intelligent documents

What are Intelligent Documents?
As businesses look for ways to operate more efficiently and effectively in today’s highly-regulated environment, new intelligent document technologies have emerged. The clear leader in this field is Adobe Systems with their interactive PDF format and LiveCycle™ server products. Solutions based on these technologies enable companies to eliminate the time-consuming, error-prone and inefficient tasks associated with processing manual documents.

Intelligent Documents retain some of the characteristics of paper documents, such as a familiar look and layout. In fact, the look of an intelligent document may remind you more of a traditional printed document than a modern web page. However, the functionality of an intelligent document will remind you more of a modern web page. Like web pages, intelligent documents provide services like data validation and calculation. Other features of intelligent documents include:

Embedded XML Data for support when no connection to a server is possible
Automation Services provided by embedded JavaScript routines
Embedded routing instructions that define the next step in a workflow

How does the technology work?
Adobe’s intelligent document offering centers on their Acrobat (client) and LiveCycle™ (server) product lines. Adobe’s LiveCycle platform includes many of their enterprise server products that support PDF generation and workflow. A business user will employ the Acrobat client software to fill in a form. This form can be a disconnected PDF or a connected PDF.

Why should you consider Intelligent Documents?
Your company is probably wasting too much time and money handling paper-based forms and documents. Intelligent documents are more efficient because important data does not have to be re-keyed at each different step in the workflow. The data travels with the document in the form of embedded XML.

Intelligent documents produce more accurate results because errors are eliminated earlier and more accurate data is available to a greater user base. Through client-side and server-side verification, your data is checked before it hits your database or enterprise applications (ERP and CRM). Intelligent documents also extend the reach of your enterprise applications to third-party partners outside your firewall.

Intelligent documents also enable greater accountability and traceability in document handling throughout your enterprise. Audit trails can be easily obtained based on an intelligent document’s embedded XML data.

Intelligent Loan Application