Click on any phrase to play the video from that point.
Hi, I'm Ali Hanyaloglu from the Acrobat Solutions team at Adobe.
Thanks for joining us today.
Crimson Consulting, on behalf of Adobe, recently conducted a study
to quantify some of the strategic benefits and value
of using Acrobat software for a range of very common business document workflows.
So joining me today is Chris Le Tocq from Crimson Consulting. >>Hi, Ali.
Hello there. Thanks for joining us.
So I'd love for you to be able to share with us some of the key findings from that study
and also possibly if you can answer some questions that we've received
from those who are on our Twitter feed and blog around that productivity study.
Sure.
So tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about Crimson Consulting.
I work with Crimson primarily on user research, primary research,
a lot of working with how people work well with computers, phones, a variety of devices.
And Crimson does a lot of market research in general
really focused on how to succeed in marketing.
Great. Let's jump in right away.
First of all, can you share with us what some of the key takeaways from that study were.
I think the overall takeaway was how well Acrobat helps
when you're working with documents in a group of people collaboratively,
especially the tight integration with your standard productivity software,
which really was a good experience for our testers.
So Chris, what methodologies did you use to gather some of that data?
We used really a two-phase approach.
The first was in the lab where we had a variety of testers
with various degrees of experience of productivity software.
And then the second phase we went out to IT execs
who are responsible for deploying this software across the world
and we looked at the sorts of experiences that they had
with various levels of expertise and deployment and tasks in their organizations.
How did you actually conduct the studies with the users?
We had people of various levels of expertise.
We were looking for people who are avid users,
people who do other things but do this as well.
And what we did was for each of the tasks we timed them many times,
because one of the things when people start on a task,
it takes them a little time to get used to it.
And really what you want to do is you want to measure the best time that they got.
So we were there timing people, listening to their comments,
listening to what worked for them, looking at what worked for them.
The study itself gives a very compelling ROI for using Acrobat for productivity workflows.
Is that ROI model something that can be used by other customers as well?
Oh yes, absolutely.
That's why we went to these various IT guys,
because they're from a wide range and structure of organizations,
different industries, different countries, and people can choose from those people and say,
"Okay, here's somebody like me. What results did they get?"
because these are companies that had taken the time
to measure how much their employee spends on various types of tasks,
and sometimes organizations haven't done that yet.
So Chris, the white paper includes a customizable live calculator
inside of the PDF itself.
Can you tell us a little bit about the model behind the ROI
and where some of the numbers in that calculator come from.
The calculator is designed for people to put in their own numbers
so they can make this map to their organization and their understanding of their organization.
But we tried to make sure that in cases where people potentially didn't have
a particular number that there were other examples.
And in fact what we've included is, from the IT people we talked to
we've included essentially their entries into that calculator.
And from an IT person's standpoint, you can match yourself against that,
potentially fill in the ones that you don't have
or see what you need to make sure you've got.
We've had some questions come in from our customers about the study
and the white paper that was published, so I was hoping I could share some of those with you.
Sure. >>The first one is around the different workflows and scenarios that were chosen.
Why were those particular ones selected for the study?
We looked at from a productivity standpoint, what is it that people do most?
For instance, gathering comments into a standard document,
that is where we started.
And then we looked at presentation documents, spreadsheet documents,
forms, and various types of collaboration beyond that.
But the key ones we chose were those that people do the most.
In the ROI model you refer to 60 percent effectiveness of using Acrobat.
Can you explain a little bit about what that effectiveness means.
And why 60 percent?
It's just a place to start.
Various organizations deploy Acrobat fully or partially in their organization.
Our experience, and certainly the experience we had from talking with the IT people,
is that if you start at 60 percent, that's roughly a good average.
Some of the people we talked to are obviously further along the curve,
and they've deployed to 100 percent.
Others are starting. They're at the 30 percent range.
Sixty percent is a place to start.
Another question that came through actually a few times was around the scenarios
about using Acrobat for forms.
Can you tell us why the productivity increases were so great
when it came to using Acrobat for forms workflows.
Acrobat's history and its functionality today is really streamlined for working with forms.
That's years of productivity improvement in there and it shows.
Chris, you've talked about collaboration with Acrobat,
we've talked about forms specifically.
Any other scenarios that were of interest?
Acrobat works well in terms of enhancing the productivity of standard applications.
But there are key unique capabilities in Acrobat
like, for instance, the ability to redact personally identifiable information.
If you want to do that in other apps, you've got to search for it,
you've got to really be sort of inventive.
Acrobat, one click.
And finally, can you tell us a little bit some of the anecdotes
or interesting things that you heard or saw when you were conducting the study with users
and how they were using the technology.
Our testers were--how shall I say?--surprised
because they thought that Acrobat was this thing here that reads documents
and that's what it was.
And they really did not know that the collaborative, the commenting,
the integration was there.
And it worked well for them.
Thanks, Chris, for answering those questions that we got through.
So finally, what are the next steps that you suggest?
From an organizational standpoint, I think you have to look at Acrobat and say,
"From a collaboration standpoint, this is going to help my people work better together."
I would suggest, like we found, that the best place to start
is to understand what it is that your people in your organization are doing today,
the proportion of the time that they're working with others,
that they're working with people outside the organization,
which is an area where Acrobat really shines and enables people to collaborate together.
Great. Thanks so much for your time today, Chris.
I really appreciate it and appreciate your insights into the study as well.
You're welcome. My pleasure.
If you'd like to determine how you too can take advantage of this study
within your organization, go ahead and download the white paper
from the Acrobat pages at adobe.com
[http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/it]
And don't forget, it includes a live customizable calculator
where you can select many different international currencies too.
Thanks so much for watching, and we'll see you soon.
