PDFs are nonetheless used all around the world.
However it does not come with out challenges. In an period with rising cyberattacks and threats to companies, it’s extra vital than ever to make your contracts digital.
On this weblog, we’ll check out a number of the most important disadvantages of PDFs, however first let’s talk about what precisely a PDF is.
What’s a PDF?
A PDF, or transportable doc format, is a typical kind of file used to maintain the format and formatting of a doc in place when it’s considered throughout totally different units.
In contrast to different doc codecs that will show otherwise relying on the software program or system, PDFs preserve their authentic format and design, making them a typical alternative for sharing paperwork throughout numerous environments.
Initially developed within the early Nineteen Nineties, PDFs have develop into the norm in contract administration, from enterprise reviews and educational papers to authorized contracts and authorities types.
The format’s recognition comes from its means to seize textual content, photos, graphics, and the rest on any web page right into a single file, making certain consistency in look whatever the software program or working system utilized by the receiver.
PDFs generally supply choices for encryption and may even supply password safety, offering some extent of safety for delicate info. This function has made PDFs seem significantly helpful when doc integrity and confidentiality are very important, akin to in authorized proceedings or delicate company communications.
PDFs can help some fundamental options for doc navigation and interplay. Customers can simply navigate by pages, seek for particular content material, and annotate paperwork with feedback or highlights utilizing their system’s search and discover features.
PDFs may also incorporate interactive parts like hyperlinks, buttons, and kind fields, permitting for extra dynamic and fascinating content material. These capabilities make PDFs appropriate for varied purposes, from creating interactive shows to distributing digital types.
4 key disadvantages of PDFs
PDFs have developed into a flexible and extensively adopted format for sharing and preserving digital paperwork. However they aren’t with out their disadvantages, so let’s go into extra element about a couple of key ones.
1. PDFs might be the reason for cyberattacks
PDFs can fall sufferer to cyber threats, with malware or viruses embedded inside seemingly bizarre recordsdata. This will trigger a threat to a number of units inside your tech ecosystem, as viruses can unfold rapidly.
PDFs may also continuously function bait for phishing assaults, the place attackers create realistic-looking paperwork that persuade customers at hand over confidential info or open dangerous hyperlinks. These phishing PDFs are normally effectively disguised, so it may be arduous to detect a a phishing PDF from a traditional one.
2. PDF metadata issues
PDFs can inadvertently expose metadata. If revisions have been made to the PDF — normally in the case of contracts — made by a number of folks, then that may nonetheless be seen within the metadata when a PDF is shipped.
Metadata issues might result in an elevated threat of phishing assaults. If metadata is just not correctly encrypted, components of it may possibly doubtlessly be used to hint the server the place delicate buyer information and private info is saved. This leads properly to the following level.
3. Potential for information breaches
One of many key disadvantages of PDFs is that they depart scope for information breaches.
Consider it this fashion. Most PDFs — be a contract or one other kind of doc — can’t be secured or encrypted. Which means anybody who comes throughout it may possibly learn it. Most often, this might be innocent. Nonetheless, somebody with extra malicious intentions might use your PDF to glean extremely confidential info.
Equally, had been your doc administration system to be breached, the hackers might bulk obtain your entire PDF contracts — and all paperwork — in moments. The outcomes might be catastrophic for your online business.
Many Britons effectively keep in mind the Folks’s Vitality information breach of 2020. Folks’s Vitality, a sustainable power provider based mostly in Scotland, noticed all of its 270,000 prospects’ private info stolen in a single single obtain throughout a cyber assault. The ensuing harm to its fame was huge, as had been the authorized implications. The victims of the assault noticed their private info freely posted on-line.
It is a worst-case situation, however PDFs depart your online business extra weak to assaults of this sort and on this scale.
4. Revisions can result in lengthy threads
Each time you make a revision, you’ll be able to’t replace the ultimate PDF. This implies it’s important to generate a totally new PDF and ship it to the receiver over again. This will result in seemingly countless electronic mail threads and leaves loads of area for human error.
For instance, suppose an older model of a PDF contract is signed. In that case, it may possibly result in confusion because the phrases won’t match what was agreed upon following negotiations and revisions.
However this isn’t the one instance of the disadvantages of PDFs in the case of signing your contracts. With attainable revisions, the passing of the contract between signees, and the truth that emails might be misplaced and forgotten in cluttered inboxes, it may possibly take a very long time to get a PDF contract signed.
This will decelerate your pipeline and, consequently, your ARR, resulting in a backlog on your gross sales staff as they attempt to navigate an ever-increasing variety of offers on the cusp of closed-won.
For instance, if a prospect takes some time to signal and return a contract, it might effectively get misplaced in a salesman’s inbox. This might result in an embarrassing second for them as they ask for a standing replace, solely to get “I’ve signed it and despatched it again” because the reply.
In spite of everything, PDFs, like paper contracts, solely result in much more scope for human error.
The right way to overcome the disadvantages of PDFs in your online business
We talked in regards to the quite a few disadvantages of PDFs, however there are methods during which companies can curb the potential challenges.
Rent a contract admin worker
It’s comprehensible why some companies want to stay with PDFs.
Maybe your buyer base prefers extra conventional signing strategies. Maybe you principally work in or promote to nations the place digital contracts and digital signatures are much less frequent. Regardless of the purpose, some companies are compelled to stay with conventional PDF contracts.
Nonetheless, there’s a solution to clear a number of the backlog issues they’ll create: rent an worker who works solely, or principally, with contract admin work. Relatively than leaving it as much as particular person salespeople or somebody from HR or authorized to kind by a mountain of paper or recordsdata, you’ll be able to have a contract admin specialist whose major focus is to handle these points.
Such staff can arrange workflows and submitting techniques that guarantee your contracts are correctly categorized, updated, and as safe as might be when utilizing PDF-level encryption.
Though hiring an worker to deal with contract admin work would represent an additional enterprise expense, for those who merely have to make use of PDFs, then that is unavoidable.
Put money into contract administration software program
In the event you can, make the change to a neater, extra advantageous method of managing your contracts. It would sound simpler stated than completed, however the impression and financial savings for your online business might be large, each in financial phrases and when it comes to the increase to your ARR it may possibly present.
On this part, we’ll check out only a few of the explanation why.
Your entire paperwork in a single place
Gone are the times of getting to go looking folders or drives for one particular contract or model of a contract. As a substitute, they’ll all be in a single place, as long as the contract administration software program in query comes with an archive function in-built.
Earlier than a contract is archived, you’ll be able to categorize it. Also referred to as including tags, a function akin to this implies which you could make a contract retrievable based mostly on the place it’s within the cycle, which ICP the signee falls into, when the contract was signed, who the salesperson accountable was, and a lot extra.
When archived, contracts might be simply retrieved in only a few clicks. Higher nonetheless, some archive options assist you to put restrictions on entry in place. Which means solely particularly chosen customers and admins can entry both particular person contracts or the archive as a complete.
As soon as that is in place, you’ve gotten added an additional layer of safety to your contracts, overcoming one of many most important disadvantages of PDFs.
Automated contract administration system
Typically, a number of stakeholders might want to signal a contract, and generally, one might want to signal earlier than the following one can. With PDF contracts, it’s not attainable to regulate this course of, which might imply delays in the case of signing and even needing to ship your contract out a number of occasions.
Thankfully, contract administration software program will help right here, too. Some options include a function that means that you can set a signing order on your contract. In different phrases, you’ll be able to set the contract in order that till the primary signatory has signed, the second can not.
The perfect half is that some options have options permitting you to arrange automated electronic mail sequences. These sequences imply that these within the signing order are notified when it’s their flip to signal.
Which means you want by no means chase signatories once more. It additionally implies that your gross sales staff spends much less time chasing signatures and extra time doing what they do finest — promote.
Superior contract safety techniques
As we now have already mentioned right here, PDFs can pose a menace to the safety of your online business — no matter whether or not there’s a information breach or the contract or doc is inadvertently despatched to the mistaken recipient.
Some contract administration options include particular safety features that solely permit your contacts to be accessed by their meant recipients. Talking from a Swedish perspective, some instruments solely assist you to entry the contract after you have signed in utilizing an app known as BankID. BankID is a extremely safe identification app that makes use of codes and facial recognition to confirm that you’re who you say you’re.
With safety features akin to these, you’ll be able to ensure that your entire metadata, your buyer’s private info, and any personal information that is likely to be included in your contracts is as protected as might be.
Some European suppliers home their information inside the EU, which implies that it’s secured to a number of the highest requirements on the planet.
Contract administration integrations
Integrations in contract administration software program will help you overcome one other key drawback of PDFs: your gross sales staff doing double the work.
At any time when a PDF contract is signed, your CRM must be manually up to date with all the key particulars of the contract. A duplicate of the contract may need to be manually uploaded.
Some contract administration options include a two-way sync function. A two-way sync removes the very notion of double work, as, in some instances, you’ll be able to create, ship, and get your contracts signed and your CRM up to date, all with out having to depart stated CRM.
As soon as the correct integrations are in place, will probably be simpler than ever on your gross sales staff to considerably scale back their admin work, increase their pipeline, and enhance your online business’s ARR.
Modifying and amending a contract made straightforward
One recurring downside that we hear again and again from our new prospects right here at Oneflow is that they discover the static nature of PDFs to be a burden, not solely when it comes to creating electronic mail threads but additionally when it comes to discovering important info or realizing the place to make edits.
That is one other downside that contract administration software program will help to unravel. An rising variety of software program firms depend on HTML code to assemble and help contracts in the course of the creation course of.
As such, which means HTML contracts are dynamic, simply editable, and might be created utilizing pre-made blocks and templates. With the correct contract administration software program, modifying and amending a contract might be as straightforward as modifying or updating an internet web page in your CRM.
Even simply these few benefits make for a improbable ROI on contract administration software program for your online business, all whereas overcoming a number of the key drawbacks of PDFs.
Prepare for an easier, smoother signing expertise
On this article, we explored a number of key disadvantages of PDFs and the way they’ll pose a problem to your online business.
Nonetheless, it’s now clear that contract administration software program not solely makes for an awesome ROI but additionally helps you overcome the ensemble of challenges PDFs can create. Many platforms supply a free trial as normal. So, why not attempt it at this time?
Uncover the intricacies of assorted contract sorts and learn to choose the proper one on your wants.
Edited by Jigmee Bhutia
