PDFs are Pretty Darn Fun

Do you want to go green by making your business paperless, or even just make it a goal to use less paper? If you get rid of paper, what are you going to replace your information receptacles with? The best digital alternative to paper is a popular file format known as PDF.

What is a PDF and How Can it Benefit My Paperless Strategy?
Despite its popularity, few people actually know what PDF stands for, or what most file extensions stand for. The Portable Document Format was created by Adobe more than 20 years ago, and over the course of two decades, Adobe’s made great strides to improve the format in order to meet the needs of the ever-changing business landscape. On Adobe’s official webpage, they describe PDF as:

An open standard for electronic document exchange maintained by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). When you convert documents, forms, graphics, and web pages to PDF, they look just like they would if printed. But unlike printed documents, PDF files can contain clickable links and buttons, form fields, video, and audio — as well as logic to help automate routine business processes.

When business owners think about going paperless, the primary goal is often “doing what it takes to go green.” Granted, improving the planet is a great motivation to replace paper with PDFs, and for the environmentally-motivated business owner, they may be pleasantly surprised to learn just how much more superior and efficient PDFs are to plain ol’ paper. Here are just a few things that you can do with PDFs that you can’t even dream about doing with paper.

PDFs are Easily Editable
Even though PDF was originally designed for printing purposes, it has evolved to include rich editing features. The ability to edit a PDF comes in handy if you spot an important edit that needs to be made before printing. This editing feature can even serve as a word processor if you’re in a pinch. As you know, editing already-written text on paper is much more difficult.

PDFs are Searchable
One huge advantage that PDFs have over paper is that they are searchable. Furthermore, thanks to PDFs being so widely used, virtually every content-generating app of value will allow the user to convert their project into a PDF file. In addition to making digital files easy to share and view across every computing platform, a converted PDF file makes the previously-static text searchable. You also have the option to index your PDF files for quick retrieval. Try finding exactly what you need in a stack of papers and you’ll quickly see why PDFs are superior.

PDFs are Secure
Only those given permission to view or edit a PDF file by its owner can do so. As a digital file, PDFs can also be protected by the same security measures that you have enacted for your network. Compare this to the security of a paper file, which is only as good as the lock on your file cabinet.

Going green, easy edits, searchability, security, these are just a few of the ways that PDFs can improve how your business manages its information. To take full advantage of PDFs for your business, and to equip your company with the latest and most efficient paperless technologies on the market, give Preferred a call at 708-781-7110.