Adobe Acrobat DC Is Changing The Way APAC Works

PDFs are the currency of the modern workplace — the main form of communication used billions of times last year to share contracts, textbooks, financial statements, creative designs and everything in between.

The NSW Government of Australia, for example, is in the midst of an $80 billion infrastructure boom that comes with a long tail of logistics. The construction sector is driven by paper-based, repetitive processes from approvals on strategy plans in the office to connecting with subcontractors on site. The sheer number of documents can create a negative employee experience as all parties get bogged down by copious amounts of paperwork, slow-moving approvals and error-prone workflows.

In today’s workplace where collaboration and efficiency are necessary, the recent updates to Adobe Acrobat DC are reimagining this currency with new PDF share and review services, enhanced touch-enabled editing on tablets, and a redesigned way to send documents for signature with Adobe Sign.

Now the ability to streamline is there. Engineers can sign and receive approvals from a tablet or phone at any location. Employees can circulate content with any number of reviewers and set automatic reminders to keep approvals on schedule and the project wheels in motion.

Although PDFs support people and businesses across the globe, these updates will be enthusiastically welcomed in Asia Pacific (APAC). Our region has become the manufacturing and services hub of the world with billion-dollar industries, from software producers in India to manufacturers in China. India has become a renowned technology hub, with one of Adobe’s own Research Labs positioned in Bengaluru the ‘Silicon Valley of India.’

We are the engine for the world’s largest businesses and this means working with multiple teams across multiple time zones. The latest Adobe Acrobat DC innovations support this style of work, using Artificial Intelligence to streamline document reviews and automate repetitive tasks, while the connected mobile apps let you create, edit, fill and sign PDFs from wherever you are.

But like our rate of smartphone growth — the fastest growth rates in the world — it is our unique regional profile that these improvements will best suit. For example, these high penetration rates have seen Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Malaysia become mobile- first markets.

New mobile access will be vital to those operating in the India market, with over 50% of its workforce under 25 and a population that overwhelmingly uses mobile to access the internet. Anyone communicating with teams here and other emerging markets in the region stand to gain a new level of productivity and collaboration.

Underlining these updates is our new Microsoft partnership. You can now edit PDFs within Office 365 and use Adobe Document Cloud Solutions with SharePoint — Microsoft’s central depository system used by nearly half of all businesses. Any documents that are prepared in Microsoft Solutions can now be easily signed and approved using Adobe Sign.

Security today is everything, and this process will leave a legally binding audit trail that enhances the security and governance of that document.

The world of work is changing, and none more so than in our slice of life in Asia Pacific. As businesses start to rethink how work fits into people’s lives, we’ll keep improving Adobe Acrobat DC to support them.