Three ways Adobe Acrobat helps small businesses digitize and simplify their work

Now more than ever, small business leaders need to be nimble, collaborative, organized, and secure. The best way to determine whether technology will help you run your small business is to keep in mind a few considerations — the capabilities of the technology, how well it helps you accomplish your business goals, and how the technology improves your day-to-day processes.

Adobe Acrobat continues to deliver PDF and e-signature capabilities to small businesses that are powerful enough for the enterprise but tailored to the unique needs of small businesses. In the past fiscal year, over 600,000 small businesses — a 15 percent increase year-over-year — relied on Acrobat to simplify and fully digitize their work.

“Digital documents are an integral part of our business. We use them for everything from invoices to agreements to product catalogues,” said Sofiya Deva, Founder of The Postcard Edit. “For example, we find that it’s frictionless and easy to edit, share, and finalize agreements with Acrobat. We operate globally and collaborate with both big retailers and emerging designers. PDFs supports us in communications that feel professional and are agile and user friendly.”

Ahead of National Small Business Week, here’s a look at what small businesses need to do to continue to grow and thrive, and how Acrobat can help.

1) Stay in touch

Small business leaders need to be available for their team whenever and wherever they are, and their businesses rely on platforms that foster quick, efficient collaboration. Acrobat is as much about communication as it is about documents. For those leaders on the go, Liquid Mode in Acrobat Readeruses artificial intelligence to optimize PDF text and layouts for small screens like those in mobile devices — struggle with pinching and zooming no longer! Free, online Acrobat tools offer a simple way to tackle a plethora of document tasks right in your browser like converting files from PDFs to Microsoft Word docs, and fill and e-signing PDFs. Acrobat’s share for review and request e-signature features accelerate document reviews, as well as speed up collecting and tracking e-signatures.

2) Stay organized

Project management is a critical piece of a successful small business — logistics, scheduling, time tracking, and staying on top of important documents can get complex fast. It’s important that all critical documents be categorized and searchable. Adobe Scan is a mobile app that uses AI to turn your phone or tablet into a scanning tool, converting paper documents into editable, searchable PDFs. Once the documents are scanned, small business leaders can use a free Adobe Document Cloud account to automatically upload, store, share, and access those scanned files online.

3) Stay secure

Finances take up a lot of a small business leader’s time. Financial information and records related to cash flow, monthly fees, pricing, and payments must be kept safe and secure. With Acrobat, you can protect sensitive information like these in many ways, including controlling who can access, view, and edit your PDF, as well as password-protecting your PDF to prevent unwanted copying, editing, or printing of your PDF.

For small businesses, every minute spent on busy work is a minute lost on something more important. That’s exactly why Adobe Acrobat is designed to help small business leaders and their employees collaborate, stay organized, and stay secure more efficiently and effectively. With Acrobat, administrative work is quickly digitized, without a steep learning curve or a major investment, helping small businesses ditch the pen, paper, and postage for good.