Technical FAQs
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 Unfortunately, that typically means that the document could potentially be outdated the moment it’s copied, shared, or downloaded because a more current version might exist elsewhere.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.
Many of us are old enough to remember the ways offices used to manage documents. The familiar beige file folders all lined up, alphabetically, numerically, or by some other organizational scheme. You might remember how the dust, coffee cups, and other random office supplies would accumulate on top of it in the closet, between the cubicles, or maybe in the lunchroom by the fridge.
You know, the good old office file share drive?
You may have thought we were referring to a filing cabinet, a large boxy shared drive server, or even a local file storage appliance of some kind. Whatever you had in mind, most of them have been replaced by cloud-based document management applications.
In the 20-teens and beyond, the idea of managing documents in the cloud no longer seems unrealistic. Information workers, IT managers, and business executives are rapidly becoming accustomed to the many benefits of cloud-based document management for some of the following reasons:
- Centralized administration of permission control, business process maps, users, groups, and reporting.
- Decreased or elimination of costs and resource utilization for maintenance of hardware, databases, and proprietary on-premise software.
- Increased flexibility to access documents from outside the office, on user-preferred devices.
- The shift of software license capital costs for operational subscription costs and consumption-based pricing.
- Data protection, security, scalability and availability which only cloud services providers can deliver.
These are many of the common drivers which incentivize businesses to adopt cloud-based document management. Yet there are document management functions which aren’t native to most cloud storage applications. They are more focused on individual users and document lifecycle management on a micro-level, as opposed to storing, filing, and controlling access to documents on a macro level.
That’s why cloud-based APIs are useful. Using integrated technology, you can add functionalities like viewing, compression, and OCR into your current cloud application with ease. The world is moving away from physical files and on to bigger and better software. Are you?
No matter how you feel about remote work, there’s no disputing its influence. It has forever altered the workforce. In 2019, only six percent of the workforce worked remotely. But following the COVID-19 pandemic, that number rose significantly.
Remote work is here to stay. Though big-name companies like Dell and Amazon mandated return-to-office policies in 2024, remote work remains a key talent-acquisition strategy. Smaller companies vying for the nation’s top talent find this strategy particularly valuable for attracting candidates.
Even the legal field is on board. Law firms now recognize the advantages of remote work. This has created a unique set of challenges for legal eDiscovery processes.
Legal Remote Work by the Numbers
According to data from Latitude Legal, hybrid work is a common arrangement for permanent positions in the legal industry. In a 2024 Q1 trends analysis, 60% of permanent staffing orders from Latitude Legal’s clients featured hybrid schedules. Data from Thomson Reuters Institute’s 2024 Law Firm Office Attendance Policies Report confirms most legal professionals welcome new hybrid policies.
Following the pandemic, remote legal assistance became common. Law firms turned to remote paralegals and legal assistants for help with legal research, document preparation, and eDiscovery. Today 82% of paralegals and legal assistants work remotely in some capacity.
But there’s one major roadblock: legal eDiscovery. With data scattered across locations, it’s difficult to track that data and keep it secure. On-premise software solutions are no longer effective for managing the files and documents legal professionals access remotely.
For cloud-based eDiscovery software providers, this roadblock is a major opportunity. The software segment of the eDiscovery market is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 11.4% through 2028. Experts attribute this growth to the rising demand for sophisticated eDiscovery platforms that offer enhanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning capabilities.
With these capabilities, legal professionals can streamline the process of reviewing and analyzing large datasets.
What Challenges Lie Ahead for Legal eDiscovery?
Legal eDiscovery no longer lives within the controlled confines of office networks. Now that remote work is a permanent fixture, legal tech ISVs are focused on adapting their offerings to meet the needs of a distributed workforce.
Here are some of the challenges they’ll likely face to ensure compliance and streamline the remote eDiscovery process.
Data Sprawl
Remote work has made the corporate data landscape more fragmented and complex. Cloud-based collaboration tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Workplace enhance productivity, but they also create new data repositories. Each tool comes with its own data format and storage mechanism, which complicates the process of collecting and analyzing information during eDiscovery.
Many remote employees use personal devices for work purposes, blurring the lines between corporate and personal data. Employees who store documents on their personal computers, tablets, or smartphones make it hard to identify and collect all relevant data during eDiscovery.
The geographical distribution of data adds another layer of complexity. Law firms must navigate different jurisdictions and data protection regulations. When employees use non-approved applications or services to store data in systems outside of the organization’s visibility, this issue gets even thornier.
Security Concerns
Since 2020, 20% of organizations have experienced a data breach related to a remote worker. Remote workers are prime targets for cybercriminals. They’re more susceptible to sophisticated phishing attacks and ransomware, which can compromise entire eDiscovery datasets.
Vulnerable network connections are often to blame. Most home networks lack the robust security measures found in corporate environments. Remote workers who use public Wi-Fi run the risk of exposing eDiscovery data. It’s open to interception and hacking attempts that compromise the integrity and confidentiality of eDiscovery.
There’s also the sheer volume of eDiscovery data to consider. In the U.S., a civil case contains approximately 130 gigabytes or 6.5 million pages of data. As employees transfer large volumes of data between remote locations and central repositories, new security risks emerge. Cybercriminals can intercept sensitive eDiscovery information without proper encryption and secure file transfer protocols.
Data Collection and Preservation
The shift to remote work has complicated the process of collecting and preserving electronically stored information (ESI) for legal eDiscovery. Employees are working outside centralized corporate networks. The data they process is also more diverse, from audio and videos to spreadsheets and proprietary databases.
ECM solution providers must corral an expanding array of file types and data structures. Remote work has ushered in more proprietary formats as new collaboration platforms emerge. Legal tech ISVs have to stay one step ahead. Remote data collection capabilities that maintain data integrity are critical.
Review Process Barriers
The review phase of eDiscovery is already a complex, time-consuming process. It faces new hurdles in the remote work environment. Now that teams work across locations, coordinating team reviews is more difficult.
As a result, many law firms struggle to maintain consistent review protocols. Real-time collaboration and communication are also trickier. With these barriers, there’s a greater chance teams will duplicate or overlook documents. Complex, multi-stage review workflows don’t often translate well to the remote environment.
Mitigating Remote Legal eDiscovery Risks
While remote work presents its share of obstacles, most are solvable. The first step to overcoming them is taking a proactive approach.
Comprehensive Policies and Training
Law firms must develop and regularly update policies that cover remote work. These policies should outline data storage and communication channels. Every employee must understand proper storage locations for eDiscovery documents and approved communication tools.
Centralized Communication and Document Management
Legal professionals need company-controlled platforms for communication and document sharing. Centralization helps mitigate the risks associated with data sprawl and unauthorized application use. Platforms should facilitate easy on-platform communication to encourage adoption.
Compliance and Risk Assessment
Regularly assessing and updating compliance measures to align with evolving data protection and privacy regulations is key. With the right eDiscovery tools, legal teams can enforce these policies and prevent legal penalties and non-compliance risks.
The Role of AI in eDiscovery
It’s impossible to talk about the future of legal eDiscovery without mentioning AI. AI-powered document management is the way forward. It will play a critical role in mitigating the challenges of remote legal eDiscovery.
Automated Data Classification and Review
AI-powered algorithms can classify documents based on their content and relevance, allowing for faster data processing and analysis.
Advanced Search and Analysis
With accurate tagging and classification, it’s easier to search the documents within your ECM system. This is a major time-saver for eDiscovery teams.
Predictive Coding and AI-Assisted Review
AI algorithms can also identify relevant documents, which enhances the speed and consistency of document review, especially for large datasets.
Security and Compliance
Together, AI and blockchain technology create more secure, reliable systems. This adds a layer of security to the eDiscovery process, making it less susceptible to data tampering and compliance violations.
Collaboration and Workflow Optimization
AI-driven tools streamline collaboration among remote legal teams, allowing them to share information and insights efficiently.
Solving Remote Legal eDiscovery Challenges
The shift to remote work has undeniably transformed legal eDiscovery. Law firms have reimagined traditional eDiscovery approaches to accommodate their remote employees.
But with every challenge comes an opportunity. Accusoft is helping legal tech ISVs lead the charge in developing next-generation eDiscovery tools.
With PrizmDoc, ISVs can integrate a fully customizable API-based solution into their ECM application for secure document viewing, conversions, and annotations. This integration enhances eDiscovery efficiency, performance, and document security.
PrizmDoc is powered by IBM watsonx.ai technology, which has revolutionized document management and processing for our ECM clients. Users can securely view, mark up, and manage multiple file formats within their application, reducing document processing times with the sophistication of AI.
Start your free trial of PrizmDoc today, or schedule a call with our sales team!
Sept. 7, 2022 – TAMPA, Fla. — Accusoft, a software development company specializing in content processing, conversion, and automation solutions, and Snowbound, a leader in document viewing and conversion SDK solutions, announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Accusoft will acquire Snowbound. In the largest acquisition in its 30-year history, the transaction will significantly expand Accusoft’s presence and product portfolio.
Snowbound’s VirtualViewer® technology, supported by its powerful RasterMaster® SDK, supports numerous formats including PDF, MS Office, AFP, DWG, TIFF, email, video, audio files, and more within one universal interface. Its REST API and RESTful content handler provide a more flexible development and deployment capability enabling it to be easily integrated into most applications. In addition, the company offers connectors for IBM FileNet, Alfresco, and Pega. This acquisition will enable Accusoft to expand into new viewing and collaboration technologies offering customers a more robust web-based document viewing experience.
“Today, we celebrate the joining of two companies who have both driven significant innovation for web-based viewing, conversion, and imaging SDK technologies. I have always had the utmost respect for Snowbound’s leadership team and their employees as we have competed against one another for sales opportunities over the decades. I am honored to bring Snowbound into the Accusoft family,” said Jack Berlin, CEO of Accusoft.
“We were incredibly selective as we looked for the right acquisition partner. We were deliberate in selecting an organization with a leadership team and product portfolio that would be compatible with our own, and that would continue to grow, develop and nurture what we have built at Snowbound. We have proudly driven 26 years of innovation in the way that companies securely share, collaborate, and process documents and images. With the acquisition, our technology will expand RasterMaster®’s and VirtualViewer®’s Java-based feature set and allow continued empowerment to customers as they navigate the ever-changing world of digital transformation and the complexities of document management,” Simon Wieczner, CEO Snowbound.
While the acquisition is complete, Accusoft will wait until January 2023 to take full operational control of Snowbound. In the meantime, the two leadership teams will partner to close out a strong 2022 and transition the team and its assets.
For more information about Accusoft, please visit https://www.accusoft.com/.
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 OnTask, 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.
About Snowbound
For over two decades, Snowbound Software has been the independent leader in document viewing and conversion technology. It plays an integral role in enhancing and speeding company workflows for the Fortune 2000, including insurance claims processing, financial transactions, and more. Snowbound excels in providing customers with powerful solutions for capturing, viewing, processing, and archiving hundreds of different document and image types. Thanks to its pure Java technology and multi-environment support, Snowbound’s products operate across all popular platforms and can be integrated into new or existing enterprise content management systems. Nine of the 10 largest banks in the United States (seven of 10 in the world), as well as some of the biggest healthcare providers, government agencies, and insurance companies rely on Snowbound for their mission-critical needs. For more information, contact us at 617-607-2010 or info@snowbound.com, or visit www.snowbound.com
Whether your clients are working on processing a loan or gathering financial data for a consumer’s credit request, lending is a complex process that is only getting more complicated in this fast-paced digital era. Your application helps financial institutions address a variety of pain points, but is it solving the one that’s most pressing today?
Consumers of financial institutions are required to submit various forms when applying for a line of credit or loan. Does your financial application make it easy for lenders to review and approve these documents? Some applications require downloading a file to a third party service like Word. However, this can be tedious – a process that wastes time and complicates the collaboration process for your clients.
Document Viewing Within Your Application
Financial institutions are searching for a standard procedure to help them view and collaborate on borrower histories. Due to time restrictions, they need a process that simplifies functions like search, annotation, file conversion, and more.
What if there was a way to view a variety of different document types within your own application? Imagine a lender uploading the forms into your product, viewing customer data all in one place, sending information through various approval routes, and searching for the information they need in seconds.
With Accusoft’s unique software development kits (SDKs) and application programming interfaces (APIs), you can integrate a variety of different features into your product to help lenders process credit applications faster. They can view consumer data within files, identify data in form fields, and extract borrower information into a database.
Accusoft has a solution that can greatly reduce your coding time. PrizmDoc Viewer is a highly versatile document viewer that handles a variety of issues typically encountered in loan origination and credit applications. Easily embeddable into financial software, PrizmDoc Viewer enables you to worry less about code and focus more on your clients’ pain points.
A Pre-Built Solution to Enhance Your Product
When you integrate PrizmDoc Viewer into your application, your lenders can view dozens of file formats, including the text files most commonly associated with loan processing, without leaving the native program. For example, if a lender needs to view an Excel file, they can view it within your application without opening Excel itself and exiting your application.
In addition, PrizmDoc Viewer has search functionality that enables you to find information quickly and efficiently. When you search a document for specific information, PrizmDoc Viewer uses hit highlighting to locate the information in seconds – even if the document is thousands of pages long.
With these unique features already in PrizmDoc Viewer, it’s easy to see why Accusoft products are trusted by major brands. Make sure your clients are getting the versatility they need by delivering a customized solution for them. When you integrate PrizmDoc Viewer into your application, you’re saving coding time and creating a more powerful solution for your customers.
What pain points can you solve for your customers? Create a more versatile solution for their needs with a document viewer that streamlines their lending process. If you want to learn more about financial lending integrations, contact us today.
College and university will look very different this fall. While some schools are making the leap back to on-campus learning, many are opting for hybrid educational models or hitting pause on the entire process to help limit COVID-19 concerns. No matter the academic approach, however, post-secondary schools share a common challenge, finding a distance learning system or learning management system (LMS) that has all the functionality they need without the cost. Teachers, schools, and universities are all scrambling to find a tool that fits their needs especially during a time when nothing is certain. That’s where learning management systems can help bridge the gap, by offering secure document collaboration with unique features like viewing, annotation, commenting, redaction, and more.
Current Collaboration Issues
As noted by the Harvard Business Review, while the last-decade uptake of massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered the potential to displace face-to-face learning, COVID’s effect on e-learning was nowhere near student and staff expectations. Post-secondary schools have been forced to deploy MOOC-like frameworks at a frantic pace as they attempt to minimize learning disruption and ensure students have access to critical educational resources.
It’s one thing to implement collaborative and communicative solutions — it’s another to ensure these deployments are efficient and effective. While Zoom calls, text chats, and email chains offer some ability for staff and students to connect, they’re not enough in isolation. As a result, schools now face three key collaboration challenges:
- Enhancing Student Engagement — If students aren’t engaged, success isn’t possible. Schools need learning management systems that simplify engagement initiatives.
- Ensuring Staff Efficacy — If staff spend all their time managing documents, they sacrifice student connection. Simplified document viewing, conversion, and editing tools help streamline this process and improve student outcomes.
- Expanding Solution Scope — As e-learning becomes common practice, schools need to ramp up solution scope. Here, process automation tools are critical to bridge the digital divide.
Potential Platform Pitfalls
While initial shifts to online and blended learning were given a measure of leeway as schools struggled to cope with the emerging impacts of a global pandemic, students and staff now want focused, functional online learning tools.
As noted by Inside Higher Ed, for example, while students are willing to be flexible, they also want assurances that their education will include regular communication opportunities with staff and classmates, and won’t sacrifice their career potential at the expense of an untested, rapidly-evolving educational model. Academic staff, meanwhile, need the ability to both engage with students and evaluate their work at a distance to ensure at-home learners enjoy the same advantages as their on-campus counterparts.
Here, digital platforms offer both promise and potential pitfalls. For example, if document management tools can’t offer the flexibility and functionality required to easily convert, view, and edit multiple file types, time is wasted for both staff and students. Customization is also critical, since every school has specific processes around document formatting, grading, and user access.
In addition, concerns exist for schools making at least a partial return to on-site education. As student numbers ramp up, campuses must reduce the potential risk of virus transmission by eliminating as many common touch points as possible. Here, barcoded student ID cards already used by many schools offer built-in practical potential — but only if the right infrastructure exists to support these solutions at scale.
The Learning Management System Answer
So how do universities and colleges support both hybrid and entirely e-learning approaches? It all comes down to content management — the combination of key solutions and services to both empower student success and reduce staff frustration. For post-secondary schools, essential tools include:
- On-Demand Document Viewing — With students now required to submit work electronically for assessment and evaluation, instructors and administrators need on-demand document tools that let them easily view, add comments, and insert redactions across multiple file types.
- Comprehensive File Conversion — To help standardize document management and storage, comprehensive file conversion is critical. By converting multiple file formats into searchable, scalable PDFs, schools can unify document management and ensure edits are only possible with specific permissions.
- End-to-End Document Automation — The sheer volume of information now processed by post-secondary schools — from organizational sign-up forms and healthcare waivers to loan applications and contact tracing documents — demands end-to-end document automation that ensures all forms are routed through the same, secure process for simplified security and storage.
- Superior Barcode Support — Barcodes not only help schools manage physical resources such as books, computers, and lab equipment but can also be leveraged on ID cards to support no-contact transactions in bookstores, food service establishments, and other campus facilities. As a result, schools need superior barcode support capable of quickly reading codes — even if they’ve been damaged or worn down thanks to continuous student use.
Blended learning strategies will remain part of post-secondary life for the foreseeable future. As a result, it’s critical to bolster both student and staff success with learning management solutions and distance learning systems capable of delivering both on-campus and off-site collaboration, communication, and connection. If you are looking to enhance your current learning management system or create an application that can help educators during these challenging times, contact us for a free consultation.