MARCH 2006

FormRouter's Reader Extensions service: Extra features for fair price
Adobe partnership brings PDF-forms solution to wider audience
by Kurt Foss, Editor, AcrobatUsers.com

What's the number one PDF-related support question posted on Adobe Systems' online support forum? According to the site's Acrobat FAQ, first among the top five most-asked questions is: “Can I save a filled-out PDF form using the free Adobe Reader?”

The question has been out there since Adobe first introduced the capability for PDF forms in Acrobat version 3.5. For the average end-user, Adobe's answer hasn't varied much over the ensuing product generations and years, thus assuring longevity of the query. The answer has changed only slightly, from a firm “no” to the current “maybe,” the latter being true based on a financial investment in new Adobe LiveCycle technology by the document creator.

After launching separate, short-lived products — Acrobat Business Tools and later Acrobat Approval — positioned between Acrobat and Reader that temporarily addressed the issue, Adobe eventually settled on a server-based solution aimed at the high-volume enterprise or government customer. The Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions software allows document creators to easily embed any of a series of special rights in PDF documents — including the ability to save locally, work offline, fill in, annotate, sign and submit -- making features normally associated with Acrobat available to Reader-equipped users.

When a rights-enabled form is opened with a current version of Reader, hidden functionality is activated for that particular document.

While it solved the “Local Save” problem for large organizations such as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which now makes select U.S. income tax forms available as rights-enabled documents, it was cost-prohibitive for most small- and medium-sized companies.

Hence the inability to save form data along with the electronically fillable form using the free Adobe Reader has remained an issue and hot support topic.

When FormRouter Inc. established a special licensing arrangement with Adobe Systems in 2004 to exclusively offer an Application Service Provider (ASP)-based Reader Extensions service to activate PDF-usage rights for customers within North America, both companies had every reason to believe it would be good news to the previously underserved segment of the PDF forms-using community. In addition, it dovetailed nicely with many of FormRouter's other forms design and deployment services.

“FormRouter's service is all about making it incredibly easy and cost-effective for small organizations that don't have IT support to get forms online quickly,” says Chairman and CEO Chris Pieper. “No programming, no servers; if you've got a form, you can have it online within the hour.”

On the exclusive Reader Extensions partnership, Adobe's Brian Wick, group manager for LiveCycle Product Marketing, says “FormRouter enables customers in the small- and medium-sized business segment to easily Reader-enable their forms. Our target markets for LiveCycle products are the Global 2000 (large enterprise) accounts in target markets, so the small- and medium-sized business  markets can really benefit from the ability to work with a company like FormRouter to offer this service that can be up and running very quickly in a hosted environment.”

While it has indeed proven to be a desirable service to numerous businesses and organizations, Pieper explains there have also been challenges.

“Since we've been doing it for a while now, what we've found is that people don't really understand what it is,” Pieper says about the Reader Extensions capabilities and implications, “and they have pre-built expectations about what it should be.”

The company's subsequent game plan called for an increased focus on education, both internally to learn more about user needs and potential pricing barriers, and externally to enlighten users on exactly which features/rights the service can include/enable and how they can be useful in a business environment.

Based in part on discussions with some of its PDF forms-based customers, which include government agency divisions, insurance companies, legal services and schools, Pieper says the company has revised the pricing structure for the Reader Extensions service a couple times. The current options are an activity-based subscription fee, seat-based for named groups of users or a one-time per-form-based license — with a low entry point starting around $500 per form as of June 2005. Each option has its own specific requirements, limitations (including backward compatibility with earlier versions of Reader)  and ideal circumstances. Most recently, the company further simplified things for potential customers when it announced a new lowered cost of entry in early December 2005.

“At $125 per page,” Pieper explained in a news release last month, “just about anyone can realize the full potential of PDF forms and the free Adobe Reader.”

Since that announced change, Pieper says the Cary, NC-based company has had “a much nicer reception from users that this is really fair.”

While there's always a segment of the user population that expects capabilities to be free, he says, the majority understand there are costs involved with offering such business-oriented services, and they're willing to pay a fair price. “We've got folks who are really happy that they have access,” Pieper says.

To address the user-education component of its proactive marketing of the service, FormRouter founder and CTO Jim Healy recently developed a step-by-step guide that explains how to cost-effectively deploy rights-enabled PDF forms. Calling the Reader Extensions technology “one of Adobe System's most powerful and misunderstood solutions,” Healy addresses a range of questions, including:

• Why Add Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions to Your PDF Documents?
• How does Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions work?
• Where did Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions come from?
• What specific functions can Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions enable?
• How does an organization license Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions?
• Can Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions be acquired as a service?

In addition to offering a solution to the age-old dilemma of saving form-entered data using Reader, the Reader Extensions service includes additional functionality that can be similarly unlocked and utilized. The FormRouter guide describes the following “special rights” in detail:

1. Allow completed forms to be saved locally (with form data)
2. Allow users to sign documents with a digital signature
3. Allow completed PDF forms to be sent via E-Mail
4. Take advantage of file attachments and media clips
5. Capture 2D barcode data without Adobe encryption
6. Add and delete fields with JavaScript
7. Create new pages via templates
8. Utilize Web services (SOAP calls)
9. Export and import form data
10. Add comments and field data at the same time
11. Submit entire forms to a server

Pieper sees the Reader Extensions service as a natural extension of the company's efforts to drive increased acceptance and use of PDF-based forms, noting that about 65 percent of its customers' needs are PDF-related.

“FormRouter started opening up the market for PDF forms for people who were getting left behind,” he says. “A small company could always put PDF forms on the Web, but if they had to go get a server and do all the other stuff, there are just too many reasons not to do it. We took away all of those obstructions.”

At the other end of the budget spectrum, Pieper says the availability of the Reader Extensions service isn't likely to have an adverse effect on Adobe sales to large-enterprise customers. In fact, he says, some potential enterprise customers have used the FormRouter service as a way to try out the functionality, or to get some urgent work done before the purchase plans are finalized.

“Almost always, what we find is when an IT department gets involved, it's time for them to talk to Adobe. If it's a big enough project that the IT organization is engaged, then they're doing enough work that Adobe's going to give them a better price and better service.”

At the same time, Pieper says, allowing FormRouter to offer a lower-cost service based on Adobe's technology also serves to discourage the growth of illegal offerings that periodically pop up on the Internet. “That's not good for anyone.”

“After talking with lots of Acrobat users,“ Pieper says, “I found that once people understand what Reader Extensions can do, and they understand the large investment that Adobe has put into this software, they don't mind paying a fair price to use it. If you think about it, distributing a Reader-extended PDF is like distributing powerful software functionality to a lot of people — without having them install anything. Once Acrobat users get it, they feel good about what they are buying.”

“The thing we'd like everyone to realize,” Pieper says, driving home his key message, “is that it's not free, but it's fair.”

<< Back to Articles main menu.