Imaging News — March 2006

Feature Article:	To Convert or Not Convert—That Is the Question When Managing Multiple Document Formats
Announcements	Support Released for MS Excel Worksheets (Read the Release) Flexsnap: HTML Accelerates Manitoulin Transport Customers’ Ability to Access Shipment Information (Read the Release) New FlexSnap Flash Demo Available
Product Spotlight:	FlexSnap Web Viewers
	SnowBatch Conversion Application
Survey	Take our survey on email and attachments
Events	DUMA, April 10, Valley Forge, PA
	AIIM, May 16-18, Phiadelphia, PA
President's Corner:	Looking Under the Hood at Our Imaging Engine
Tech Tip:	An Object Oriented Approach to Copying and Reordering Pages in a Document

To Convert or Not Convert—That Is the Question When Managing Multiple Document Formats

Complying with federal regulations, streamlining workflow, and managing assets more efficiently are increasing the need for businesses to capture and store their corporate information. Many document and image formats exist to facilitate the processing and storage of this information. Companies often need to manage both standard formats, such as PDF, MS Word, and TIFF as well as proprietary formats, developed to fulfill industry-specific needs, like ABIC, AFP, and DICOM.

In a typical workflow process, personnel responsible for reviewing or accessing documents are usually required to have the creator application installed on their workstation. While this can be an effective solution, it is not the most secure, the fastest, or the most cost efficient. Companies following this approach are dependent on many different applications and incur additional costs for purchasing software, upgrading existing users, training users on multiple applications, and maintaining individual workstations. The company’s infrastructure also becomes more complex in order to support the variety of applications and the ability to distribute multiple document or image formats.

Traditionally companies addressed these challenges by converting documents or images to a standard, portable format. Conversion solutions can effectively automate conversion processes and standardize formats. However conversion also introduces an extra step into the process, requiring more time in an already lengthy process.

An alternative, that is becoming more prevalent due to the growth of content repositories, is the use of a web viewer with built-in support for multiple formats. Viewers are flexible solutions that can act as stand-alone applications or be integrated into larger solutions or applications. They are generally available as client-based or web-based solutions.

Working with and managing multiple document and image formats does not have to be a complicated, time-consuming, or costly process. Companies have the potential to greatly increase their productivity by making an informed decision on whether a conversion or viewing solution best fits their needs.

Some important questions to consider when deciding between these two solutions:

• Why do you need to convert files? Would a universal viewer be a more appropriate choice?
• How many document or image formats do you need to support?
• Would 3 second access to documents improve process throughput and profitability?
• How many users do you need to support?
• Would access to documents and images over the Web be beneficial to your users?

Receive a complimentary review and analysis to help you determine whether a conversion or viewing solution is right for your company. Contact us through our website or by phone at 617-607-2010.

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Product Spotlight

FlexSnap dramatically improves the speed and efficiency of handling documents and images throughout your organization's workflow processes. FlexSnap enables high-speed viewing, manipulation, annotation, and printing of multiple formats through a universal web viewer.

SnowBatch is a powerful Windows-based batch conversion application. The easy-to-use interface makes converting documents and images quick, easy, and accurate.

Request an evaluation of a FlexSnap web viewer or SnowBatch batch conversion application.

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Snowbound Survey

Give us feedback on how you handle emails and attachments and we'll give you a 256MB USB 2.0 Flash Drive.

Be one of the first 20 respondents to complete our latest survey and you'll receive a free 256MB USB flash drive. Take advantage of this limited-time offer by completing a brief online survey.

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President's Corner

Many companies today realize that the software products they buy are highly sophisticated, full-featured and mature. However they don’t often consider that many of the applications they use depend upon third-party components to provide some of those capabilities.

Today, software requirements are so demanding that no one company can develop all the technology that’s necessary to create a world-class product. To deal with this issue, the most common practice is to license specialized technology from third parties and then embed that technology into your application.

Because Snowbound specializes in imaging products and tools, and has done so for many years, we often serve as our own third-party. Our FlexSnap viewers and servlets and our SnowBatch conversion application all embed our own RasterMaster imaging Libraries. By doing so, they gain powerful capabilities - support for over 100 image and document formats, more than 140 functions and code tested by millions of users.

And because we understand our imaging Libraries better than anyone, we have the capability, if needed, to quickly modify the Libraries to better support our applications.

Today’s fast pace and competitive business climate demands that companies focus on their core competencies and technology expertise. The decision to buy versus build is becoming a more critical decision than ever before. When you buy from Snowbound you can be assured that you are receiving the highest quality imaging technology to meet your requirements.

Simon Wieczner, CEO