Technical FAQs

Veritas Technologies, a leader in multi-cloud data management, improved document backup and security while ensuring compliance of customer data using Accusoft’s PrizmDoc solution

In this video, learn how

• Veritas Technologies was spending a lot of time and effort trying to develop an in-house document handling and compliance solution, diverting resources from their core product development. 
• Using Accusoft’s PrizmDoc, the company reliably archives customer data from multiple sources. 
• PrizmDoc helps them securely provide internal and external legal teams with compliant, redacted document access.
• Veritas Technologies can now focus on improving its core compliance offerings.

To learn more about how Accusoft’s PrizmDoc can provide the document management features you need to protect confidential information and privacy, visit our PrizmDoc page or talk to one of our integration specialists.

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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Forms are a critical part of business processes, no matter what type of organization you’re running. Whether you’re dealing with employees requesting PTO or prospect requesting more information, forms enable you to collect the data you need quickly organize the information in an efficient way.

There’s a process for everything, and many organizations are figuring out that forms require a very systematic approach. If you don’t have a system in place, data can easily be lost or misplaced. What is the real issue here? Paper isn’t cutting it and neither is email.

The Trouble with Paper Forms

The problem arises when there’s too much data to structure. Manual processes take forever. Just think about all the printing, scanning, and faxing you have to do with paper forms. It’s inefficient and the cost adds up. Not to mention the time it takes to manually process that data.

In addition, emailing forms back and forth for manual or digital entry can get complicated as well. Whether the recipient is printing the form or needs to have a PDF editor installed on their device, the fact of the matter is that it’s just not efficient enough for business. Consistency is key to a streamlined workflow, and the rapid growth of unstructured and inconsistent data collection is creating process challenges.

The Problem at Scale

As companies grow, business processes naturally become more complex. Quickly scaling can be difficult without the help of a process automation tool. Without one, you need a larger headcount, and even then, mistakes will inevitably happen. Teams spend too much time and valuable resources on cumbersome, repetitive processes that are often stalled, derailed, or completely forgotten.

Manual forms and digital forms just don’t make sense when there isn’t a streamlined workflow process around collecting the data. Just think about all the forms you currently use that either contain missing or illegible information. If you’re thinking we are about to suggest a bulky document management system, think again. While we see the value of adding expensive solutions to manage content, it’s not for everyone and it’s especially not suitable for small businesses.

A Solution with Style

With Docubee, forms don’t have to be a hassle. The fast form creator helps you create reusable digital forms in minutes by automatically finding and placing fields on documents. Just imagine… eliminating manual processes and streamlining your document-based workflows. It’s not a dream. It’s reality.

With the click of a button, you can turn your static document templates into online fillable forms. Now you have a simple and powerful way to collect data from your employees and clients without all the back and forth. We help growing businesses transform tedious email and paper-based functions into efficient digital processes. Take automation to the next level with Docubee. Ready to explore more of our cloud-based, mobile-ready features? Learn more about Docubee and our features now.

Should you automate your business forms? That’s a good question. And, the answer depends on how often you use forms within your business or when interacting with your customers.

If you’re operating with a remote workforce during this pandemic, you’ve likely found a way around any paper forms you were using. Some are using email, others are just getting by with snail mail. It’s not an efficient situation. Even after things return to normal, paper forms will still be inefficient, expensive, wasteful, harder to secure, and easier to lose track of. And it’s not just paper forms that are a problem. Even electronic forms can get tied up in someone’s email inbox without automation. 

Form automation can help streamline document processing for any small or medium-sized business that use forms as a part of its operations. With the addition of automation software, you can track electronic forms and move them automatically through a workflow that you create.This relatively simple upgrade can help alleviate security and productivity issues, saving your company valuable time and money.

How SMBs Benefit from Form Automation

Form automation helps small to medium-sized businesses transform tedious paper-based tasks and forms into efficient digital processes. There are many advantages to adding automation, such as: streamlining form-based processes like employee applications, creating new forms to replace paper-based ones, and simplifying the collection of electronic signatures. Other benefits include:

1. Streamlining Processes: Form automation software allows you to create workflows that streamline your document management processes. Automated forms can be easily updated without printing or scanning, and documents can be tracked with workflow software. You can set up your system to auto-populate forms, format for digital signatures, and create a workflow that moves a document on to the next person in line.  

The Wyanoke Group, a medical publishing company specializing in education, used form automation to standardize their processes and streamline operations. They used the Docubee form automation solution to manage employee review forms, identify tasks for each participant, administer individual permissions, and track the progress of each workflow. They also use Docubee’s reporting features to track each employee review’s progress throughout the chain of command. 

2. Improving Collaboration: Creating mobile responsive and dynamic fillable forms also makes it easier for a remote workforce to collaborate. Forms can be digitally routed, easily and instantly, from one location to another. Cloud-based electronic forms can be accessed anywhere with an internet connection. This makes it easier for long-distance customers to submit forms and for staff members to circulate forms between multiple office locations. 

3. Saving Time: If you process a large number of forms in your business, automation can help you manage them more efficiently. Forms with auto-fill features can also save time for the person filling out the form, while also eliminating manual entry errors and omissions. When you need to find a form later on, searching a digital database is faster than digging through a filing cabinet for a paper version. 

After COVID-19 quarantine restrictions were lifted, the West Florida Flames, a non-profit soccer organization, realized a need for document automation. With 2,500 active members waiting to return to the game, they needed a way to quickly process the required health waivers. Working with Docubee, the Flames were able to get a form automation process up and running in less than 24 hours. Digital waivers were created and sent to members, making it possible for the organization to collect approximately 1,000 waivers in three to four days. 

4. Saving Money: In the United States, companies spend over $120 billion on printed forms each year. An automated form is less expensive to produce because you’re saving the money you would’ve spent on supplies like paper and ink. Digital forms are also easier to locate, which reduces the frustration and expense of recreating the same forms over again. 

5. Tracking Information: Whether you’re circulating a form within your office or sending paperwork out to customers to complete, automation can allow you to easily track a form’s progress, issue reminders when a task is awaiting completion, and move the form along as steps are completed.

Automation also makes it possible for you to:

• Identify where your forms are getting stuck
• Add personalized email messages and alerts throughout the process
• Reassign, resend, and generate custom links to provide task completion reminders

6. Securing Sensitive Data: Standardized forms reduce room for error and legal risks. With automation, you can create forms that allow you to capture legally certified and secure digital signatures. With all of your forms in one workflow, you won’t have to worry about outdated, incorrect versions. 

However, not all form automation solutions are created equal, so look for solutions that are SOC2 compliant (and also HIPAA compliant, if you’re working in healthcare). For example, Docubee digital signatures are legally binding under the ESIGN Act and include a certificate for a complete electronic audit trail, meaning your data is safe and secure, whether it’s a patient consent form, an internal expense report, or a new sales contract.

7. Reducing Waste: Physical copies of forms waste paper, ink, postage, and more. A recent study found that the average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year, with as much as 70 percent of that paper ending up in the trash. Automated form processing can save a significant amount of paper over time, helping both your business and the planet. 

By helping your business to go paperless, form automation makes it possible for you to:

• • Eliminate printing and scanning
  • Speed up routing and approvals 
  • Reduce paper records, phone calls, and emails
  • Simplify form completion for clients, employees, and new hires

Ready to try form automation for yourself?

Implementing a form automation solution like Docubee makes it easier for your small and medium-sized businesses to collect information from your customers and employees. With its intuitive and mobile-responsive interface, Docubee makes it possible to digitize your forms in seconds and create, route, review, and approve your forms all in one place. 

If you’d like to learn more about the benefits that form automation can bring to your SMB, please join us for a group demo, watch one of our many on-demand videos, or schedule a custom demo whenever you’re ready.

Banks are in no rush to bring workers back. While some had early plans to restart in-office work, the Wall Street Journal notes that even as Manhattan rushed to restart its physical financial framework, few staff have made the move. Meanwhile, financial firms like JP Morgan are putting return to work strategies on hold indefinitely as pandemic priorities evolve. 

The result is a realization that to generate revenue, firms must embrace digital banking initiatives, with no remote work roadmap that exists. This transition means going beyond simply sending staff home. It means creating a financial framework that addresses key challenges, acknowledges current trends, and embraces the next, new normal of digital banking transformation. 

Digital Banking Challenges: The Stay-at-Home Shift

As noted by The Financial Brand, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the urgency for digital banking transformation. But it’s one thing to recognize the gap between current outcomes and new expectations — it’s something else to apply solutions at scale.

Here, it’s critical for banks to avoid the knee-jerk reactions that often come with operational urgency and instead start with a focus on what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs to change. The old “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” adage applies here; spending on solutions that don’t solve specific problems will only widen the gap between pandemic problems and corporate performance.

To embrace the stay-at-home shift, banks must consider three key challenges:

• Communication – Nearly 70 percent of professionals say that the current pandemic has been the most stressful time of their career. Not only are staff worried about potential health problems, but they’re also concerned with juggling jobs and families simultaneously with little assurance of security. As a result, communication is critical. For banks, this includes regular team check-ins and staff meetings but also one-on-one conversations that aren’t about performance or productivity but instead prioritize mental health.
• Collaboration — While new video conferencing tools have empowered virtual face-to-face communication, they don’t always deliver workflow collaboration. Teams now need technology that empowers them to work together on loan processing, credit applications, and investment analysis at scale.
• Completion — There are so many tasks that are left in limbo due to paper processes. A form could be sitting on someone’s desk or in their email inbox for weeks before processing takes place. As result, applications get stalled and consumers have to wait. Banks need workflow automation tools that ensure critical tasks aren’t waiting for completion.

Digital Banking Trends: Mid-Pandemic Priorities

As firms respond to evolving client, stakeholder, and even regulatory expectations, it’s critical for firms to realize where digital banking trends are headed and what that means for their bottom line. As noted by Finextra, this starts with the digital banking experience. Research from McKinsey shows that customers who are satisfied with their current digital experience are 2.5 times more likely to open new accounts with their existing bank. This makes digital experience the new banking battlefield. If firms can meet (or exceed) consumer expectations around ease-of-use and data security, they can set the pace of pandemic performance rather than falling behind.

Banks must also embrace moving away from service-based applications to those that actively drive engagement. While transactional apps — such as those that allow customers to check their bank balance or perform simple payments and transfers — are now par for the course, clients who don’t feel comfortable visiting branches in person are now looking for customized and personalized digital banking experiences. This includes everything from the ability to easily connect with financial advisors to comprehensive investing and saving advice based on both historical data and likely outcomes.

For financial firms, tackling new trends requires the right IT framework. This means building out existing infrastructure to support everything from increased informational throughput to in-depth data analysis. In a world where digital client satisfaction can make-or-break financial futures, pre-pandemic platforms simply aren’t enough.

Digital Banking Transformation: The Next, New Normal

With return-to-office plans in limbo, some banks are now taking the next logical step and offering permanent work-from-home options, but as noted by Forbes, there’s a problem. Most banks still aren’t doing enough to embrace digital transformation at scale. 

When asked, 79 percent of business leaders defined digital transformation as the “integration of digital technologies into all areas, fundamentally changing how to operate and deliver value, and a culture change that continually challenges the status quo and gets comfortable with failure.” But despite the widespread impact of current COVID concerns, many banks remain on a digital path that prioritizes incremental change, not complete transformation. Backed by legacy tools and aging apps, however, simply adding small services to existing stacks won’t be enough to support the next, new normal of stay-at-home staffing. 

To drive meaningful, substantive change across organizational operations, banks must prioritize three transformative functions:

• Document Management – Firms are suddenly dealing with a deluge of document formats and file types that must be handled by geographically disparate staff. Time spent searching for conversion, annotation, redaction, and editing tools is wastes time. Agile, adaptable document management tools that deliver end-to-end capabilities are now critical.
• Solution Security — Banks must comply with regulations that mandate consumer data security and process compliance. FinTech applications must provide secure ways for departments to collaborate on sensitive documents while also maintaining security and abiding by industry regulations. By integrating a document viewer inside the application itself, financial institutions are able to programmatically restrict downloading of sensitive documents.
• Trackable Collaboration — Staff need the ability to quickly locate and remedy process problems. This is especially critical as the volume of digital documents ramps up over time. Bank employees must be able to find, fix, and finish tasks efficiently. 

A New, Flexible Roadmap for Digital Banking

While there’s no perfect roadmap for digital banking transformation in the age of COVID-19, however, the first step is obvious. Embrace the realities of work-from-home. Many banks are distracted with incremental change and stuck in pre-pandemic thought processes, hoping the pandemic will end and things will go back to normal. As with every major world event, the world is going to be different after COVID. 

Banks must prepare for this change and  embrace true evolution. Banks must start by articulating the challenges of remote work, acknowledging the evolving expectations of mid-pandemic trends, and addressing the need for transformative technological change.

While digital transformation initiatives have been climbing the FinTech priority list for years, Eli Rosner of Finastra notes that thanks to COVID-19, “It feels like the fast forward button has been pressed.” Firms must now embrace the realities of remote work and rising consumer expectations even as investor patience wears thin on reliable ROI.

The result is a FinTech landscape that’s more than meets the eye. To deliver on transformative deployments, companies must look past familiar fintech trends to uncover key challenges, assess acceleration issues, and recognize the realities of digital revolution.

The Challenges of Change for FinTech Companies

FinTech solutions emerged as harbingers of change. Frustrated by restrictive policies and cumbersome processes, financial technology companies embraced the market reality of application-driven enterprises capable of meeting consumers on their own terms. But even these tech-first solutions couldn’t predict current challenges. As noted by recent Deloitte research, FinTech firms now face both external and internal barriers to effective change.

Externally, investors remain an ongoing challenge as their patience for digital revenue delivery wears thin. While they recognize the need for transformative spend, they’re not willing to wait years on steady returns. Internally, lacking enterprise agility now hampers the ability of finance technology firms to deploy new partnerships and coordinate digital innovation at scale. Changing market forces are creating unprecedented challenges for FinTech firms.

The Acceleration of Adoption

Even as enterprises grapple with evolving change frameworks, the global pandemic continues to push companies out of their comfort zone, forcing firms to quickly implement multichannel solutions capable of connecting with customers anywhere, anytime. Consider that 35 percent of banking customers have embraced more online options, while contactless credit card payments have jumped by 40 percent over the past few months.  

In effect, the COVID-19 crisis has revealed a need for speed that’s far beyond the comfort zone of many FinTech firms. The result of this adoption acceleration is equal parts potential and problem. Companies can’t afford to slow down, but need a better view of what lies ahead.

The Realities of Revolution

To overcome emerging challenges and embrace agile application adoption at speed, FinTech firms must leverage a two-step process that first recognizes the real-life impact of digital revolutions and then deploys specific solutions to improve operational outcomes.

In practice, this means addressing four new realities:  

1. Customer-First Frameworks

As noted by Deloitte, the shift to customer centricity is often viewed as an enabler. If companies are able to deliver seamless, client-first experiences through common digital channels, they can significantly raise their reputational stock with consumers. But it’s one thing to recognize the reality of customer-first frameworks and another to implement them at scale. Here, fintech firms are best-served with workflow automation tools capable of streamlining key processes — such as loan applications and credit checks — to help reduce the time between customer inquiry and response.

2. Complex Document Functions

With clients and staff now working and interacting remotely, FinTech firms are facing a substantive uptick in the volume and variety of digital documents they receive — and they need to process ASAP. Here, complexity itself doesn’t represent the full spectrum of change, since regulatory and compliance controls are familiar challenges for FinTech companies. Instead, it’s the velocity of complex document processing that can quickly overwhelm even experienced FinTech software as they look to process applications and approvals at speed without sacrificing security or consistency. Comprehensive, industry-compliant document management tools can help FinTech firms bridge the complexity gap.

3. Comprehensive Data Foundations 

Spreadsheets remain essential for traditional firms and FinTech solutions alike. As data volumes grow, organizations face issues related to information-entry errors, version consistency, and data security. To ensure foundational finance data is accurately collected, consistently applied, and always protected, FinTech solutions need to deploy next-generation spreadsheet solutions capable of giving end-users the control and security they need.

Collaborative FinTech Forces

To deliver on client expectations around speed and security, FinTech solutions require SDKs that natively support document collaboration and control without introducing security risks such as unauthorized editing, downloading, or sharing. This means equipping their applications with the operational infrastructure that facilitates everything from editing and commenting to robust redaction, annotation, and file conversion.

FinTech in 2020: The Only Constant Is Change

The global business landscape in 2020 has been anything but predictable. Defined by pandemic pressures and driven by increasingly sophisticated digital initiatives, FinTech companies have managed what seemed impossible only a few years ago. They made a speedy shift to remote work that now delivers rapid customer responses while reducing overall risk.

However, it’s important to note that the market movement isn’t over. As COVID conditions continue to evolve and consumers recognize the value of advanced FinTech solutions, the only constant in FinTech industry this year is change.