What is enterprise document conversion, and how does a document conversion software impact your business?

Enterprise document conversion is the process of converting different digital file formats into other formats so that they can be used in various business processes (standardization, customer communication, digital archiving,  sharing and collaboration, etc.) and applications (CRM, ERP systems, etc.). The whole idea is to make file formats accessible, readable and shareable internally and externally: with stakeholders, other departments, etc.

Document conversion software is the software that is responsible for the file format conversion. File format conversion, depending on the number of documents, can be a background process. Converting just a few documents to PDFs, for example, is easy and can be done via desktop tools. Just open Microsoft Word and save the document as a PDF. And repeat this for your 100 documents. 

But when talking about enterprise document conversion, the number of documents grows immensely.

When you have 100.000s of documents to convert to PDF or PDF/A, choosing the right document conversion software for your business is crucial. We’ll explain the three most important features of a true document conversion software that add value to your business.

1. A true document conversion software should be fast(er)

Most organizations, without even realizing it, are not directly converting documents to PDF. Instead, they first have to open the source file in the application where the original document was created. This ‘authoring application’ can be a Microsoft Office application (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) or Adobe technology, for example. And then a PDF is created from those applications. This indirect process is significantly slowing down the whole document conversion. An ideal software that doesn’t need this intermediate step will work much quicker and is definitely the right choice for organizations with large volumes to convert.

The speed of your document conversion software is also impacted by its speed of enriching documents: adding headers, footers, bookmarks, table of content (TOC), hyperlinks, security, watermarks, … All these enrichments may be legal/regulatory requirements, so you can’t go without them. 

Classically, the PDF document created will be uploaded to different tools in order to add all necessary elements. This manual work is not only increasing the risk of errors, but it’s also slowing you down. A conversion software that offers both conversion and enrichment capabilities, is clearly a lot faster and reduces your dependence on having other tools to enrich the documents. 

2. A true document conversion software should help reduce costs

All authoring applications (such as MS Office or Adobe technology or AutoCAD etc.) require licenses. And these licenses come at a cost. Plus, the software also needs maintenance. If you can convert your documents directly without requiring the original application, this will result in huge cost savings.

The same goes for OCR: extra tools, plug-ins and add-ons you might need to perform OCR on the converted documents. They also come with licensing costs. An all-in-one document conversion solution is not only much faster, but will work great for your budget.

Have we mentioned the manual work? Document enrichment is very labor-intensive. Converting a Word document to PDF via Adobe takes no more than 5 seconds, but enriching (managing hyperlinks, adjusting zoom levels, adding headers & footers, watermarks, bookmarks, merging documents, creating searchable documents etc.) and re-routing it to the right repositories is the most time-consuming task of the document conversion process. If this has to be done for thousands of documents, you or your employees will spend lots of time (days or weeks probably) doing repetitive manual work that can be automated by an efficient document conversion software.

3. A true document conversion software should help reduce manual work

Avoiding manual work as much as you can: that’s where an ideal conversion software should add value. Downloading content manually to the computer desktop, for example from email repositories or document management systems, and then uploading it to the conversion tool? The right document conversion software can do much better: it will automatically take content from any location(s), convert it to desired formats and send it back to the right location(s). 

Other manual steps can be eliminated too, such as the use of optical character recognition technology (OCR). Rather than having to use a separate OCR tool, the perfect document conversion software should have built-in OCR as part of the document conversion process. Saving you valuable time, while reducing your dependence on manual tools. 

This maximum automation in one platform will give you the greatest ease of use. You don’t need to check what the document will look like in Microsoft Word versus Adobe. No more wondering whether colors, titles and other settings will appear in the same way. You just control everything from one platform before converting documents. 

Every company requires an efficient document conversion solution

Many companies in different industries (insurance, banking, HR, automotive, aviation, life sciences and healthcare, IT integrators) use DocShifter to speed up and simplify their document conversion and enrichment processes. For all their content and formats including: Microsoft Office files, HTML, XML, e-mail and attachments, PDF and PDF/A documents, scanned images, audio and video files and many more. 

DocShifter software is 10x faster than comparable solutions, easier to use, produces high quality output and doesn’t need authoring applications (MS Office, Adobe technology, AutoCAD etc.) to run. Saving you valuable time. Reducing your IT and infrastructure costs. Speeding up your file format and PDF conversion operations. 

Looking for an automated document conversion software that can convert and enrich your 100.000s of documents at lightning speed? 

Contact us today or schedule a demo.