Technical FAQs

Next Evolution in Intelligent Contract Automation Redefines How Businesses Create, Manage, Sign, and Track Digital Contracts

TAMPA, Fla. November 29, 2023 – OnTask, a leader in contract automation and eSignature collection, has announced it has rebranded as Docubee. With a redefined product platform and focus on intelligent contract automation, Docubee provides an unparalleled customer experience and streamlines the entire contract lifecycle, including the way businesses create, manage, sign, and track digital contracts.

“The new Docubee brand will allow us to grow with a friendlier and more engaging identity that resonates with our customers and more clearly articulates how we can solve problems for our clients and community,” said Megan Brooks, Chief Operating Officer of Accusoft who oversees product brands such as OnTask, and now Docubee. “The customer-focused personality of Docubee will also play out as we refine our product offerings to further support our clients and improve the user experience.”

Docubee is built on a foundation of innovation. The past six years leading up to the rebrand have centered upon the development of award-winning contract automation solutions that leverage cutting-edge technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), conditional logic, and top-notch security to streamline contract-related tasks.

That foundation, combined with refinements of its multifaceted contract automation solutions, has set the course for Docubee to address customer needs moving forward.

The refined Docubee platform offers five core solutions:

• Gather: Collecting information to incorporate into contracts and agreements.
• Generate: Creating contracts swiftly through templates, AI, or by creating and editing from scratch.
• Share: Routing contracts seamlessly for editing, review, and approval.
• Sign: Capturing secure, compliant, and legally binding signatures on any device.
• Integrate: Connecting to the systems teams use daily, or building Docubee’s tools into native applications using APIs.

The brand has seen tremendous growth in recent years with the launch of innovative tools like (AI) document generation, eSignature APIs, and workflow tools, as well as marquee partnerships like with legal case management software leader SmartAdvocate.

“We anticipate extensive growth within these specialized areas,” said Brooks. “The time is right to align with our customers, invest in this platform, form new partnerships, and enhance our service.”

Docubee is a SaaS technology product of Tampa-based software company Accusoft, a technology industry leader with a 30-year track record. Accusoft is recognized for its software technologies that are designed to solve complex workflow challenges, improve productivity, provide actionable data, and deliver results that matter.

For more information about Docubee and to explore the future of contract automation, visit www.Docubee.app.

Docubee, an Accusoft brand, is an intelligent contract automation platform that lets businesses create, manage, sign, and track digital contracts in one secure platform. Docubee powers contracts by enabling users to gather vital customer data, create contracts using tools like generative AI or pre-built templates, and connect pieces of the process with dynamic workflows. Users can integrate Docubee with their existing site or platform via the API or connect to thousands of apps and CRMs using native and webhook-powered integrations. For more information, visit docubee.com

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The world of investment technology moves almost as quickly as the investment markets themselves. Without the right FinTech tools, today’s individual investors are likely to be left behind the latest financial trends. That’s why FinTech investment solutions are once again becoming a major point of emphasis for developers looking to expand access to key financial services.

The History and Impact of FinTech Investment Solutions

As a subset of the FinTech industry, “invest-tech” is sometimes used to refer to a wave of innovative investment management technologies that are helping to connect aspiring investors to the information and financial services they need to capitalize on new opportunities. Like many other FinTech applications, investment software tools have played a pivotal role in expanding access to financial markets and helping consumers take direct control of their investment decisions.

Much of the early FinTech investment market was driven by “robo-advisor” services that used sophisticated algorithms to provide customers with investment guidance. The boom reached its peak in the mid-2010s, with a record 81 new invest-tech solutions hitting the market in 2014. Since then, the number of launches has dwindled as established incumbents in the financial services sector moved in to acquire some of the most promising firms.

In many instances, those acquisitions were made to expand existing digital capabilities or to secure a new base of established investment customers. Since the typical FinTech investment user was younger and possessed fewer assets, the profit margins for many start-ups were simply too low and the costs of customer acquisition too high. This dynamic has gradually shifted the industry’s focus toward the B2B market, although crowdsourced investment platforms remain quite popular among many retail investors. 

The Current State of FinTech Investment Technology

FinTech investment platforms roared back into the public consciousness following the COVID-19 pandemic as the combination of work-from-home mandates and accumulated savings caused a rise in retail investment. Individual investors made up 19.5 percent of stock market activity in the first half of 2020, an increase of nearly five percent from the previous year. On a particularly busy day of trading, individual investors constitute a whopping 25 percent of market activity.

Thanks to mobile FinTech apps from startups and established players in the financial services industry, more people than ever before have access to investment opportunities, which has caused significant disruption to the market. The controversial rush on GameStop stock in early 2021, for instance, demonstrated just how much impact easy-to-access these platforms could have on investment trends.

This resurgence in retail investment could very well spark another wave of interest in FinTech investment apps, especially from established firms looking to expand their digital capabilities and capitalize on the growing market.

Enhancing the FinTech Investment Experience

For developers building the latest iterations of FinTech applications, there are a few key features worth focusing on to deliver a better investment experience. 

Sharing Data and Portfolios

While being able to access investment portfolio data on demand is valuable, customers are understandably concerned about the security of that data. Whether they’re building a retail investment app or a managed digital vault, developers need to provide a way of viewing private information securely. This is especially critical for digital documents. Relying on an external application for viewing or even just using the default browser viewer could potentially expose information to unauthorized users. By integrating secure, native viewing features, developers can ensure that investment portfolio data remains within a protected application environment.

Protecting Proprietary Research

One of the key benefits of working with an investment firm is having access to their market research when making financial decisions. In many cases, financial projections are calculated using proprietary formulas embedded within spreadsheets. Unfortunately, spreadsheets pose a number of security and compatibility problems. Even if a workbook is shared securely, there’s often little to stop someone from copying the proprietary formulas embedded within the cells and using it for other purposes. FinTech developers need ways to make those spreadsheets available without also compromising the valuable formulas developed over years of painstaking research.

Improving Data Capture

Making the right investment is all about having the right information. That data could come from a variety of sources, and in many instances it will need to be collected and analyzed before it can be of any use. Automating the data capture process can help to get that information into a customer’s hands faster. For example, customer information can be updated quickly by automatically extracting data from structured forms like tax filings. Scanned documents can also be converted into searchable PDFs using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which makes it easier for AI-powered tools to sift through data in search of trends and potential opportunities.

Choosing the Right FinTech Investment Integrations

Building a successful FinTech application requires developers to build innovative tools that set them apart from the competition while also implementing everyday functionality that often lies outside their experience or expertise. Features like document viewing, annotation, and file conversion may be integral components of their platform, but take both time and development resources to build from scratch. By turning to SDKs and APIs, developers can quickly roll out new features without detracting from their primary software development goals.

Accusoft has been working with FinTech investment platforms for many years, helping developers to build powerful InsureTech applications without sacrificing the viewing and image processing technology that customers expect.

• PrizmDoc Viewer: Adds secure HTML5 viewing, annotation, conversion, and redaction capabilities to web-based applications, allowing developers to control every aspect of the viewing experience without compromising privacy.
• PrizmDoc Cells: Provides full XLSX support for applications, making it possible to securely upload and share Excel workbooks without exposing the source file or allowing users to access and copy proprietary formulas.
• FormSuite: A versatile forms SDK that allows developers to add form template identification and data extraction to their application, making it easier than ever to automate and streamline workflows.
• ImageGear: In addition to conversion and compression tools, it also provides full-page OCR for converting scanned documents into searchable text.

Learn more about how Accusoft is helping FinTech developers to drive the next generation of investment technology platforms.

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.

Here at Accusoft, we’re always looking for new ways of connecting people with progress to improve productivity and drive innovation. It’s why we put so much work into our standards-based APIs and SDKs. We understand that developers need mature integrations that are ready to enhance their applications from day one and will be supported by extensive, accurate documentation. From the onset of 2020, we had a strategy in place to help us focus on making it easier for our customers to solve their business problems.

And then, well, 2020 happened…

As this challenging year finally comes to a close, we wanted to take a look back at how we adapted to stay focused on our enduring mission to deliver better products and services to our customers.

2020 Customer Advisory Board Meetings

Since most of our products are delivered through APIs and SDKs, we often encounter situations where our customers and partners independently purchase, download, and extend applications with minimal interaction. Historically, this made it difficult to gain insight into how our clients utilized many of our solutions and what features they would like to see from them in the future.

That’s why we hosted our first Board of Connectors (BoC) meeting in 2019 to bring customers and product managers together in an ongoing dialogue about business needs and product strategy. These meetings also had the benefit of allowing our customers to build relationships with our internal teams, provide feedback on product features, share their business challenges, and discuss key development trends impacting their respective industries.

We had the good fortune to hold our first BoC meeting in-person before the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to adopt rigorous social distance and work-from-home protocols for the safety of our employees and customers. Our second meeting took place in virtual format later in the year, which allowed us to learn first-hand how our customers were dealing with pandemic pressures and how we could adjust our product strategies to meet their rapidly shifting needs.

An Eventful 2020 for PrizmDoc Viewer

One of the principal beneficiaries of these meetings was our popular PrizmDoc Viewer solution. As a best-in-class HTML5 viewer, PrizmDoc Viewer was already a powerful and versatile viewing integration capable of enhancing a variety of applications. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years, it’s that there’s always room for improvement.

That’s why we made it a point of emphasis to implement the top five requests we heard at the first BoC meeting of 2020. Despite all the disruption of COVID-19, we’re incredibly pleased that we were able to deliver on every one of these requests. We also rolled out a host of new product features and continued to optimize PrizmDoc Viewer for improved performance.

Here’s a quick rundown of the five big PrizmDoc Viewer upgrades of 2020:

v.13.11: February 2020 

For the first release of the year, we focused on improving performance when viewing large raster images. We also wanted to make PrizmDoc Viewer easier to install and upgrade.

What we did:

• Improved the PrizmDoc Viewer Raster Conversion Service to significantly reduce memory consumption and reduce the time it takes to generate raster tiles when viewing large image files.
• In addition to our traditional installers for Windows and Linux, we released new PrizmDoc Server and PrizmDoc Application Services (PAS) Docker images for production deployments, making the setting up of the PrizmDoc Viewer backend dramatically easier.
• Released a new .NET SDK for PrizmDoc Server – for .NET developers doing backend document processing with PrizmDoc Server this wrapper around the PrizmDoc Server REST APIs makes it easy to use PrizmDoc Server functionality in .NET.
• Upgraded the PrizmDoc Server installer to allow for in-place upgrades so users no longer need to uninstall the previous version before installing the newest version.

v.13.12: April 2020 

For the second release of the year, we expanded our use of Docker technology to make PrizmDoc Viewer easier to evaluate. We also worked to improve the performance and stability of PrizmDoc Server.

What we did:

• Released a new evaluation Docker image that provides a demo web application to explore the viewer and its features, and start a complete PrizmDoc Viewer backend to begin using for local development.
• Updated online help with a new look and feel for easier navigation. Added a new getting started topic for streamlined evaluation, and initial integration topic for an easy transition after evaluation. 
• Improved performance and stability of PrizmDoc Server when viewing complex PDF documents.

v.13.13: June 2020 

This release saw the rollout of a new redaction feature along with myriad performance improvements.

What we did:

• Provided support for multiple redaction reasons via our client API so users can apply more than one reason, selected from a customizable list, to any redaction reason. Reasons appear on top of the black box of redacted content and can be burned into a downloadable PDF along with the rest of the redacted content. Developers can also import a pre-built set of redaction reasons from an existing JSON file for streamlined end-user application.
• Improved conversion times and memory consumption when viewing multi-page DWF documents.
• Improved performance when retrieving revision data and scrolling through results when comparing two versions of a Word document.

v.13.14: September 2020

The fall release saw new support for viewing email attachments, more redaction features, and continued improvements to the upgrade process.

What we did:

• Added support for opening email attachments in the same viewer window where the original email is being viewed. Improved the client UI to show email attachments in a compact dropdown menu.
• Added server-side support for multiple redaction reasons using the Redaction Creators API.
• Released the ability to draft redactions without obscuring the content, allowing users to produce PDF documents with transparent redactions that display the document content underneath the redaction rectangles.
• Added the ability to retain configuration setting when upgrading PrizmDoc Server and PAS.

v.13.1: December 2020

The final update of 2020 focused primarily on reducing resource strain, but also saw the release of new sample code and added new Java Virtual Machine (JVM) controls.

What we did:

• Optimized log entries for the PrizmDoc PDF processing service to dramatically reduce log file size and storage needs.
• Enhanced PrizmDoc service health detection to automatically return to healthy status as soon as a failed backend service returns to normal operation, eliminating a potential need to restart PrizmDoc Server.
• Released two new Angular samples on GitHub: a .NET backend sample and a Java backend sample.
• Added new parameters in central configuration that provide controls for JVM settings when starting PrizmDoc Server Java-based services.

What’s Next for 2021?

Following our virtual BoC meeting in Q3, our product teams have been hard at work developing new features for the upcoming year that will continue to meet the diverse use case needs of our clients’ applications. We want to build on our successes in 2020 when it comes to engaging our customers and using their direct feedback to make beneficial and lasting improvements to our family of SDK and API solutions.

If you’re currently using our products and would like to participate in one of our upcoming BoC meetings for 2021 to submit feedback or learn about future releases, contact us today! We’re looking forward to working with you in the new year!

Electronic spreadsheets have been a mainstay of business operations since their introduction four decades ago, but the way organizations use them has changed significantly during that time. Today, the financial industry needs FinTech accounting software that facilitates online spreadsheet collaboration without creating unnecessary risk or disrupting workflows. 

Spreadsheets in the Tax and Accounting Industry

Although many tax and accounting firms use dedicated software solutions to manage complex financial workflows, they still rely on conventional spreadsheets for a variety of tasks. In fact, a recent study by Deloitte found that 62% of companies are still relying heavily upon spreadsheets for business insights. The data used to inform risk analysis, growth projections, and financial modeling is often collected and sorted in individual spreadsheet files by individual employees. In many instances, that data will eventually be transferred into a more sophisticated accounting platform, either through manual entry or an API integration.

Spreadsheets also play a critical role when it comes to presenting complex financial data. Whether it’s for an internal presentation to key stakeholders within the organization or a customer-facing report designed to relay important information about their business, tax and accounting firms routinely need to create, edit, view, and share spreadsheets. 

Although Google Sheets has gained quite a bit of traction over the last few years, Microsoft Excel remains the preferred spreadsheet solution for most financial industry professionals. Practically every CRM and CMS platform allows users to easily export data into Excel’s XLSX file format for convenient viewing, making it the de facto standard for most companies. Online spreadsheet collaboration is also easier than ever before thanks to public cloud tools like Office 365.

5 Major Spreadsheet Collaboration Challenges

Unfortunately, all of that ubiquity and convenience comes with a few drawbacks. There are also some inherent shortcomings with Excel spreadsheets that pose significant challenges to tax and accounting firms in particular.

1. Version Control

One of the great benefits of spreadsheets is their ability to track data over time, with new information constantly being fed into the spreadsheet formula to generate different results. Unfortunately, that typically means that the document could potentially be outdated the moment it’s copied, shared, or downloaded because a more current version might exist elsewhere. While cloud-based software like Google Sheets or Office 365 theoretically ensure that everyone is viewing and referencing the same document, if there are too many people making changes, errors can easily escape notice and break entire spreadsheet formulas (or possibly corrupt the file). Even then, people may clone their own version to work on independently, which creates the same version control challenge posed by Excel-dependent files. 

2. Security

Familiarity has a way of breeding complacency. That’s certainly true when it comes to sharing XLSX files. People are accustomed to sending and receiving spreadsheets over email and other messaging platforms. What they may not realize, however, is that 38% of malicious email attachments disguise themselves as Microsoft Office file types. The last thing a tax or accounting firm wants is for an employee to accidentally infect their network with harmful malware by opening what they thought was a spreadsheet. At the same time, even conventional spreadsheet collaboration can pose a serious security risk. Excel files offer limited security controls, and downloaded or shared files could be easily hacked to compromise important financial data. With more people working remotely in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, FinTech accounting software needs to account for the common security risks posed by home offices while still meeting consumer demands for high-speed, low-friction digital solutions in 2020 and beyond.

3. Asset Protection

Spreadsheets often contain more than just important financial data. The spreadsheet formulas buried within the many rows and columns of cells may represent important intellectual property for a tax or accounting firm. Any time a company shares a spreadsheet, it runs the risk of those formulas being stolen and distributed. Even if these proprietary assets remain safely tucked away within the spreadsheet, there’s still the matter of anyone with a copy of the file being able to use it however they want, potentially cutting into the firm’s business.

4. Workflow Efficiency

Managing a large number of independent XLSX files can quickly become burdensome for any organization. Take, for example, a situation where a tax firm’s customers must download a spreadsheet to enter their tax information and then send that file back to the firm so the data can be entered into its FinTech accounting software. Not only does this create numerous opportunities for manual errors, but it also introduces several unnecessary (and potentially risky) steps into the process. What if a file is not attached to an email? Or if someone downloads the spreadsheet, but then misplaces it? How does the tax firm verify that the version sent back to them is the most up-to-date version? This approach to spreadsheet collaboration ends up wasting time and is highly prone to mistakes.

5. Software Dependencies

While Excel may be the most widely used spreadsheet software in the world, that doesn’t mean every organization has access to it. Smaller companies and startups are much more likely to rely upon cloud-based tools like Google Sheets due to their low cost and ease of online spreadsheet collaboration. Although Google’s Chrome browser offers extensions capable of reading, viewing, and editing XLSX files, the conversion process is often imperfect due to differences in feature sets. Transferring data back and forth between Excel and other spreadsheet programs can create formatting problems and potentially break internal formulas. 

The PrizmDoc Cells Solution

One of the best ways for FinTech accounting software developers to address these issues is to simply integrate spreadsheet viewing and editing functionality into their applications. PrizmDoc Cells is a web-based spreadsheet editor that natively supports XLSX files by storing them on a secure server and allowing users to interact with them online through an Excel-like interface. 

Secure Spreadsheet Functionality

PrizmDoc Cells provides essential spreadsheet features within a familiar UI. After opening an XLSX file, users can review and edit cell content within a secure web-based environment. Firms can also restrict features to protect spreadsheets from errors and unauthorized alterations. 

No Microsoft Dependencies

Deployed entirely within a Docker container, PrizmDoc Cells can import, view, edit, and export XLSX files entirely within a firm’s FinTech accounting software or web-based application. No one needs access to a copy of Microsoft Excel to access files.

Manage End-User Access

In addition to hosting their source files securely within a proprietary server or private cloud environment, organizations can control what end-users can access within the spreadsheet. Proprietary data and spreadsheet formulas can be safely hidden from view to protect valuable IP.

Maintain Version Control

As an entirely web-based viewer, PrizmDoc Cells eliminates the need to email, copy, or download spreadsheets, ensuring that the file being viewed is always the most up-to-date version. Editing access can also be adjusted to ensure that only authorized users are able to make changes.

White Label Customization

Developers can easily remove all branding to seamlessly integrate PrizmDoc Cells with their applications and FinTech accounting software.

Say Goodbye to the Old Way of Spreadsheet Collaboration

Today’s tax and accounting firms need to work more efficiently than ever before to keep up with the demands of their clients. They can’t afford to keep relying upon outdated approaches to spreadsheet collaboration. The pressure is on for FinTech developers to build applications capable of accommodating their security, workflow, and version control requirements when it comes to spreadsheets. 

With PrizmDoc Cells, developers can build FinTech accounting software solutions that allow for true online spreadsheet collaboration without compromising the security or control organizations expect from their applications. Experience the functionality of PrizmDoc Cells firsthand by trying a demo today. To get a closer look at how PrizmDoc Cells will operate in your own development environment, sign up for a free trial.

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.

January 17, 2024 – Tampa, FL – Accusoft, a software company specializing in industry-leading secure document viewing, processing, and automation technologies for integration into Enterprise Content Management solutions, announced the latest release of PrizmDoc today. The latest version now includes AI for Personally Identifiable Information Detection and Redaction.

“Enhanced data security and improved regulatory compliance are very important to our customers, particularly in the Legal, Insurance, and Financial Services industries,” said Steve Wilson, Accusoft’s Chief Product Officer. “This newest version of PrizmDoc makes meeting these requirements easier.”

AI for Personally Identifiable Information in PrizmDoc: Features and Benefits

The new PrizmDoc AI for Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Detection and Redaction module allows end users to search and detect PII in a document. This provides:

• The page number where the information is located
• The ability to see the specific related text
• What type of PII the AI has identified
• An identification confidence score for each item

Once reviewed, end users can easily redact the information with a click of a button, or this process can be automated by using APIs.

Software developers can access this functionality using APIs to create workflow automation and enable user interface tools to provide functionality to end users.

PrizmDoc’s newest feature removes the need for end users to manually scan documents trying to identify PII for redaction, reducing bottlenecks and delays, and saving companies a significant amount of time.

Accusoft’s Chief Operating Officer Megan Brooks added: “This release marks a distinct milestone for Accusoft and PrizmDoc. Enhancing PrizmDoc with AI gives our customers a unique capability that allows them to differentiate their ECM solutions from the competition. As we stay close to our partners, the market, and the evolution of AI as it impacts the Document Management industry, we look forward to delivering more innovative feature enhancements to our customers.”

Learn more about PrizmDoc or to schedule a demo of the new PII features

About Accusoft

Founded in 1991, Accusoft is a software development company specializing in document processing, conversion, and automation solutions. From out-of-the-box and configurable applications to APIs built for developers, Accusoft software enables users to solve the 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 Docubee and PrizmDoc 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 releases, and a passion for understanding industry trends that drive consumer demand. Visit us at www.accusoft.com

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Few file formats are as widely recognized and used as PDF. In fact, PDFs have become so commonplace that it’s hard to imagine a time when they didn’t exist. Most users don’t even give them much thought, knowing that all they need to do is click on the file and trust that their PDF file viewer will be able to open and render it accurately. But things weren’t always quite so simple before PDF viewers.

Origins of PDF

It’s easy to take document viewing and printing for granted today, but to understand the development of the PDF format, it’s important to look back at the document challenges facing organizations in the early 1990s. Businesses, government agencies, and universities were already using local area networks to share digital documents, but there was no guarantee that a document would display the same way on every machine. In addition to multiple competing word processor formats (such as Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect), there was no reliable way of viewing files containing images or other layout elements across different software and operating systems.

Around that time, Adobe co-founder John Warnock became focused on the idea of creating a standardized document format that would work across all operating systems and effectively function like digital paper. The primary goal was to ensure that the document contents would look the same no matter where they were viewed. That meant solving complex challenges like replacing unsupported fonts without distorting the document’s layout and distilling graphic parameters to flatten the file so it would load within seconds instead of minutes.

Adobe released the first version of the Portable Document Format (PDF) in 1993, but it would take some time for the format to catch on. “The world didn’t get it,” Warnock recalled in a 2010 interview. “They didn’t understand how important sending documents around electronically was going to be.”

The early years were rocky, largely because PDF was just slightly ahead of its time. Early PDFs had limited functionality and were slightly too large to be sent quickly over the early internet connections. That began to change in 1996, however, when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) used PDFs to provide downloadable tax return forms and instructions online. The IRS also started using PDF files to digitize their internal document processes, largely phasing out their reliance upon paper documents for auditing. This adoption convinced many hesitant organizations that if the format was good enough for the IRS, then it was good enough for them as well.

The Growth of PDF File Viewers

In the years following the introduction of PDF as an open format, a unique “freemium” model emerged that helped to promote its use across a variety of industries. While developers sold software that could be used to create, convert, edit, and secure PDFs, they also offered more streamlined PDF file viewers for free. This ensured that anyone could easily open and view PDF files no matter what kind of computer or operating system they were using. 

Although early readers were offered as separate software applications, they quickly became available as libraries that could be integrated into an existing application. By integrating a PDF file viewer directly into an application, developers could provide secure PDF support without having to rely upon any external software.

Today, there are multiple PDF file viewers available, which often makes it difficult to identify the one that provides the right combination of rendering performance and security for a particular industry’s needs.

The Rendering Challenge

Rendering a PDF file accurately is a deceptively complex task because not every file is constructed in the same way. In fact, prior to the PDF standard being taken over by the International Standards Organization (ISO) in 2007, Adobe’s documentation surrounding the format was rather infamously vague, resulting in the creation of poorly optimized PDFs that third party readers had difficulty viewing properly. Some PDF file viewers address this challenge by adding new code to accommodate known issues, but this has the unpleasant side effect of giving the reader a larger footprint and potentially impacting performance.

This challenge has become even more complex in recent years given the popularity of mobile devices. Effective PDF file viewers must be able to deliver a responsive viewing experience that can adjust their user interface (UI) to different sizes and types of screens.

The Security Challenge

Security has always been an important consideration for PDF file viewers, but it has become a much more prominent concern since the first virus capable of embedding itself in PDF files was uncovered in 2001. Unfortunately, security vulnerabilities continue to be a problem with third party PDF readers, as evidenced by the multiple vulnerabilities discovered in Adobe’s PDF products in 2020. While developers have more PDF file viewers to choose from than ever before, finding a solution that doesn’t introduce security risks has become a high priority when building a new application.

One of the best solutions for resolving security challenges is to build PDF capabilities directly into their already secure applications. Viewing or creating a PDF file in an external program, such as third party software or even within a web browser, introduces a potential functionality and control gap. It’s difficult to control what can be done with a PDF once it travels outside the confines of a secure application environment, allowing it to be downloaded, viewed, and potentially altered. With PDFs set to continue as the de facto standard for digital documents, it makes more sense than ever for developers to give their applications the ability to manage those files natively, without having to interface with external software dependencies.

Find the PDF File Viewer That’s Best for You

Developers have many choices when it comes to integrating PDF viewing capabilities, which is why Accusoft has developed a broad range of PDF integrations to address every potential use case. Our Accusoft PDF Viewer delivers a high-speed, lightweight JavaScript library that offers out-of-the-box mobile support and requires only a few lines of code to install. Available as a free-to-use integration, it’s the fastest way to add dynamic PDF viewing capabilities to your application without any configuration headaches. 

If your application needs more than just support for PDF viewing, PrizmDoc Viewer provides production-scale annotation, redaction, and conversion for multiple file types. As an HTML5 viewer, PrizmDoc Viewer easily integrates into applications to create a secure environment for documents and images. Try it today using an online demo or download a free trial to see how PrizmDoc Viewer can transform the way your application handles and views documents. 

Despite the explosive growth of big data and sophisticated analytics platforms, a 2019 study by Deloitte found that 67 percent of business leaders are not quite comfortable using them to inform decision making. For many organizations, spreadsheets remain the preferred tool for managing data and evaluating trends. Developers looking to build the next generation of business applications can accommodate those tendencies by integrating native spreadsheet support for Microsoft Excel workbooks.

Excel Worksheets vs Excel Workbooks

Although sometimes referred to interchangeably or described broadly as spreadsheets, there is a key distinction between an Excel worksheet and an Excel workbook. A worksheet consists of only one spreadsheet while a workbook contains multiple different spreadsheets separated by tabs.

The difference may not be very important when viewing or sharing XLSX files natively in Microsoft Excel, but it can create serious challenges when rendering those files in another application. Without some way of accurately rendering dynamic spreadsheet data, viewers are often forced to resort to a static print preview image. This process makes the file viewable, but also leaves it “flattened” because all interactive elements are removed from the spreadsheet cells.

If the workbook contains worksheets with linked data (that is, cell data from one sheet is affected by cell data from another sheet), it’s critical that a viewing solution preserves the dynamic aspects of the file. The advantage of a spreadsheet is that it can serve as a working document. Without the ability to interact with it, users might as well simply copy and paste the data into a text document.

Managing Excel Workbooks with PrizmDoc Cells

PrizmDoc Cells provides several options for managing Excel workbooks, making it easy to transition back and forth between XLSX format and web browser viewing. Once a proxy route is set up within the application to send API calls to the PrizmDoc Cells server, three different commands can be used to manage Excel workbooks.

Upload Workbook

This API call adds a new XLSX file for viewing and editing. When a document is uploaded to the system, the server assigns a unique workbook ID to it so it can be found and rendered in the application’s viewer in the future. After uploading a workbook, a new session can be created using the workbook ID for viewing and editing purposes. 

Download Workbook

When PrizmDoc Cells displays a spreadsheet, it renders the XLSX file itself, but it doesn’t make any alterations to that file. As each session makes edits to the workbook, those changes are associated with the document ID rather than the original XLSX file, which preserves the integrity of the original spreadsheet. At some point, however, those edits may need to be saved into a new Excel workbook. 

The download API call converts the current session document so it can be downloaded as an XLSX file. File availability can be set during the download process to control who will have access to the new workbook.

Delete Workbook

Old versions of workbooks often need to be deleted for security reasons, usually because they contain confidential data. Since the original XLSX file remains safely within application storage, there often isn’t much sense in retaining workbooks IDs that aren’t being used. The delete API call removes a workbook ID from the server. Once removed in this way, the workbook cannot be viewed, edited, or downloaded by PrizmDoc Cells.

Preserving Workbook Functionality

Since PrizmDoc Cells natively renders information contained in an XLSX file, it retains the dynamic elements that make spreadsheet workbooks so useful to organizations. Not only does it preserve proprietary business logic and formulas, but it also maintains the integrity of this information across multiple worksheets. Cell content can still be searched to quickly locate important text or data throughout the workbook.

For situations where proprietary formulas need to be protected, PrizmDoc Cells allows users to upload XLSX workbooks as values-only files, with all spreadsheet formulas removed. Also, any cells locked in an uploaded XLSX file will remain locked in PrizmDoc Cells to preserve workbook security.

True Spreadsheet Workbook Support for Your Applications

Many organizations continue to depend upon spreadsheet workbooks to manage their business. By providing feature-rich workbook support within their applications, developers can help them retain control over their proprietary spreadsheet formulas without sacrificing the functionality they expect from Excel. 

PrizmDoc Cells makes it easier than ever to share spreadsheet workbooks without having to rely upon Microsoft Excel dependencies. Shared XLSX files can remain safely within a secure application environment to prevent unauthorized downloads or troublesome version confusion. Get a first-hand look at how PrizmDoc Cells can enhance your application in our extensive online demo.