PDF Files as a Business Solution
PDF (portable document format) files have become increasingly more popular for saving and sharing sensitive business documents. Surprisingly, they offer a level of security unparalleled by other document formats, which is key to ensuring that your documents are accessed by authorized readers.
Why Businesses
Choose to Convert Documents into PDF Files
Below, you’ll learn why businesses are converting their files to PDFs before clicking the send or share button.
Flexible Security Options
PDFs are safer than other word document formats. A simple click of the mouse will let you choose which person or group of people can access a document. The most basic form of protecting the file’s content is by adding a password to it, but you can take it a step further by encrypting the file. Only authorized personnel with the decryption key can access the file.
However, we feel inclined to inform you that there are online code-breaking and decrypting services. While PDFs are naturally safer than other document formats, businesses still need to exercise caution regarding with whom they share sensitive information.
Easy to Modify
You can purchase certain apps like Adobe Acrobat to modify the contents or layout of a PDF file. Advanced editors will also let you add a digital signature, merge and split pages, and leave annotations. However, if your business doesn’t have the means to subscribe to a premium service such as Adobe Acrobat, you can use an online PDF editor that offers similar tools for much cheaper or absolutely free.
Services like PDFChef Online and Smallpdf let you convert files to and from PDF, as well as add digital signatures, leave annotations, and even insert new text and images.
Ideal Marketing and Branding Format
Designers can spend a long-time making billboards look like works of art. Now that e-commerce has become huge, companies have shifted from putting up displays at physical locations to distributing digital brochures and catalogs. This is where PDFs come in.
While most companies know PDF as an alternative format for text and images, it’s possible to include videos, audio, and even fun animations to your content without bombarding your customers’ RAM-hungry browser tabs. Customers can flip (scroll, really) through your digital work, take time to look at high-quality images, and choose to watch brief videos to see your products in action. Adding hyperlinks to your e-commerce store or third-party reviewers will also assist readers in making their purchase decision.
Easy to Share Information
We already discussed how sharing text, images, and videos using PDF files is possible, but the benefits of PDFs are much greater for back-office operations. Companies use PDFs to make invoices, purchase orders, reports, and other documentation. They’re easy to create, easy to share, and their flexible security ensures that only the right people can gain access to the file.
How to Convert Documents to PDF
There are countless apps to convert document files into PDFs. Your go-to word processor should allow you to save your text as PDFs. Even Google Docs lets you export your text documents as PDFs.
The most popular PDF converter is Adobe Acrobat. Being the creator of the file format, Adobe Acrobat offers the widest range of PDF tools, including adding videos and animations to PDF files. It’s a subscription-based platform with multiple pricing plans, all of which will run your business over $200 annually.
If you don’t need a feature-packed PDF converter, don’t hesitate to use one of the free PDF editors online. Free services like Sejda and PDFChef offer simple tools that let you merge, split, and sign PDF files. Other tools include deleting and rotating pages, leaving annotations for other users, and converting image files to PDF.
