulty viewing, let alone being able to download, edit, markup, or save information as a separate file. Workers find themselves quickly downloading a media player just to open the image.  Having multiple solutions in place is not only confusing, but it also contributes to inefficiency and human error which means added risk for images to remain secure. 

As photographs can constitute personal data under the GDPR, this means organizations must be able to quickly and easily remove all images where the individual can be identified.  

With ImageGear, an organization is able to add powerful image processing capabilities that enhance secure collaboration such as:

• PDF manipulation that includes managing access with digital signatures for added security levels
• The image processing library offers developers a set of methods for modifying an image including to resize, crop, merge, rotate, and flip.
• An option to add OCR for document search and data capture support

Getting Started 

To quickly gain peace of mind with secure collaboration, contact us 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.

In part one of our series on how APIs are empowering a new generation of LegalTech solutions, we looked at some of the technology obstacles facing today’s legal organizations. We also covered the basic principles of how API integration works and how it can bridge the gap between legacy systems and new applications. In part two, we’ll be taking a closer look at some specific API integration use cases and explain why they’re an essential part of a successful firm’s LegalTech toolkit.

4 Benefits of APIs for Legal Teams

Before going into more detail about how LegalTech API integration works, it’s worth highlighting the broad benefits APIs can deliver to a law firm. 

1. Streamlined Workflows

The average legal department relies on more than one software solution to meet their business needs. While larger firms that provide a broad range of legal services typically require more specialized platforms, even smaller legal teams deploy different software applications to address different business needs.

Thanks to API functionality, these diverse LegalTech solutions can be integrated into a single, platform-agnostic portal that eliminates the workflow disruption caused by constantly switching back and forth between programs. 

2. Remote Functionality

API integrations also make it possible for lawyers to access an assortment of LegalTech tools from any location, even if they can’t physically be at their offices. This capability is more important than ever as the legal profession continues to grapple with the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic. 

Many lawyers are still working from home and communicating with their clients and colleagues remotely. In some states, virtual court proceedings might remain in use even after the pandemic. If law practices aren’t able to function effectively in a remote context, they will struggle to deliver quality legal services to their clients.

3. Competitive Advantage

Managing multiple technology resources and facilitating remote collaboration isn’t just about making work easier for legal teams. Streamlining workflows results in greater efficiency, which means lawyers can spend more time doing high-value work for their clients rather than sorting out technical issues or tracking down hard-to-find documents and files. 

It also translates into reduced costs, since key administrative functions can be automated and carried out both faster and more accurately. Law firms that invest in technology integration can deliver better services to their clients at lower costs than their competition while still retaining the flexibility to adapt to future disruptions.

4. Enhanced Security

By its very nature, the legal industry ends up handling a great deal of sensitive information. Financial records, contracts, protected health data, and private correspondence are frequently relevant to legal proceedings of all kinds. There’s also the matter of attorney-client privilege, which greatly restricts what information can be shared outside the firm. 

Without a way to securely manage files and documents, law firms leave themselves exposed to significant liability. Thanks to API integrations, attorneys can use their existing LegalTech solutions to access, share, and edit essential files safely and securely. 

PrizmDoc Viewer: LegalTech API Integration in Practice

For a better understanding of how API integration can enhance the performance of LegalTech applications, it’s instructive to look at some specific examples. Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer uses a powerful collection of REST APIs to provide HTML5 document viewing functionality through a single interface. It not only allows LegalTech developers to quickly and easily integrate document viewing capabilities into their applications, but it also delivers several additional features that are particularly relevant to the legal industry’s eDiscovery process. 

Document Conversion

The digitization of the discovery process has made it easier for legal organizations to share documents and back up important data. Unfortunately, it’s also created a huge glut of electronically stored information (ESI) in a variety of formats. In addition to the large number of commonly used file formats (such as DOCX, PDF, and JPEG), firms must also deal with a variety of proprietary file formats and case-specific formats (like DICOM for healthcare clients). PrizmDoc Viewer uses an array of APIs to convert more than 100 file formats for easy presentation within a browser-based HTML5 viewer. It can also convert image-based documents into searchable PDFs or editable text files with a built-in OCR engine. Thanks to this integration, attorneys can quickly share and view documents internally or with clients and the court without having to download and install specialized applications.

Annotation

The ability to annotate and markup documents is essential for any collaborative legal process. Although many platforms make it easy to insert comments and edits into documents, these programs often don’t support more than a handful of file types and alter the original file when making annotations. PrizmDoc Viewer’s annotation functionality supports over 100 file types and allows multiple users to make layered edits that can be easily shown or hidden. More importantly, all markups exist on top of the original document, preserving the integrity of the original file to comply with state and federal preservation of data requirements. When the time comes to present documents, annotations can be burned into the file if necessary. 

Redaction

Sharing documents is always a sensitive process in the legal profession. Information may be protected by attorney-client privilege, disclosure agreements, contractual obligations, or government regulations. LegalTech applications need to be able to redact sensitive data when sharing documents with outside parties. PrizmDoc Viewer’s REST API allows users to manually redact individual sections, use search features to redact specific terms, or even programmatically redact data for pre-determined reasons (such as account numbers or Social Security numbers). Redacted content is not only hidden from view, but no longer shows up in search results and cannot be copied or highlighted.

Security

As mentioned previously, security should be a key consideration for any LegalTech solution. Firms need to strictly control who has access to data and confidential documents, whether that consists of sensitive client information or internal litigation strategies. PrizmDoc Viewer provides a few key features to help LegalTech applications maintain high levels of security.

• DRM: Digital rights management (DRM) controls can manage who has access to documents and what functions they can use (such as printing, downloading, or viewing). This makes it easy to restrict how files are shared and track any document leaks back to their source to hold the responsible parties accountable.
• Watermarking: PrizmDoc Viewer can hard code identifying information into documents to prove ownership and prevent the unauthorized reproduction of documentation.
• Encryption: With so many people working remotely from potentially unsecured Internet connections, file encryption is absolutely essential for any LegalTech application. PrizmDoc Viewer uses 256-bit AES content encryption to ensure that documents remain secure throughout the collaboration process.

Transform Your LegalTech Strategy with API Integration

As we covered in part one, many legal organizations cling to outdated processes and technology due to familiarity and deeply-ingrained status quo bias. But familiar doesn’t always mean functional. Over reliance on manual processes exposes firms to increased human error and a range of potential data security risks, to say nothing of undercutting productivity. Advanced APIs offer a new tactical toolkit, a way to select best-fit code that solves specific issues and helps legal firms improve operational outcomes. Learn more about how Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer can unlock the full potential of your LegalTech applications today.

Printers, scanners, and other imaging devices have long been a source of headaches and frustration for developers and users alike. All too often, multiple software tools are required to connect an application to a device and acquire image files from them. This not only slows down workflows, but also creates opportunities for human error. Files can easily be misplaced or imported using the wrong parameters under these conditions.

Thanks to ImageGear’s TWAIN scanning support, however, developers can ensure that their application makes acquiring images from compatible devices both straightforward and mistake free. 

What Is TWAIN?

Developed in 1992 by a consortium of software developers and hardware manufacturers, the TWAIN standard is a standard software protocol and API that facilitates communication between imaging devices and software applications running on a computer. The word itself refers to a famous line in the Rudyard Kipling poem “The Ballad of East and West” that reads “never the twain shall meet.” Although sometimes alleged to stand for “Technology Without An Interesting Name,” the term is not actually an acronym despite being capitalized.

The name is well chosen because the TWAIN standard helped to solve the enduring problem of getting imaging devices and computers to connect and send data between one another. Most commonly used for scanners and digital cameras, TWAIN made it possible to request an image file to be imported into an application without having to utilize additional software or input commands using the physical device.

Implementing TWAIN Scanning with ImageGear

As a versatile image processing SDK, ImageGear fully supports the TWAIN specification, which allows developers to support any TWAIN-capable device directly into their applications. In most instances, this will involve adding a “Scan” button or option somewhere in the platform’s interface so that users can quickly and easily instruct their scanner to capture an image and pass it along to the application’s storage or workflow. Developers can also use the integration to adjust device settings directly from their application, such as changing the scanning area, modifying brightness and contrast, or increasing/decreasing dots-per-inch (resolution). 

ImageGear’s TWAIN scanning feature works with three external elements to facilitate image file transfers:

• The Device: Usually a scanner or digital camera, this is the primary imaging source. The device must be compliant with TWAIN protocol.This is typically indicated by the manufacturer.
• Data Source: Although ImageGear’s TWAIN scanning features can connect an application to a scanner, the device still needs a software driver that allows it to communicate with the computer’s operating system.
• Data Source Manager: The TWAIN manager software provides a universal mechanism for managing and using data sources from different device manufacturers. Developed by the TWAIN consortium, it can be downloaded for free and installed wherever the application is running.

(Both the device’s data source driver and TWAIN data source manager should be included with its installation software. They are not provided by the ImageGear SDK).

Acquiring an Image Using TWAIN Scanning

ImageGear can configure an application to gather an image or set of images from a connected device with a few simple steps.

Step 1: Open the Data Source

Developers can set the application to automatically open a default Data Source. This is typically the best choice when only one scanner is available, as is often the case in a small workplace. They can also use the Data Source Manager to provide a list of all available Data Sources and let the user select the one they need.

Step 2: Adjust Settings

ImageGear’s TWAIN scanning features allow image acquisition parameters to be set through the application. Parameters such as page count and image size can be set to a common default, but developers can also give the option to obtain the various capabilities (listed as “ScanCaps”) and display them for users to select from. ImageGear supports a wide range of TWAIN-related capabilities.

Step 3: Acquire Image

After all settings are configured, the image can be scanned and loaded into an ImGearPage Class object. When acquiring a multi-page image, ImGearPages are loaded into an ImGearDocument Class object instead.

How ImageGear TWAIN Scanning Looks in Code

As an example, here’s what the C# code may look like when using ImageGear to help an application import an image from a TWAIN Data Source:

using System;
using ImageGear.Core;
using ImageGear.TWAIN;

public ImGearPage AcquireImage(IntPtr Handle)
{
    ImGearPage igPage = null;
    ImGearTWAIN igTWAIN = new ImGearTWAIN();

    igTWAIN.WindowHandle = Handle;
    igTWAIN.UseUI = true;

    try
    {
        // Open the data source selection dialog
        igTWAIN.OpenSource(String.Empty);

        // Initialize the scanning
        igPage = igTWAIN.AcquireToPage();
    } 

    catch(ImGearException e)
    {
        // Handle the exception ...
    }

    finally
    {
        if(igTWAIN.DataSourceManagerOpen == true)
        {
            igTWAIN.CloseSource();
        }
    }

    return igPage;
}

Expand Your Application’s TWAIN Support with ImageGear

Accusoft’s ImageGear SDK provides comprehensive support for a broad range of TWAIN devices, which makes it easier than ever for developers to control the scanning process directly from their applications. Integrating TWAIN scanning can streamline workflows and significantly improve the software user experience by completely eliminating the need to turn to external programs for image acquisition. ImageGear is fully compatible with multiple generations of the TWAIN standard, including TWAIN v1.6, v1.7, v1.8, v1.9, and v2.4.

In addition to TWAIN scanning support, ImageGear provides powerful image and document processing capabilities that can transform your application workflows. With extensive file conversion and compression features, it’s the best way to quickly integrate content management features into your platform. To get a glimpse of what ImageGear can do for your .NET application, download a free trial today and start building.