Technical FAQs

Question

Why do I get a “File Format Unrecognized” exception when trying to load a PDF document in ImageGear .NET?

Answer

You will need to set up your project to include PDF support if you want to work with PDF documents. Add a reference to ImageGear24.Formats.Pdf (if you’re using another version of ImageGear, make sure you’re adding the correct reference). Add the following line of code where you specify other resources:

using ImageGear.Formats.PDF;

Add the following lines of code before you begin working with PDFs:

ImGearFileFormats.Filters.Insert(0, ImGearPDF.CreatePDFFormat());
ImGearPDF.Initialize();

The documentation page linked here shows how to add PDF support to a project.

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Question

Why do I get a “File Format Unrecognized” exception when trying to load a PDF document in ImageGear .NET?

Answer

You will need to set up your project to include PDF support if you want to work with PDF documents. Add a reference to ImageGear24.Formats.Pdf (if you’re using another version of ImageGear, make sure you’re adding the correct reference). Add the following line of code where you specify other resources:

using ImageGear.Formats.PDF;

Add the following lines of code before you begin working with PDFs:

ImGearFileFormats.Filters.Insert(0, ImGearPDF.CreatePDFFormat());
ImGearPDF.Initialize();

The documentation page linked here shows how to add PDF support to a project.

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Question

ImageGear .NET v24.6 added support for viewing PDF documents with XFA content. I’m using v24.8, and upon trying to open an XFA PDF, I get a SEHException for some reason…

SEHException

Why might this be happening?

Answer

One reason could be because you need to execute the following lines after initializing the PDF component, and prior to loading an XFA PDF:

// Allow opening of PDF documents that contain XFA form data.
IImGearFormat pdfFormat = ImGearFileFormats.Filters.Get(ImGearFormats.PDF);
pdfFormat.Parameters.GetByName("XFAAllowed").Value = true;

This will enable XFA PDFs to be opened by the ImageGear .NET toolkit.

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Question

I am combining multiple PDF documents together, and I need to create a new bookmark collection, placed at the beginning of the new document. Each bookmark should go to a specific page or section of the new document.
Example structure:

  • Section 1
    • Document 1
  • Section 2
    • Document 2

How might I do this using ImageGear .NET?

Answer

You are adding section dividers to the result document. So, for example, if you are to merge two documents, you might have, say, two sections, each with a single document, like so…

  • Section 1
    • Document 1
  • Section 2
    • Document 2

…The first page will be the first header page, and then the pages of Document 1, then another header page, then the pages of Document 2. So, the first header page is at index 0, the first page of Document 1 is at index 1, the second header is at 1 + firstDocumentPageCount, etc.

The following code demonstrates adding some blank pages to igResultDocument, inserting pages from other ImGearPDFDocuments, and modifying the bookmark tree such that it matches the outline above, with "Section X" pointing to the corresponding divider page and "Document X" pointing to the appropriate starting page number…

// Create new document, add pages
ImGearPDFDocument igResultDocument = new ImGearPDFDocument();
igResultDocument.CreateNewPage((int)ImGearPDFPageNumber.BEFORE_FIRST_PAGE, new ImGearPDFFixedRect(0, 0, 300, 300));
igResultDocument.InsertPages((int)ImGearPDFPageNumber.LAST_PAGE, igFirstDocument, 0, (int)ImGearPDFPageRange.ALL_PAGES, ImGearPDFInsertFlags.DEFAULT);
igResultDocument.CreateNewPage(igFirstDocument.Pages.Count, new ImGearPDFFixedRect(0, 0, 300, 300));
igResultDocument.InsertPages((int)ImGearPDFPageNumber.LAST_PAGE, igSecondDocument, 0, (int)ImGearPDFPageRange.ALL_PAGES, ImGearPDFInsertFlags.DEFAULT);

// Add first Section
ImGearPDFBookmark resultBookmarkTree = igResultDocument.GetBookmark();
resultBookmarkTree.AddNewChild("Section 1");
var child = resultBookmarkTree.GetLastChild();
int targetPageNumber = 0;
setNewDestination(igResultDocument, targetPageNumber, child);

// Add first Document
child.AddNewChild("Document 1");
child = child.GetLastChild();
targetPageNumber = 1;
setNewDestination(igResultDocument, targetPageNumber, child);

// Add second Section
resultBookmarkTree.AddNewChild("Section 2");
child = resultBookmarkTree.GetLastChild();
targetPageNumber = 1 + igFirstDocument.Pages.Count;
setNewDestination(igResultDocument, targetPageNumber, child);

// Add second Document
child.AddNewChild("Document 2");
child = child.GetLastChild();
targetPageNumber = 2 + igFirstDocument.Pages.Count;
setNewDestination(igResultDocument, targetPageNumber, child);

// Save
using (FileStream stream = File.OpenWrite(@"C:\path\here\test.pdf"))
{
    igResultDocument.Save(stream, ImGearSavingFormats.PDF, 0, 0, igResultDocument.Pages.Count, ImGearSavingModes.OVERWRITE);
}

...

private ImGearPDFDestination setNewDestination(ImGearPDFDocument igPdfDocument, int targetPageNumber, ImGearPDFBookmark targetNode)
{
    ImGearPDFAction action = targetNode.GetAction();
    if (action == null)
    {
        action = new ImGearPDFAction(
            igPdfDocument,
            new ImGearPDFDestination(
                igPdfDocument,
                igPdfDocument.Pages[targetPageNumber] as ImGearPDFPage,
                new ImGearPDFAtom("XYZ"),
                new ImGearPDFFixedRect(), 0, targetPageNumber));
        targetNode.SetAction(action);
    }
    return action.GetDestination();
}

(The setNewDestination method is a custom method that abstracts the details of adding the new destination.)

Essentially, the GetBookmark() method will allow you to get an instance representing the root of the bookmark tree, with its children being subtrees themselves. Thus, we can add a new child to an empty tree, then get the last child with GetLastChild(). Then, we can set the action for that node to be a new "GoTo" action that will navigate to the specified destination. Upon save to the file system, this should produce a PDF with the below bookmark structure…

Bookmarks example

Note that you may need to use the native Save method (NOT SaveDocument) described in the product documentation here in order to save a PDF file with the bookmark tree included. Also, you can read more about Actions in the PDF Specification.

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Understanding the Value of Third-Party Software Integrations
 

Today’s customers expect more of software applications than ever before. Piecemeal solutions that provide only a few noteworthy features are quickly being overtaken by more comprehensive platforms that deliver an end-to-end experience for users. This has prompted developers to incorporate more capabilities, while also building innovative features that set their solutions apart from the competition. Thanks to third-party software integrations, they’re able to meet both demands.

What is Third-Party Software Integration?

Third-party software integrations typically come in the form of SDKs or APIs that provide applications with specialized capabilities. Rather than building complex features like optical character recognition (OCR), PDF features, or image cleanup from scratch, developers can instead incorporate the necessary features directly into their software via an SDK or use an API call to access capabilities without expanding their application’s footprint.

From a user experience standpoint, third-party software integrations allow developers to build more cohesive software solutions that provide all the essential features a customer may require. Instead of pushing them into a separate application to interact with documents, provide a signature, or fill out a digital form, they can instead deliver an unbroken experience that’s easier to navigate and manage from start to finish.  

4 Key Third-Party Software Benefits

There are a number of important benefits organizations can gain from using third-party software integrations, but four stand out in particular:

1. Reduce Development Costs

When evaluating whether it makes sense to build functionality for an application in-house or buy a third-party software integration, cost is frequently one of the key considerations. There is often a tendency to think that it would be more cost-effective to have developers already working on the project simply build the capabilities they need on their own. After all, there’s no shortage of open-source SDKs and other tools that are available without having to pay licensing or product fees.

In practice, however, this approach usually ends up being more expensive in the long run. That’s because the developers working on the project often lack the experience needed to build those capabilities quickly. A software engineer hired to help build AI software, for instance, probably doesn’t know a lot about file conversion or annotation. While they might be able to find an open-source tool to build those features, they still need to do quite a bit of development work and on-the-job learning to get the new capabilities stood up and thoroughly tested. 

Focusing on these features means they’re not focusing on the more innovative aspects of their application. From a cost standpoint, that means they’re being paid to build something that’s already readily available in the market. When these internal development costs are taken into account, it’s almost always more cost effective to buy ready-to-implement software features built by an experienced third party. As the saying goes, there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. 

2. Get to Market Faster

Software developers are always working against the clock. With new applications hitting the market faster than ever, there’s tremendous pressure to keep development timelines on track and avoid missing important deadlines. This helps projects stay within their expected budgets and prevents potential competitors from getting to market faster. Any steps that can be taken to accelerate development and potentially shorten the timeline to releasing a product could mean the difference between becoming an industry innovator or being labeled as an also-ran.

Third-party software integrations allow developers to quickly and seamlessly integrate essential capabilities into applications without compromising their project timeline. Rather than building features like forms processing, document annotation, and image conversion from scratch, teams can instead use third-party SDKs and APIs to add proven, reliable, and secure features in a fraction of the time. By keeping projects on or ahead of schedule, they can focus on delivering a better, more robust product that exceeds customer expectations. 

3. Expand Application Features & Functionality

Software development teams typically possess the experience and expertise needed to build the core architecture and innovative features of a new application. In many cases, they’re designing something novel that will provide a point of differentiation in the market. The more time they can spend on refining and expanding those capabilities, the more likely the application is to make an impact and win over customers.

What these developers often lack, however, are the skills needed to implement a variety of other features that will enhance the application’s functionality. Features like document conversion, OCR, PDF support, digital forms, eSignature, and image compression are complex and difficult to build from scratch. By integrating third-party software, developers can leverage proven, feature-rich technology to expand their application’s capabilities. This not only allows them to improve their solution’s versatility but also enhance the overall user experience by eliminating the need for external programs or troublesome plug-ins. 

4. Access Specialized Engineering Support

Incorporating features like PDF support, image conversion, and document redaction into an application poses several challenges. Some of those challenges don’t show up right away, instead, they become evident long after a software product launches. If the developers don’t have a lot of experience with the technology behind those features, minor issues can quickly escalate into serious problems that leave customers unhappy and willing to look elsewhere for alternatives. No organization wants to be caught in a situation where a bug embedded in an open-source tool renders a client’s valuable assets unusable.

By leveraging proven, tested, and secure third-party software integrations, developers gain access to support from experienced engineering teams with deep knowledge of their solutions. In addition to documentation and code samples, they can also speak directly with developers who can provide guidance on how to best integrate features and resolve issues when they emerge. The best integration providers will even work with organizations to customize their solutions to meet specific application needs, which helps create even smoother user experiences and enhances reliability.

Integrating Third-Party Software with Accusoft

For over 30 years, Accusoft has helped organizations add essential features like barcode recognition, file conversion, document assembly, and image compression to their applications through an innovative line of SDKs and APIs. Our document lifecycle technologies are backed by multiple patents and have been incorporated successfully into a wide range of applications. Our dedicated engineers provide ongoing support and work closely with customers to implement their specific use cases, ensuring that their software platform is delivering the best possible experience.

To learn more about integrating third-party software with Accusoft SDKs and APIs, talk to one of our solutions experts today.

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Processing and archiving massive volumes of paper mail was historically a major challenge for ARAG. When ARAG updated their records system to a newer version, they reevaluated their processing and archiving software and decided to migrate their C/C++ document conversion solution, the VB indexing application, and client application to Java. This move would enable them to support infrastructure growth independent of hardware and operating system requirements. With more than 200 users and 20,000 pages scanned daily, ARAG sought a reliable Java SDK and Library to facilitate the process.

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Enterprises are continuously engaged in a process of evaluating their operations to identify opportunities for improvement. When one of the world’s leading mortgage lenders took a closer look at how it was handling documents to process applications, it quickly recognized the need to implement a solution that would allow them to scale capacity and enable faster loan processing. The company’s diversified businesses included banking, capital markets, and insurance, all of which combined to handle more than $1 trillion in mortgages, with nearly $2 billion in new loans each day.

Overview

For many years, the lender had processed applications by hand, entering information from paper and electronic forms into a mortgage processing application. While users had to thumb through paper documents, electronic loan documents were made available through a content management system and a dual-monitor workstation. One screen contained the loan processing application and a list of electronic loan documents. The other screen displayed the selected document and allowed the user to browse its contents. 

In examining their loan purchasing process, the lender discovered that while it took 7-9 days to close a paper document loan, electronic documents closed in just 4-5 days. Unfortunately, the legacy content management system limited scalability and performance, and a grossly underpowered document viewing application further impacted user productivity. The potential revenue gain in expanding their use of electronic documents was enormous – in terms of enhanced efficiency alone. To retain their competitive edge in a challenging market, the lender made the decision to replace their legacy CMS with an enterprise solution.

Challenges

But in order to realize the full productivity potential of the new enterprise CMS system, the lender also needed to upgrade its client document viewing application. The new viewer needed to provide reliable viewing for various types of electronic forms, including scanned documents, faxes, and emails in TIFF, JPEG, and PDF formats. To meet productivity demands, the first page of each document had to be accessed within two seconds. The technology also had to be entirely web-based since no documents could be stored on a client’s desktop or hard drive due to compliance constraints. From a user experience standpoint, the viewing solution also needed to provide scalable thumbnail rendering, accommodate mouse and keyboard navigation with “hot keys,” and be able to meet rigorous load-testing requirements. 

After a thorough review of available options, the lender selected Accusoft’s PrizmDoc® for Java, formerly VirtualViewer®, HTML5 viewing technology to address its complex functionality and security requirements. Critically, PrizmDoc® for Java supported the lender’s required document set of PDF, TIFF, and JPEG, as well as AFP, PCL, MS Office, and many other important business document formats, which provided the growing lender with additional flexibility for future expansion. The viewer also delivered a variety of thumbnail features, including page rotation sync, full panel view, and adjustable size options. PrizmDoc® for Java’s configurable user interface would also make it easy to implement navigation options and hot keys that enhanced productivity. 

The lender had little time to dedicate to the integration with its new enterprise CMS solution, especially since much of the integration time would be taken up by the load-testing process. Fortunately, PrizmDoc® for Java’s intuitive API made it easy to incorporate the product seamlessly while leaving plenty of time for load testing. 

Results

Replacing their legacy content management system and integrating Accusoft’s powerful PrizmDoc® for Java high-speed HTML5 viewer enabled the lender to achieve its desired performance standards. Because PrizmDoc® for Java is completely web-based and requires no software to be installed on the client’s desktop, the lender could easily roll out a scalable solution that met critical security and business continuity objectives within a single, high-speed viewing application. 

The viewer’s server component renders and delivers individual pages to the client quickly and seamlessly, well within the lender’s required sub-two-second access requirements, even when accessing large, multi-page loan documents in various geographical locations. PrizmDoc®for Java now helps to increase the mortgage lender’s productivity by allowing users to access, view, annotate, and manipulate loan documents on the fly without ever touching the client’s local hard drive.

As a result, the lender can now import daily peak loads of more than half a million documents and deliver them to users across the enterprise in under two seconds, improving their overall mortgage processing time by more than 40 percent.

About Accusoft

Founded in 1991, Accusoft is a software development company specializing in content processing, conversion, and automation solutions. From out-of-the-box and configurable applications to APIs built for developers, Accusoft software enables users to solve their most complex workflow challenges and gain insights from content in any format, on any device. Backed by 40 patents, the company’s flagship products, including Dcoubee, PrizmDoc Viewer, and ImageGear, are designed to improve productivity, provide actionable data, and deliver results that matter. The Accusoft team is dedicated to continuous innovation through customer-centric product development, new version release, and a passion for understanding industry trends that drive consumer demand. Visit us at www.accusoft.com. 

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Accusoft has been remote since March 2020. The executive team is committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of its employees during this time. While these measures are necessary, they come with different challenges for team communication and bonding. Over the past seven months, Accusoft’s leaders have gotten creative, finding new, virtual ways for their teams to connect, not only about work but personally as well. Here are some of the unique ways Accusoft has kept its employees engaged, informed, and connected while operating remotely.

Company-Wide Town Hall & AccuTalk

Accusoft’s executive team hosts a company-wide, virtual town hall once a month to give updates on the company’s performance during COVID-19. Leaders share updates and answer questions about the state of business. The meeting helps provide clarity about what’s going on at Accusoft during the pandemic. It alleviates some of the uncertainty about how this situation is impacting normal business operations.

“We know it’s crucial to keep our employees informed about the business,” states Jack Berlin, CEO of Accusoft. “While it’s difficult to be out of the office, especially for me, I know it’s what’s best for our team. While we are remote, we need to ensure that employees are informed and understand how we are handling this situation from the top down.”

AccuTalk, formerly Chalk Talk, is held once a quarter on a virtual platform. This company-wide meeting highlights the accomplishments of each department and their goals moving forward. During AccuTalk, the leadership team shares information about the successes and challenges of the team’s quarter and what they can do to meet their new goals in the following quarter.

Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives

Accusoft is committed to upholding its core values, including diversity and inclusion. Over the past several months, there has been social unrest on important issues related to this core value. Accusoft recognizes how this has impacted its employees and aims to provide a safe space for individuals to share thoughts, ideas, and feelings around the subject in a productive way. Individual team members have contributed to the activism Slack channel, which discusses trending news stories, ways to be a better ally, and community events to get involved in. 

Team Celebrations and Gatherings

In addition to informational meetings and activism groups, team leads and managers have hosted team bonding events including everything from Zoom lunch celebrations for team member’s life events to virtual gaming parties. 

The PrizmDoc team has a monthly birthday happy hour and a weekly lunch meeting where they play GeoGuessr. The marketing team has even gathered for a socially distant happy hour in-person to support a team member’s family food stand. 

“It’s important that we get together in a safe environment to reconnect with each other. We can easily forget that the human on the other side of the screen, whether visible to us or not, is a colleague that we once interacted with closely in person,” says Christine Hairelson, VP of Employee Experience at Accusoft. “We are all facing different challenges during this pandemic, and it’s vital that we connect with each other on a personal level as well as a business one.”

Virtual Events and Holidays

In addition to the team-specific events, Accusoft’s Event Ninjas, a group of dedicated volunteers from all teams, has put together several virtual events for the company to participate in over the past seven months. The team has planned a trivia night, ice cream social, beer and cheese tasting, and a virtual Halloween party. The goal is to keep everyone connected and engaged. 

“While we may not be able to all gather together safely, we can still connect with each other and share milestones, celebrate holidays, and help each other through this challenging time,” states Megan Brooks, VP of Marketing.

Want to work for Accusoft? Explore all of our open job opportunities on the Careers page, and apply to join our team.

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spreadsheet XLSX

 

Spreadsheets remain a standard tool for many organizations, and despite increasing adoption across cell-based competitors such as Google Sheets, Excel still owns the market. As noted by research firm Robert Half, while the use of XLSX formats is on a slow decline, almost 70 percent of finance firms say Excel remains their spreadsheet software of choice.

Fundamentally, this comes down to familiarity; 62 percent of users surveyed find this common format easy to use, making it their go-to option when entering financial data or performing quick calculations. The only problem with this is that this spreadsheet tool introduces significant security issues. According to recent Cisco data, 38 percent of the most prevalent, malicious file extensions use Microsoft Office file formats — including Word, PowerPoint, and Excel — to compromise corporate networks.

Accusoft is now offering a more secure, web-based solution for spreadsheet needs. PrizmDoc Cells offers a web-based spreadsheet viewing and editing alternative that makes it possible for independent software vendors (ISVs) to easily incorporate XLSX functions into corporate applications without increasing security risk. Here’s how the newest part of the PrizmDoc Suite can help companies streamline processes while maintaining security.

Web-Based Spreadsheet Security

Common spreadsheet practices come with significant risk. As noted by ZDNet, for example, a new malware group is using the Excel file format that creates malicious spreadsheets that bypass security scanners and — thanks in large part to their format familiarity — are opened by end-users. This creates a self-sustaining problem. With single-source spreadsheets still the norm for many financial firms, attackers just need to spoof corporate email addresses and attach familiar XLSX files to compromise corporate networks.

For ISVs, this presents an opportunity. The market needs a secure way to view and edit spreadsheets in-browser and they need to be able to control the way the formulas are viewed and manipulated. By delivering browser-based spreadsheet viewers and editors within their own applications, ISVs can streamline their clients’ processes while maintaining security and controlling data sharing. PrizmDoc Cells integrates with ISV’s applications to enable easy spreadsheet viewing and editing functions. This integration allows administrators to lock down spreadsheet access by making them read-only or disallowing downloads, while also permitting protected sharing so that users can perform calculations without compromising the original source.

 

Value-Added Version Control

Collaboration is critical for effective spreadsheet use, especially among highly regulated industries like finance. From sharing key data around lending, credit, or investment applications to completing profit and loss calculations, spreadsheets remain a staple of efficient and effective financial transactions.

As with any industry, version control is a challenge for any third-party file collaboration. As noted by Beta News, the still-popular process of downloading spreadsheets to end-user devices comes with multiple versioning issues, including:

  • Loss of Visibility — When files are downloaded onto end-user devices, information security teams naturally lose sight of how information is used, changed, or shared. Not only does this make it impossible to deliver consistent version control, but it puts organizations at risk of regulatory non-compliance.
  • Data Discrepancies — Once data is downloaded, it is instantly out-of-date. Replicated across multiple users, this scenario creates substantial subsets of data that are all slightly different and require significant analytical effort to create some semblance of reliable version control.

When an ISV integrates PrizmDoc Cells within their application, the functionality reduces version control challenges by allowing spreadsheet owners to remove visibility into underlying logic, such as proprietary business formulas or calculations, as required. It also eliminates the need for client-side installs or downloads, which adds another level of security for comprehensive version control.

 

Reducing Human Error in Spreadsheets

Errors remain a common spreadsheet concern. As noted by Computer Weekly, “Several research studies have found that up to 70% of spreadsheets contain errors which would result in serious miscalculations.” This creates both productivity and security risks. If calculations create inaccurate outputs, organizations may find themselves struggling to find the source of equation issues or computation concerns. If the problem persists, staff may share the affected spreadsheet in hopes of quickly finding a resolution, in turn potentially exposing documents to increased risk.

PrizmDoc Cells solves this problem with browser-based spreadsheet viewing and editing functionalities. Files display as they would in native applications but can be embedded across any website, CMS, intranet, or portal, allowing staff to securely view and manipulate spreadsheets based on permissions. While it’s impossible to eliminate the potential for formula or format issues, it’s imperative to keep data safe in a secure environment, and sharing these spreadsheets securely makes finding and solving any error more efficient.

 

A Secure Browser-Based Spreadsheet & XLSX Integration

Excel-based spreadsheets cannot stand up to the security and data sharing needs that companies need to scale. When it comes to sharing sensitive data and manipulating formulas, there is both complexity and corporate risk. Without the right permissions and controls in place, data could easily be misrepresented, costing the company revenue.

With PrizmDoc Cells, ISVs can provide the capabilities end-users need for secure spreadsheet viewing and editing. With the ability to independently import, edit, and export XLSX files, securely embed spreadsheet data anywhere, reduce error rates with secure collaboration, and streamline version control, it’s worth opening the door to new spreadsheets capabilities. Discover the next generation of spreadsheet solutions. Try PrizmDoc Cells today.

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The top InsurTech news for 2020? In a post-pandemic world, insurance technology offers “the prescription for safety.” In a world now dominated by worry around what’s currently happening, what will probably happen, and what could suddenly happen under the right (or wrong) circumstances, the agile and adaptable potential of InsurTech offerings paves the way for proactive service delivery that both boosts consumer piece of mind and reduces insurer risk.

For insurance companies to capitalize on evolving market conditions and outpace the competition, data-driven decision making is key. Even more critical is the need to convert critical information from standardized ACORD formats into actionable, accessible data. Here’s how Accusoft’s FormSuite for Structured Forms can help.

The InsurTech Innovation

As noted by research firm PWC, “What used to be a sign of success may not be anymore.” Now, clients want next-day decisions about insurance applications and claims along with detailed descriptions of cost assessments and timelines for action. What does this mean in practice? 

That it’s no longer enough to rely on legacy solutions and applications to get the job done. Instead, companies need applications augmented by next-generation forms processing technology capable of integrating with internal assets while simultaneously delivering the data-driven decision-making inherently tied to quick, accurate, and complete insurance information capture.

Now more than ever, the fundamental value proposition for insurance companies is the ability to disrupt existing functional frameworks with new policies and practices that streamline document processing, improve decision timelines, and secure client data. 

The ACORD Form Challenge

If building better applications was the only challenge facing InsurTech product managers and development teams, companies would have their hands full. There’s also a common form type that can be challenging for automation.

Since 1972, ACORD has been the source of standardized forms for the insurance industry. While these forms are standard, there is nothing standard about their format. Every year, ACORD changes the format of its forms, leaving insurance organizations  with a challenge for automation. 

Despite generalized standardization which sees consistency in the type of data recorded by specific forms — including client information, claim details, and policy requirements — how this data is structured and displayed within the form itself can vary from provider to provider and even agent to agent. Forms used for identical purposes are often close in format, but not quite the same when it comes to placement of critical data. This compels insurance agencies to manually process common forms, in turn increasing both the risk of human error and the time required for completion.

For insurance application developers looking to create applications that can process ACORD forms more efficiently and deliver on customer expectations around speed and accuracy, FormSuite for Structured Forms provides the capability to create a standard form library for easy form recognition and data capture.

The FormSuite Solution: Document Delivery Done Right

FormSuite for Structured Forms can help insurance companies get the best of both worlds. With an Agile framework, this SDK is capable of streamlining the standardization of ACORD-compliant forms with a little help from developers.

Key benefits of this solution include:

  • Complete Forms Recognition — Manual data entry and capture both reduces forms processing speed and can introduce the potential for significant errors. Form recognition toolkits allow developers to create form libraries for their users to scan and recognize forms for data capture. In practice, this means developers only need to update the library when a new ACORD form is released to ensure reliable and robust recognition. 
  • Accurate Data Capture — With forms continually arriving from multiple sources, document standardization is often lacking. But no matter how forms are scanned into the system — upside down, sideways, or at differing resolutions — FormSuite uses its image cleanup functionality to deliver accurate forms processing.
  • Form Field Detection — FormSuite uses the application’s form library to identify form fields on standard forms and capture the data within each form field.
  • Optical Character Recognition — From optical character recognition (OCR) to intelligent character recognition (ICR) and optical mark recognition (OMR), FormSuite offers it all. Advanced OCR ensures your application can easily capture everything from legible hand printed names to check boxes and dollar amounts.
  • Confidence and Accuracy Reporting — Data confidence matters for insurance documents. If uncertainty about data translates to errors in evaluation or decision-making, the results could be disastrous for ongoing ROI. That’s why FormSuite for Structured Forms generates customized confidence and accuracy values for all data captured. Firms then send all document OCR capture for confidence evaluation; if results meet or exceed confidence thresholds, document processing can continue automatically. If confidence levels are too low, meanwhile, your app can trigger employee review to ensure data entered matches captured results.

Embracing the InsurTech Advantage

Just as other industries have faced significant disruption this year, insurance companies now find themselves at an operational crossroads. While augmenting familiar forms and functions with application overlays offers the potential to improve on existing processes, firms must also build out apps and services capable of delivering accessible, actionable, and accurate ACORD forms data to staff. When they commit to doing this, insurance companies can deliver on the proactive promise of digital-first insurance with policies and processes capable of keeping pace with evolving client expectations.

Ready to improve insurance processes? Discover FormSuite for Structured Forms and deliver on document potential.

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