LiveCycle Barcoded Forms ES — in depth

With Adobe® LiveCycle® Barcoded Forms ES software, you can use proven and dynamic 2D barcode technology online and offline to automate the extraction of data from paper forms and deliver it to core systems for processing. This dramatically reduces costs, errors, and time compared to manual data entry and solutions based on optical character recognition (OCR).

Paper forms continue to play a critical role in many organizations' processes, even as electronic automation grows in adoption. While paper forms are familiar to end users, processing them can be costly to your company, both in overall inefficiency as well as the potential for expensive errors. This is especially true if your business requires high volumes of signed documents to meet regulatory or legal requirements. In most cases, signatures are placed on forms that have been filled in by hand or filled in online and then printed. In both of these scenarios, the processing of a form requires some type of OCR, which in the best case is 95% accurate. That means that 5% of these forms will need to be processed by hand. LiveCycle Barcoded Forms ES combines the ease of using Adobe Reader® software to fill in the form and a 2D barcode to improve the data extraction on the back end. Two-dimensional barcodes are 100% accurate if the barcode can be read. Overall failure rates fall to .01% because only the most damaged barcodes are unreadable.

How it works

Step 1. Author a form

The barcode tool is an integral part of Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES and Adobe Acrobat® Professional software, enabling the design of fillable PDF forms with 2D barcodes connected to the form data. You can specify any format for data encoding, such as XML, tab-delimited, or space-delimited. A process definition can be created using Adobe LiveCycle Process Management ES software to extract the data from the barcode and integrate it into business processes, connecting this data with the archive of the signature. When the form and business processes have been designed, the form can be published using Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions ES software to enable the barcode for use with Adobe Reader 7.0 and above.

Step 2. Complete the form

The end user typically will download the form from a website or receive it through e-mail or mail from a service company or government. Using Adobe Acrobat or Reader either online or offline, the user completes the form. The user-supplied information is automatically encoded to the 2D barcode as it is entered. The end user can then print the form, sign the paper document, and mail or fax it back to the organization. The end user can save a copy of the form digitally for his or her records or, in the case of longer forms, return to finish completing the form at another time. In some cases — such as when a digital signature is enabled on the form, or the business process does not require a signature — a barcoded form may be submitted digitally instead of as a paper form.

Step 3. Process the form

In order to take advantage of barcoded forms' efficiency, they must be converted into TIFF files. This either happens at submission time via fax or as part of a larger paper processing service that scans the pages and submits them to the decoder. When published using LiveCycle Reader Extensions ES, barcoded forms can be decoded using any commercial 2D barcode decoder. The decoder capability of Adobe LiveCycle ES has the advantage of being integrated into the larger data capture architecture and can capture data from both paper and digital means in the same workflow. Using the business process definition you created, LiveCycle Process Management ES can automatically forward captured form data to the appropriate enterprise processing application. Because you can specify the data format in the authoring phase, moving form-based data across multiple enterprise applications is easy. You can also archive data to be visually presented months or years later, just as it was entered into the original PDF form.

Key capabilities

Automate paper forms processing

Using LiveCycle Barcoded Forms ES software, you can enhance fillable Adobe PDF forms with dynamic 2D barcodes to accurately capture user-supplied information. The data captured from paper forms is efficiently integrated into your core IT systems, allowing you to process both electronic and paper forms in a single, unified environment. This saves time and helps reduce processing costs by eliminating manual data entry and error correction.

Author, update, and decode in 2D

Two-dimensional barcodes provide significantly higher data capacity than a typical one-dimensional barcode. LiveCycle Barcoded Forms ES leverages industry-standard technology to author, update, and decode 2D barcoded, fillable PDF forms. The 2D barcode encodes user-supplied information in real time while the user fills in the form. When the form is printed and submitted by fax or mail, you can use LiveCycle Barcoded Forms to efficiently and automatically decode the barcode and send the extracted user-supplied form data along in the next step of your process.

Leverage the strengths of Adobe PDF and Adobe Reader

LiveCycle leverages PDF and Adobe Reader to reliably extend the reach of form-based processes to any end user, regardless of their hardware or software configuration. PDF preserves the look and feel of original paper forms, down to the layout and fonts. With fillable Adobe PDF forms, you can ensure that your end users will have an intuitive experience as they complete forms electronically using free Adobe Reader software. The broad global acceptance of Adobe Reader means your organization can capture information from virtually anyone, anywhere, online or offline, in a way that is convenient and completely free of charge for them.