Gaining Competitive Advantage Through The Use Of PDF

Today’s corporate culture is a lot different than what we were used to fifteen or even ten years ago. The staff no longer waits for their employer to enroll them into some training PDF program, today’s talent believes in self-learning and self-improvement. Today’s employees no longer have to be in their cubicle by 9 and work till 5, in fact, a lot of today’s employees are working from the comforts of their home.

Another great change that we are starting to see in today’s corporate culture is that the employees no longer wait for the IT department to wake up and get each department the equipment it needs. Today’s employees know exactly what they need and are not willing to wait for anyone to get it.

One of the many things that today’s offices focus on is how they can best manage their records and other data that needs to be stored. When it comes to file management, today’s businesses are concerned about 4 main things;

• Ensuring that the organization is using its digital resources in the most productive way.
• As a part of their commitment to paperless policy and ensuring complete reliance on technology, making sure that they use as little paper and as infrequently as possible.
• Having a framework in place that allows safe, fast and efficient creation, usage, storage and distribution of files and documents.
• Making sure only the higher-ups have full “read and write” access to the data stored in the database while the mid and low-level employees have “read-only” access.

Today’s businesses and organizations are using all kinds of the document creating software. From Microsoft Word and Excel to PowerPoint and even Google Docs, lots of data storage software are being used by businesses all around the world. But, if there is one thing that all smart businesses and companies agree on, it is that the only file format they can always rely on is PDF.

In today’s digital era, PDF is that most commonly used file storage format. Businesses are saving most of their files in PDF and even rushing to convert pdf to the doc.

PDF’s origins

In early 1990’s, the rapidly growing tech world was facing a big problem. Transferring files from one computer to another one messed the formatting of the file. In short, even though it was possible to transfer files, the world never rely on it.

Lots of different tech companies were pouring in lots of funds to introduce a file format that could solve this problem but it was PDF that did it successfully. Introduced at the trade show COMDEX in 1992, PDF was the first big release from Adobe.

PDF was released alongside the Adobe Acrobat Reader and a special software that allowed PDF file creation and editing. The whole suite has a big price tag because of which PDF failed to see early success, after some months of disappointing results, Adobe made the Reader available completely free of charge.

Obviously, even though office computers were a common sight by now, offices around the world were stuck using paper. Organizations and businesses around the globe were spending huge amounts on paper buying and storage each month and it was driving their operational costs up. Hence, when PDF was released for free, organizations jumped at it.

Everyone was willing to give PDF a shot and the United States’ Internal Revenue Service was actually one of the first major organizations that adopted PDF. The suite worked great for the IRS and because of that a lot more big organizations adopted PDF and eventually, the format overtook the whole tech world.

In 2008, as Adobe wasn’t charging any royalties for PDF or Adobe Reader usage, PDF was released as an open format, making it officially free to use, create and distribute.

What makes PDF the best?

Over the years, PDF has gone through a few updates and really earned its place as the best file format out there. Today, PDF offers much more than just being able to retain all formatting elements when a file is transferred to another system. Here are some of the best things about PDF;

• PDF is one of the most secure file formats in the world and even in legal procedures; PDF is the most preferred file storage format. PDF allows its users to set a password which restricts any third party from editing or manipulating the file.

Users also have the option to set an open password which will restrict file access. Moreover, PDF keeps a digital signature every time it is accessed and this helps keep a log of all times the file was accessed.

• In today’s modern age, physical storage and file cabinets have been replaced by cloud storage. Storing files in a lossless file format can easily fill up the free space available in your company’s cloud storage. But with PDF, files are compressed to make sure files take a minimum amount of space.
• At the time of its release, PDF was praised for being able to retain file formatting after being transferred from one computer to another. But today, it doesn’t just run flawlessly on computers, it works perfectly on all kinds of devices and OS including, smartphones, tablets, Android, iOS, Linux, etc.
• Of course, with PDF’s popularity, a lot of organizations support the format today and anyone can convert PNG to PDF free And not just PNG, from Doc to Excel, users can convert more than 500 file formats to PDF using free online tools.
• After PDF became an open standard, it became possible to create PDF files from any word processor. And with Adobe Reader being free, almost all computers come with it pre-installed. This makes sure no matter which device you have access to, you can easily read and create PDF files.

And there you have it. This is what makes the best file format today and why it is a must-use for your company.