Technical FAQs

On July 23, 2021, Accusoft announced the latest update to SmartZone, its versatile data capture SDK for forms processing. The version 6.1 update expands the integration’s already robust language support for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) by adding 65 new languages, with a special emphasis on Central European, Cyrillic, Baltic, and Asian language groups.

“We have a strong customer base in North America with SmartZone, but we’ve received multiple customer requests to expand support to a global range of languages,” said Irina Tabac, Product Manager for Forms and Cloud APIs at Accusoft. “This update will help developers serve their international customers better and offer OCR support for new customers around the world.”

Newly supported languages include: 

• Turkish
• Malay
• Russian
• Polish
• Greek
• Chinese
• Korean
• Japanese
• Thai
• Vietnamese
• And over 50 more…

SmartZone v6.1 also expands the SDK’s OCR capabilities to include full page recognition for forms processing. Now developers can give their forms processing applications the ability to capture data using targeted zonal recognition or by extracting text from the entire page.

Available as an individual SDK or as part of the FormSuite Collection, SmartZone’s data capture technology eliminates the need for manual data entry in forms workflows. To learn more about Accusoft’s SmartZone OCR/ICR SDK or download a trial for a first-hand look, please visit our website.

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.

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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.

If your development team is building a data-rich application which will ingest gigabytes of data from newly-converted forms and born-digital ones, a cloud-based forms automation API can minimize development cost and effort. These days, forms are increasingly populated on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets as opposed to desktop browsers. 

Imagine if your clients, patients, employees, or constituents could fill out structured paper forms, then scan and submit them for processing. FormSuite in the Cloud helps your business reap the benefits of:

1. Hassle-free scanning followed by image capture and cleanup. 
2. Seamless identification of multiple form types.
3. Fast, accurate extraction of handwritten and typed data inputs. 

Custom development of this sort of functionality into your business application can add significant scope to the initial build and help you bypass those manual, incremental upgrades. Even if you are already experiencing the benefits of the Accusoft server-based FormSuite for Structured Forms or FormSuite for Invoices for your legacy applications, the increased flexibility of the FormSuite Cloud Beta is worth investigating.

Use Cases for Cloud-Based Form Capture

There are several scenarios for different industry use cases where cloud-enabled forms automation could create efficiency and reduce cost.

Insurance: Are clients applying for coverage by filling out paper forms? Claims for health expenses, property damage, or car accidents are all handled through your user-facing application.

Legal: How do attorneys capture retainer forms or engagement letters? Whether your law firm specializes in real estate, corporate mergers and acquisitions, or criminal matters,  processing the various forms involved in case files is a tedious manual task. 

Government: Permit applications, census forms, tax forms, invoices, and business registration forms are a few examples of documents which often start out as paper documents, but are best stored and processed electronically. Extracting personally identifiable information (PII) from forms and storing data in secure systems mitigates the risk of compromising sensitive data.

Finance: Applications for mortgages, business loans, 401Ks, and other investments often starts with a physical form. The data within these forms often changes after the initial signature ink dries. Pulling accurate data out of these forms in a timely manner is critical. 

A Cloud-Based Forms Solution for All

Whatever industry your business applications serve, it’s quite likely that much of the data which they store will come from a form. Coding your own forms capture functionality into your application adds cost and complexity to development lifecycles. That is entirely avoidable. 

Accusoft has been preparing a cloud-based version of our proven FormSuite SDK. A Beta API is now available for a test-drive. Explore how you can extend your business applications by recognizing key form fields and capturing the data that resides there. Sign up for to test our FormSuite Cloud Beta today. 

As part of our ongoing commitment to supporting the LegalTech industry in its effort to transform the processes used by law firms and legal departments, Accusoft recently sponsored an educational webinar in conjunction with Law.com entitled “Build or Buy? Learning Which Is Best for Your Firm or Department.” Hosted by Zach Warren, editor-in-chief of Legaltech News, the webinar featured Neeraj Rajpal, CIO of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, and Kelly Wehbi, Head of Product at Gravity Stack, a subsidiary of the Reed Smith law firm. 

Together, the panelists brought two unique perspectives to the ongoing “build vs buy” debate, both from the software vendors who provide LegalTech solutions and the decision makers working at the legal firms who make difficult decisions regarding technology solutions.

Build vs Buy: The Choices Before the Decision

Both Rajpal and Wehbi agree that any decision involving building or buying technology solutions has to begin with defining the problem a firm needs to solve. Regardless of whether you’re working with an independent legal firm or a legal department within a larger organization, it’s critical to understand the business problem, existing pain points, and potential value of a solution.

“When you start asking the right questions,” Raijpal notes, “you sometimes come across a situation where the requirements are not very clearly defined and that is a big red flag to me because when requirements are not defined, you’re not solving anything.”

Wehbi shares that concern about the requirements gathering process, pointing out that things tend to go wrong when firms fail to consider both the scope and magnitude of the challenge they’re trying to overcome. “Organizations can struggle a lot when they jump a little too quickly to a solution or to thinking about just what the return would be on a potential new product or service offered.”

It’s also critical to make sure that the firm is willing to accept some degree of change. If existing business processes are unclear or if no one is willing to consider changing how they work, then no amount of technology is going to make a difference. Understanding the culture of the firm and securing the buy-in from leadership is absolutely critical to making any technology integration succeed whether you’re buying a solution or building one from scratch. 

The Pros and Cons of Building LegalTech Solutions

For an organization that has the resources, methodologies, and skill sets necessary to develop a solution that’s specifically designed to meet its unique requirements, building can be a great decision. The key advantage here is that it focuses specifically on the firm’s processes and user pain points, allowing developers to design a solution that is much more targeted than an “off-the-shelf” product.

Benefits of Building

• Applications can be customized to your exact specifications, allowing them to better address your specific business needs.
• Since you manage the solution from end to end, you retain much more control in terms of application features and functionality, how data is managed, and access security.
• Developing a specialized solution creates room for innovative technology that can provide a competitive edge.
• A custom-built solution presents fewer integration challenges, especially when it comes to interfacing with legacy systems used by many legal organizations.

Risks of Building

• Building a new solution from the ground up requires a great deal of time and resources that might be better spent elsewhere.
• Investing in custom software creates substantial technical debt that must be maintained over time and could create integration problems in the future when additional upgrades are required.
• If the new solution doesn’t contribute enough to the bottom line to justify the cost of operations, it could lead to negative economies of scale that make it difficult for the firm to grow its business.

The Pros and Cons of Buying LegalTech Solutions

Not every organization has the development resources to build a customized solution from the ground up. If they’re not ready to make that capital investment, a cloud-based offering may be better suited to their needs. Leveraging a proven, ready-to-launch SaaS solution offers a number of advantages, but could impact how the company makes technology decisions in the future.

Benefits of Buying

• Since SaaS services are usually cheaper and easier to implement, they are often the best option for companies with limited IT resources.
• Cloud solutions are good for solving common technology problems that smaller firms face.
• Already-live functionality means SaaS solutions can be implemented on a faster time frame.
• The cloud vendor handles all building and maintenance costs associated with the platform.
• Since the vendor sets up workflows and integrations as well as troubleshooting, your internal team is freed up to focus on other tasks.

Risks of Buying

• Off-the-shelf solutions offer less customization and control over infrastructure and data.
• Even industry-specific SaaS solutions are built for a general market in mind, so their features may not solve your firm’s unique requirements.
• Since the vendor manages security, customers have less oversight over how their sensitive data is managed.
• Working with a SaaS provider exposes firms to market risk. If the vendor goes out of business or sunsets a product, it may be difficult to repatriate data or transition to another provider.

When to Build

For firms with the development resources that are already using in-house document management solutions to streamline processes, SDK and API integrations are often the best way to enhance functionality. Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Suite leverages REST APIs and advanced HTML controls to provide powerful document viewing, conversion, editing, and assembly capabilities to web-based applications. Our SDK integrations also allow developers to build the functionality they need directly into their software at the code level.

Document Assembly

Law firms need automation solutions that allow them to easily create and manage multi-part, multi-stage contracts. Thanks to Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Editor, legal teams can rapidly identify and assemble sections of pre-existing text into new content that is both editable and searchable. PrizmDoc Editor integrates securely into existing applications and delivers in-browser support to help lawyers assemble assets without resorting to risky external dependencies.

Case Management

LegalTech applications can manage and review cases much more efficiently by integrating data capture, file conversion, and optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities. The ImageGear SDK helps legal teams access case data in a variety of formats without the need for downloading additional files or relying on third-party viewing applications. It can also convert multiple file types into secure and searchable PDF/A documents, making it easy to tag files with client numbers, names, and other identifiable information. Thanks to PDF/A functionality, ImageGear ensures that firms can stay on the right side of federal regulations.

eDiscovery

The rapid transition to predominantly digital documents has fundamentally altered the way legal organizations approach the discovery process. Innovative eDiscovery processes can streamline case management while also protecting client interests. In order to implement these strategies effectively, firms need applications that provide extensive file format support and search functionality as well as redaction and digital rights management (DRM) tools capable of protecting client privacy. PrizmDoc Viewer delivers these features along with scalable annotation capabilities that make it easier for collaborators to proofread, review, and make comments to case files without creating version confusion. As an end-to-end eDiscovery toolkit, our HTML5 viewer also includes whitelabeling support so it can be fully integrated into your application’s branding.

When to Buy

For smaller legal teams looking for broad functionality without development hassles or a new firm taking its first steps toward document automation, it often makes more sense to implement a bundled, buy-in solution like Accusoft’s Docubee SaaS platform.

Document Completion

Docubee makes document management easy with drag and drop data routing. Users can quickly create legal contracts, route the appropriate data to documents, deliver contracts for approval, and facilitate signing with secure eSignature technology. 

Customized Templates

With Docubee, legal teams can create customized document templates and manage them on a section-by-section basis. Individual clauses can be added or removed as needed, allowing attorneys to repurpose document templates instead of creating them from scratch for every client. 

End-to-End Support

Two-way communication support helps firms to build better dockets and negotiate more effectively. Documents can be updated automatically and version controls ensure that everyone is always looking at the most up-to-date version of a contract. Docubee also allows users to prioritize key tasks with collaborative redlining and notification tools.

Long-Term Storage and Security

Docubee stores data for up to six years to meet eDiscovery requirements. To better protect client privacy and meet changing compliance requirements, firms can also set destruction dates for contracts, templates, and case files. Docubee is SOC2 compliant, featuring multi-layer encryption to keep data under tight lock and key.

Hear the Full Conversation

To hear the full webinar and learn more about how legal firms make the difficult choice between building or buying their next technology solution, sign up now to get access to an on-demand recording of the event. If you’re ready to learn more about how Accusoft technology is helping to power innovation in the legal industry by delivering the latest in content processing, conversion, and automation solutions, visit our legal industry solutions page or contact us today to speak to one of our product experts.

For many businesses, documents are the lifeblood that keep them running efficiently. But when document processes are cumbersome or disjointed, they can slow progress and even have an impact on the bottom line.

Implementing a solution like Accusoft Cloud Services (ACS) can help you create efficient document workflows that simplify many document processing challenges. Since ACS supports a variety of file types and lets users convert multiple formats into a single PDF, it’s a nimble solution that companies can customize to fit their specific needs.

Here are a few examples of how different businesses can use ACS to streamline their processes:

Simplify HR Processes

From new hire paperwork, to time off requests to annual reviews, the human resource department oversees numerous processes that can create mountains of paperwork. Using ACS, they can move toward paper-free processes that allow users to electronically view and sign documents while maintaining security over personal information using 256-bit AES encryption.

Expedite Creative Approvals

Marketing departments, ad agencies and PR firms constantly need to traffic creative files for approvals. The challenge is that these companies work with large files in a number of formats. ACS helps overcome this challenge by allowing you to convert Word, PowerPoint, PNG, JPG, SVG, PSD files and more into a single PDF that anyone can easily open, view and approve.

Build Robust Proposals

Winning new business is an important consideration for many companies. One of the most important aspects is creating persuasive proposals that are easy to customize and share. In addition to being able to combine multiple documents from different file formats, ACS is built for ease of use and gives you complete control over configuration.

While these are only a few of the application examples for ACS, the possibilities are nearly endless. See how it could work in your organization or enhance an application you’re developing.

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