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Companies across the U.S. and Europe look for a better way to work with others
Independent study looks at the future of collaboration
Adobe recently commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a study to better understand how employees collaborate in U.S. companies. Adobe also commissioned Forrester to conduct a similar study of European knowledge workers* in December 2008. Researchers surveyed a total of 3,700 workers about their requirements, habits, tools, concerns, and desired improvements when working with others. The survey findings include similar key insights about the nature, methods, and perceived limitations of collaborative work across U.S. and European employees. Several main themes developed from the research:
- Technology enables, and complicates, team collaboration
- Identity of core collaboration tools remains unsettled
- Information gathering is a sore spot for ad hoc collaboration
- The bar has been raised for quality of communications
- People are the problem: Security risk of current collaboration methods is underestimated
- Conclusion: U.S. and European enterprises and employees can benefit from Acrobat
Technology enables, and complicates, team collaboration
Real-time, synchronous collaboration is preferred, but is harder for dispersed teams
When it comes to collaboration, there continues to be a quest for shorter response times and lower costs. According to the Forrester studies, the advantages of real-time collaboration, either face to face or over the phone, are well-established in both the United States and Europe. However, in today's information-centric enterprises, knowledge workers rarely produce and deliver work in isolation — 99 percent of knowledge workers in the U.S. and Europe work together with others. Further, 70 percent of U.S. and 81 percent of European respondents report they regularly collaborate with people in different time zones and geographical regions. Since telephone or face-to-face interactions may not always be feasible, e-mail is the default solution for collaborative deliverables. For dispersed teams, however, relying on e-mail exchanges with randomly ordered attachments is not always the best solution to reduce response time and cost.
Adobe Acrobat 9 helps keep teams on the same page
A better solution for companies collaborating across regions and time zones is to use Adobe® Acrobat® 9 software. Companies can use Acrobat and PDF, the standard for electronic document exchange, to easily share ideas and gather feedback in a timely manner from internal teams, customers, and suppliers — regardless of their location. With the richer, more dynamic interactions that Acrobat enables, companies reduce response times, project time to completion, and costs, while helping to ensure that dispersed team members are on the same page. Companies around the world today are using Acrobat 9 to enhance collaboration through richer, more dynamic experiences, as well as to reduce costs, better protect information, and simplify compliance.
Identity of core collaboration tools remains unsettled
U.S. and European workers seek a more effective solution
According to Forrester, innovative solutions for communication and collaboration have been offered but have not found wide acceptance among U.S. and European knowledge workers. According to those surveyed, e-mail remains the most popular tool, and with the exception of instant messaging, there are very low adoption rates for enterprise Web 2.0 technologies (for example, social networking sites, blogs, and wikis) in the U.S. and Europe. In addition, workers also expressed little confidence in enterprise Web 2.0 tools to improve the efficiency of collaboration. They express more confidence in established tools such as e-mail and attachments.
A better solution is available in Acrobat 9
While e-mail is ideal for transitory, short conversations, Acrobat 9 is best for longer, more sustained collaboration among dispersed teams. With Acrobat, remote teams can communicate more easily and securely using PDF. For example, users can create interactive PDF files that present multiple attachments, including multimedia and dynamic applications, all in a PDF Portfolio, and then e-mail them as a single file. With Acrobat 9, an entire team can view and respond as comments are being made. While managing and tracking feedback via e-mail is time consuming and often difficult, Acrobat streamlines reviews and approvals to keep projects on track — making it easy to manage PDF-based reviews with dispersed teams. Plus, by presenting protected documents in the proper order for review, collaborators automatically gain context, which saves valuable time.
Information gathering is a sore spot for ad hoc collaboration
Knowledge workers find it difficult to collect and share information with others
According to the Forrester studies, the systematic gathering of information over the phone and by e-mail has presented unique forms of collaboration challenges for enterprises across the U.S. and Europe. In addition, enterprise form solutions often do not serve the ad hoc use case effectively for knowledge workers in the regions. Further, "being green" and saving paper matters a lot to the knowledge workers surveyed.
Acrobat 9 form creation simplifies information collection and distribution
Acrobat 9 can help companies reduce costs by streamlining costly paper-based processes, such as form handling. With just a few clicks, a team member can take an existing document to create a form that virtually anyone can fill out and save electronically. Electronic forms created with Acrobat save time and money and help ensure more accurate information collection. More importantly, they improve information management and tracking, enabling distributed teams to simplify compliance. For example, companies can maintain and preserve audit trails, records of comments, change requests, and approvals within PDF files. Acrobat 9 also supports digital signatures, which can help companies reduce the time and cost of printing and signing forms.
The bar has been raised for quality of communications
Workers seek higher quality, more persuasive communications solutions
Forrester maintains that the bar is rising for compelling and persuasive communications, which is reflected in the survey findings. U.S. and European knowledge workers report an increasing need to create high-impact deliverables — from financial reports and regulated documents to customer-facing, engineering, and technical documents — and have concerns about the ability of e-mail and attachments to convey a story effectively.
Companies can create more persuasive and informative documents with Acrobat 9
Acrobat is taking documents into the future, providing users with a more dynamic and interactive experience. With Acrobat 9, the document itself is becoming both intelligent and alive. For example, employees can use Acrobat 9 to deliver more persuasive and informative documents — that preserve brand guidelines — by assembling a wide range of content types, including text, video, and multimedia files, into a PDF Portfolio. Colleagues and customers can easily understand what the author intended as they follow the organized and searchable file. Plus, free Adobe Reader® software enables virtually anyone to view rich PDF files.
People are the problem: Security risk of current collaboration methods underestimated
U.S. and European knowledge workers regularly share sensitive information, but are wary
Forrester reports that knowledge workers' increased collaboration means that companies are more often risking exposure of confidential or sensitive information. The research indicates that sensitive information is shared at least once a month or more for most U.S. and European professionals, yet fewer than a quarter of respondents in each survey are completely confident that information shared outside their organization is safe from unauthorized access. In addition, Forrester discovered that U.S. and European knowledge workers' behavior and attitudes are not in line with enterprise security concerns.
Acrobat 9 helps companies better protect information
While companies use collaboration to gain competitive advantage and improve time to market, they must be mindful to protect their intellectual property. Acrobat 9 better safeguards corporate documents by applying protection at the document level to restrict access, set permissions, and permanently remove sensitive information. Workers can further help protect highly sensitive information traveling beyond the corporate firewall by sending PDF files with 256-bit encryption. For additional document security, Acrobat 9 together with Adobe LiveCycle® Rights Management software allows companies to restrict confidential information to only certain individuals or to a certain subset of job titles or functions, as well as improve regulatory compliance posture, streamline business processes, and extend the collaboration sphere throughout the information lifecycle.
U.S. and European enterprises and employees can benefit from Acrobat
Forrester concludes that as collaboration grows in importance for knowledge work, enterprises must look to deploy tools that embrace and refine current work habits, while also enabling a transition to more effective communication and collaboration. As the surveys of U.S. and European knowledge workers demonstrate, traditional means of collaboration, such as telephone calls and e-mail, continue to dominate, but there is a desire for better ways to support people the way they really want to work. This requires flexibility by enterprise IT to support traditional means of collaboration while introducing tools that allow knowledge workers to be more efficient, but remain in their comfort zones.
Acrobat 9 enhances team collaboration using the tools that US and European enterprises and employees are already comfortable using in their workplaces. By providing better tools and processes for both collaboration and information gathering, Acrobat supports and improves existing e-mail-based collaboration, while also facilitating the adoption of new and more efficient processes. Acrobat 9 helps enrich documents and document interactions, enabling companies around the world to improve collaboration, reduce costs, better protect information, and simplify compliance.
* European knowledge workers were surveyed from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
Next steps
- Buy Acrobat 9
- Free trial
- Register for your free copy of the Forrester study, Enabling the Future of Collaboration. Get it now.
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