Documents surround us in almost every aspect of our lives: A trip to the doctor’s office, buying an insurance policy, getting married, purchasing a home, payroll, taxes...the list goes on. As consumers we’re inundated with forms and PDFs for many of the products we interact with. The technology companies working to improve the experience of paper-bound industries like insurance or human resources have an even bigger task: getting you and I to complete these documents as easily as possible. And let’s face it – if you’re still asking your customers to download, print, fill out, and upload documents – it’s more likely they’ll get this far:
To improve these experiences, organizations must adopt effective document management strategies that prioritize a delightful, digital-first approach. By focusing on how data can be easily collected, routed, and reused, companies can create more engaging and efficient workflows. For example, platforms like TurboTax exemplify this strategy by using smart web forms twhenhat automatically populate data, simplifying the tax-filing process for users.
You never once need to download and fill out a PDF. Rather, you complete a series of smart webforms, and in the background, TurboTax routes your information to the correct destinations across multiple pages of multiple PDFs. And when you return next year to complete your taxes? TurboTax reuses large chunks of the data you already provided to pre-populate forms and PDFs so you don’t have to spend time doing it again.
Transitioning to modern document workflow solutions not only improves user experience but also enables teams to work more efficiently.
The challenge with traditional document handling
On the flip-side, if you’ve ever had the privilege of becoming a new parent, you’re familiar with all the documents you’re required to physically fill out with pen, paper, and a clipboard. These documents continue their journey to the desk of an operations teammate who manually enters them into a digital system or PDF. How nice would it be instead if, by your second child, the information you’ve already provided could be retrieved and reused so you could more quickly complete a webform with only the new information for child #2?
This traditional approach to document handling — particularly PDFs — has long been a significant logjam for product and operations teams across industries with lots of paperwork overhead. Ask any product manager or developer tasked with building software for documents and they’ll tell you it’s:
- time-intensive*
- scales poorly
- expensive
*and highly unenjoyable
When you start crunching the numbers on developer time + opportunity costs (of not working on core, differentiated product features) + annual costs of 3rd party document software, it quickly becomes clear that the status quo isn’t a viable path forward.
This is also where Document AI can make a significant impact. By automating the generation, categorization, and data routing from PDFs and other document types, it helps businesses speed up the development of their document workflows and reduce errors.
How the Anvil Document SDK helps
Document software is a table stakes feature for most companies. A product teams’ focus should be on core, differentiated features. Most SaaS companies aren’t building their own payment platform or performance monitoring tool – that’s what Stripe & Sentry do.
Enter the Anvil Document SDK, which empowers product & developer teams to simplify how they build, manage, and deploy document-based workflows. More specifically, the SDK can help with generating or filling PDFs, collecting data, and requesting e-signatures, all embedded & styled within your product.
Here's how the Anvil Document SDK works (for product teams, developers, operations):
- Customization: Tailor document workflows & processes with pre-built components and a flexible API.
- Speed: Launch workflows in days (not months) and reallocate productivity towards innovative features core to your business.
- Branding: Seamlessly embed and style workflows and e-signatures into your application.
Effective document strategies & solutions for every team
The Anvil Document SDK is designed for all teams, not just developers. By enabling collaboration among product managers, operations teams, and non-technical staff, organizations can create workflows that are user-friendly and meet diverse needs
By addressing the core challenges that teams face with document workflows and PDFs, Anvil empowers businesses to leapfrog the traditional barriers to efficiency and scalability. With the Anvil Document SDK, teams can build faster, innovate more, and maintain a sharp focus on delivering exceptional value and experiences to their users.
Ready to transform your document management strategies? Sign up today or get in touch to learn how Anvil can improve your document workflows and boost your team's productivity.