Companies in the energy sector face stringent requirements around document storage. Whether nuclear, oil, gas, or coal, documents must be archived and accessible throughout the lifetime of a plant and beyond, typically 30-60 years. PDF documents are the standard, universally adopted format for new documents due to their ubiquity and ease of viewing and sharing.
Energy companies face the momentous task of converting existing documents into digital form. Digitized documents must not only retain all of the relevant information while being small enough to store, but also fully editable, searchable text, not just images. Using an OCR tool, included in some PDF SDKs, allows paper documents to be digitized, with their text ready to be read, edited and searched. Once digitized, these documents can be stored in a fraction of the space and automatically backed up to meet audit requirements. For new digital documents, creating them directly in a PDF editor removes errors caused by conversion and compression. Foxit PDF editing tools allow total manipulation of the document – merging, splitting, images, annotation and more. Once created, the document is rendered exactly as intended by the creator. Even large format documents such as color blueprints, that require sophisticated compression to both reduce their size for storage but ensure all details are retained for retrieval. PDF/A is widely recognized as the best format for archived documents, and any PDF applications need to both create standard compliant documents and validate compliance before archival.
At the enterprise level, document management and manipulation becomes as – or more – crucial than document creation. Creating and integrating streamlined workflows is essential to improving productivity and doing more with less. Effective collaboration tools improve productivity – moving to electronic signatures, for example, can reduce document turnaround time by up to 80%. PDF applications in the energy sector need to be optimized for collaborative work, with annotation, editing, and version control. Once finalized, areas of the document can be locked to prevent further changes while still allowing annotations from other collaborators. To avoid the problems inherent in fitting complex business processes into off the shelf solutions, many energy companies prefer to develop their own document and PDF applications in house. Developers can use PDF SDK tools to integrate document creation, signing and storage with existing enterprise software and processes.
The nature of the energy sector means the documents/PDFs involved risk being highly confidential and must only be made accessible to a select few. Document management requires security features such as encryption/decryption, creation or integration of Information Rights Management (IRM) systems, secure signing functionality, password protection, and access monitoring and restriction. Secure sharing within the organization is essential, with the ability to restrict sharing with unauthorized users. Crucial decisions must be signed off by several stakeholders, using secure digital signatures and digital signature verification. With PDF technology, these functions can be embedded directly into document workflows. Foxit PDF SDK arms developers with the tools to develop enterprise class PDF applications that fulfill all the needs of a modernizing energy sector. Chosen by Google to be the underpinning technology for their open source PDF engine for its versatility and power, it is the chosen PDF solution for major energy companies such as Shell and Chevron.
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Foxit PDF SDK enables developers to create consistent, responsive, and seamless PDF experiences across desktop, web browsers, and mobile platforms, ensuring broad accessibility and usability.
From viewing and annotating to editing, signing, OCR, redaction, and converting PDFs, all essential features are supported out of the box.
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