Author: Keith Bradbury
Date: 2005-12-05
WELCOME to the inaugural edition of The Investintech Review, a newsletter designed for individuals interested in PDF data solutions and developments in the products and applications created by Investintech. This edition provides an update on recent company events and a few other items that we felt you might find of interest. We thank you for your interest in our newsletter and hope to engage you as an active participant in future editions of the newsletter.
The Investintech Team
Electronic Document Optimization: individual empowerment, organizational efficiencies. As the business world continues its gradual move towards electronically-based management systems, communications, messaging and record-keeping, the usage of electronic documents continues to rise and is increasingly relied upon for critical business documents and information transfer. A world that was once dominated by paper is continuing the transition to a world dominated by electronic documents - unquestionably, the leading format for electronic documents is now PDF (Portable Document Format). Cont. for rest of article
Tip #1: Improve conversion output of tables - do NOT select table headers. Some tables have very elaborate, complex and detailed headers for their columns. When selected for conversion, these headers can sometimes negatively influence the quality of the table conversion because of their placement in columns. If this the case, you can improve the conversion quality of tables simply by NOT selecting the headers for conversion - this greatly simplifies the conversion task and provides better conversion results. Users generally find value in more accurately structured tables - sometimes adding the headers after the conversion is a simple solution for much higher quality conversion output. Cont. for Tip #2
September 15 Investintech released an updated version of its flagship Able2Extract product and launched its PDF to Word conversion product - Able2Doc Version 2.0.
October 20 Investintech launches its affiliate program. Interested in making 20% of the transaction for users who purchase based on your referral? If yes, contact us at sales@investintech.com and we will send you more information on how to sign up when we go live with this program.
October 25 Able2Extract v.3.0 is set to appear in the new products section of the Thomson media publication Accounting Today. Accounting Today has served as the premier news vehicle for the tax and accounting community over the last 16 years. Each issue showcases departments and sections dedicated to new products.
November 1 Investintech is set to release an update to Able2Extract and Able2Doc that will allow PDF documents to be converted to the RTF format. This will provide a second option for converting to Word documents and will allow users to open the converted documents in other programs such as Wordperfect.
Interested in becoming one of Investintech's Beta testers? We are continually improving our current suite of products and are in the process of developing some new ones. If you are interested in testing new updates/products and giving us some feedback before they hit the market, drop us an e-mail at techsupport@investintech.com.
Able2Extract was initially envisioned as a way in which users could more easily extract the quarterly and annual financial data released by publicly traded companies. This data is often presented in hard to analyze formats such as PDF. To our constant amazement, our users are consistently telling us about new uses for our products. Here are a few examples:
Let us know about some of the other ways you are using and we'll include it in a future edition of our newsletter.
Have any comments or feedback? Have an idea for a user tip you would like to see included in the Newsletter? Let us know by emailing us at dave@investintech.com.
PDF formatted documents offer both solutions and challenges for any person or business that needs to send communications in electronic format. The benefits of PDF are obvious - PDF provides a compact file format that can be easily viewed using freely available PDF viewing software. Hence, documents can be easily sent via email and viewed on any computer with a PDF viewer, which is available for free over the Internet from Adobe Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: ADBE). At the same time, there are significant challenges to working with and incorporating information received in PDF by another party. By its nature, PDF is not an editable document format - even though the appearance of a PDF document mirrors what you might see in a Microsoft Word document, it cannot easily be changed, revised or manipulated.
Tip #2: Faster PDF-to-Word conversions
Converting whole PDF files to Word can take quite a bit time if there are 30-50 or more pages. A simple way to improve performance is to convert such a document 10 pages at a time - Use "Select Page Range" to select page range 1-10, then convert; then select page range 11-20 and convert etc. You can then consolidate the separate 10 page documents into a single document by cutting and pasting. Although there are a few extra steps, it will be considerably faster. The reason for the slow performance of the larger 'whole document' conversion is because larger documents require larger memory resources. The more memory that Word utilizes in a document conversion, the slower the computer will work. Converting documents in smaller chunks will allow the conversion to occur at a faster rate.
A key critical business factor for improving overall efficiency, saving time and improving the bottom line is the ability to access and incorporate communications. In the same way that email has revolutionized the process of sending and receiving messages, whether by desktop email or blackberry, PDF documents are replacing what would conventionally be paper-based contracts, agreements, pricing lists and reports. In the electronic world the key to electronic document optimization is maximizing the individual's ability to tap into, access and analyze PDF format documents.
Investintechs Able2Extract product can provide this crucial application for organizations that regularly work with formatted PDF documents - by empowering individuals with simple-to-use, time saving data extraction techniques, Able2Extract is a key method of improving an organization's electronic document optimization strategy. Empower your organization by empowering each individual within your organization to simplify their tasks and spend time using data, rather than simply transferring it. Electronic Document Optimization is the new catch-phrase in the competitive environment and Able2Extract is the product that will help your organization attain this optimization.
