Adobe Named A Leader in Aragon Research Report on Workflow and Content Automation

Today, I’m proud to announce that Adobe is a leader yet again — this time in the 2018 Aragon Research Tech Spectrum for Workflow and Content Automation (WCA). We believe this recognition reflects the innovation and commitment from our combined Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Document Cloud teams. Aragon Research cited strong product capabilities, go-to-market execution, strategic vision, and integration between both Adobe Experience Manager Forms and Adobe Sign as some of the reasons for our leadership position.

Adobe’s leadership in WCA comes on the heels of our impressive position as a named Leader in both the 2018 Aspire Leaderboard for Customer Communications Management and in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management report, we’re back with another huge win.

About workflow and content automation

If you’re not familiar with the WCA category, it’s basically the process of automating document processes and transactions that involve people. Reducing and automating the time spent working with documents tends to have the largest impact on time to revenue, which makes WCA a critical requirement for any enterprise undergoing digital transformation.

This win is particularly satisfying for Adobe because it is a recognition of the collaborative strategy and execution between products from Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Document Cloud, and we believe it affirms our ongoing strategy to bring the best tools within our combined portfolio of products that deliver the most value to our customers.

Here is a snapshot of the Tech Spectrum that ranks Adobe up and to the right as a Leader:

Aragon evaluated 13 WCA vendors and ranked Adobe as a Leader due to both Strategy and Performance, evidenced by:

• Multi-channel document generation capabilities to automate the creation, personalization, processing, electronic signing, and storage of customer-facing and internal documents and contracts.
• Strength of its traditional PDF-based forms business, and its web and mobile- responsive forms and documents capabilities.
• Very large install base that uses Experience Manager Forms to automate complex document-based processes.
• Broad set of digitization components supports enrollment, onboarding, and ongoing communications.
• Continued innovation in content and workflow intelligence through Adobe’s extensible artificial intelligence (AI) framework, Adobe Sensei, among other key areas[1].

Automating organizations’ document processes and transactions

Across industries, companies are seeing the benefits of going paperless and viewing digital document generation and electronic signing as the path of least resistance to accomplish this. However, simply creating a contract and sending it for a signature is not the problem. Generating custom document content has previously been done in word processors, with expensive legal resources expending hours of manual labor to ensure compliance and personalize content to fit each individual document. Organizations require a more efficient and cost-effective solution.

With Adobe Experience Manager Forms (in Experience Cloud) and Adobe Sign (in Document Cloud), documents can be automatically generated and personalized leveraging robust content management capabilities, advance document assembly, and data integrations to back-end systems. These documents can then be sent through advanced workflows for signatures among multiple internal and external stakeholders and compliantly archived in the chosen content repository.

The value of going paperless

Many companies still struggle with soaring costs associated with the printing, scanning, and mailing of documents that require signatures. The integrated solution between Experience Manager Forms and Adobe Sign enables end-to-end digitization of document generation, signing, and storage, eliminating manual paper-based processes that can unnecessarily delay and impede processes for contracts, agreements, customer enrollment, and vendor onboarding.

Automated generation and processing

To generate a single, one-off contract isn’t too hard. But generating and executing thousands or millions of custom agreements requires automation of content and workflows. Experience Manager Forms serves as the content management solution to create, update, and approve content, and can then assemble the documents based on pre-defined and approved rules, as well as back-end data integrations. Experience Manager Forms’ deep native integration to Adobe Sign enables design and execution of advanced workflows that efficiently route documents for both parallel and sequential electronic signatures among stakeholders.

Intelligent content and workflows

Another core benefit of Experience Manager Forms is its ability to scale with Adobe Sensei, Adobe’s AI and machine learning framework. For example, Adobe Sensei can recognize and convert a PDF form into a mobile-responsive, digital format.

Optimization and automation of documents and workflow processes are a critical component in creating delightful customer experiences and automated internal processes that can differentiate your business from the competition for years to come. We look forward to partnering with you on this journey.

[1]Aragon Research “The Aragon Research Tech Spectrum for Workflow and Content Automation, 2018” by Jim Lundy, July 2018.

Visit Adobe.com to learn more about Adobe Experience Manager Forms and Adobe Sign.

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Aragon Research does not endorse vendors, or their products or services that are referenced in its research publications and does not advise users to select those vendors that are rated the highest. Aragon Research publications consist of the opinions of Aragon Research and Advisory Services organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Aragon Research provides its research publications and the information contained in them “AS IS,” without warranty of any kind.