“Adobe Document Cloud solutions provide a whole new document experience with powerful document editing capabilities on Acrobat Pro DC and fast and easy e-signatures with Adobe Sign.”
Please tell us about your journey into tech world? How did you arrive at Adobe?
I started as an Account Manager for Hewlett Packet in India almost 20 years ago, working closely with Enterprise IT teams in solving their needs for computing infrastructure and professional services. I then moved on to GE as a part of a leadership development program and, by the end of the decade at GE, was leading a 25-member team of business analysts and engineers. From there, I had the opportunity to take on product and marketing leadership roles at Microsoft in the Azure team and at Box, which led me to Adobe. As the senior director of marketing for Adobe Document Cloud’s API platform, my focus is on enabling organizations to build best-in-class digital document experiences.
The pandemic has influenced the way document processing automation technologies work today. Could you provide us a deeper insight into the modern capabilities of document automation platforms?
The pandemic has certainly fast-tracked the way organizations use automated document processes. According to an Adobe survey, E-signatures alone saw increased adoption with more than a quarter of Americans electronically signing a document for the first time in 2020.
Digital document management tools take the work out of manual processes enabling teams to take quick action on documents, whether editing, commenting on, or signing documents. They automatically route documents to the next reviewer or approver to deliver a continuous workflow. For example, one can create new contracts, automatically route it to team members for collaboration, assign next steps for stakeholder signatures, and deliver the final contract to a new customer or employee—all without manually tracking down the document and asking for input. The acceleration of remote and hybrid work culture has led to a growth in these digital document experiences being integrated into existing tools and business processes.
Adobe Document Cloud solutions provide a whole new document experience with powerful document editing capabilities on Acrobat Pro DC and fast and easy e-signatures with Adobe Sign. Users can read, edit, and sign documents from anywhere—including phone, tablet, or desktop—and share them with anyone. For example, specialty chemicals company Sika uses Adobe Sign to digitize everything from service and purchase orders to NDAs and work contracts. It’s increased the time it takes to process orders—including reviewing, approving, and signing sales requests—to within 24 hours.
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Tell us more about your recent APIs for Adobe PDF and Adobe Document Generation. How do these improve the overall customer experience?
Last year, we launched Adobe Document Services, our cloud-based APIs and SDKs designed for developers to build new and innovative document solutions seamlessly. This past month, we launched the PDF Extract API that uses Adobe Sensei, our AI and machine learning technology, to analyze the structure from both scanned and native PDFs, and extracts all elements of a PDF including text, tables, and images into data that computers can easily understand. The data can be uploaded to content management systems or databases, making it easy to republish content, save data from tables internally or use them for downstream processes using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Adobe is the only provider that can extract all PDF elements, whereas other solutions are limited to one type.
Additionally, the Document Generation API simplifies the automation of critical documents by allowing developers to generate PDF and Word documents from custom-designed and branded Word templates. It makes it easy to add dynamic data to sales agreements, SOWs, legal documents, and other materials that are key to business relationships.
These APIs ease the document experience for developers by quickly unlocking all the intelligence inside PDFs, and programmatically generating documents with dynamic data, eliminating time spent on tedious tasks.
How does Adobe tap the power of data and analytics to unlock the power of document automation?
Adobe Document Cloud is uniquely powered by Adobe Sensei, our homegrown AI and machine learning technology. Using years’ worth of Adobe data, we’ve been able to unlock document intelligence and innovate our products. For example, Liquid Mode makes it easy to digest PDF content on mobile devices. Instead of pinching and adjusting documents that are meant for web browsers, the tool uses Sensei to automatically reformat text, images, and tables for quick navigation and consumption on small screens. The new Adobe PDF Extract API extends our innovation with Liquid Mode giving developers the capability to build robust digital document solutions with our homegrown AI/ML technology.
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Could you tell us the IT preparedness that an enterprise might require to fully benefit from your latest API offerings?
Flexibility in development and ease of use are core design principles for our team. With that in mind, we have made it easy for developers in IT organizations to work the way they want – with cloud-based REST APIs and SDKs for Node.js, .Net, Java, supported with sample Postman collection. With Adobe PDF Services connector and 15 ready-to-use document workflow templates on Microsoft Power Automate, whether you are an IT organization with a mature development model or want to build with low-code platform, you can choose the optimal path for your project.
How do you offer Adobe Sensei AI and Liquid Mode capabilities as a single unique platform for PDF generation?
Adobe Sensei AI powers Liquid Mode, making it easy for users to read any document on a mobile phone or tablet by enhancing PDF layouts and adding features on the fly. It’s a free tool that can be downloaded with the Adobe Acrobat Reader app.
What’s your secret to building a solid product experience-driven strategy for 2021? What skills are you currently hiring for your Product team?
We have embraced the concept of built for developers by developers – our engineering, design and product teams have been building digital document tools for almost three decades. As we make more of these capabilities available as APIs, we leverage the experience of our teams in making the developer journey both intuitive and frictionless. Our team looks for adding talent across all these areas – user experience design for developer products, product managers with deep empathy for Cloud API products, front-end and back-end development engineers. We aim to hire our customers’ advocates to consistently drive meaningful impact to Adobe’s customers in the constantly evolving digital landscape.
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Thank you, Vibhor! That was fun and we hope to see you back on itechnologyseries.com soon.
[To participate in our interview series, please write to us at sghosh@martechseries.com]
Vibhor Kapoor is the Senior Director of Marketing in Adobe’s Document Cloud business. He leads product marketing and Go-To-Market for Document Services Platform that enables developers build engaging digital document experiences in their applications. With over 20 years in the industry, Vibhor has been in marketing and business leadership roles at Box and Microsoft where he was an early member of the team that built Microsoft’s Azure business. Vibhor also spent several years at General Electric and Hewlett Packard in product management, sales and commercial operations. Vibhor holds a MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University in Illinois and a Bachelors in Technology from Indian Institute of Technology in Varanasi, India.
Adobe is the global leader in digital media and digital marketing solutions. Our creative, marketing and document solutions empower everyone – from emerging artists to global brands – to bring digital creations to life and deliver immersive, compelling experiences to the right person at the right moment for the best results. Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences.
