2 min Devops

Adobe’s new tools bring process automation to the enterprise

Adobe’s new tools bring process automation to the enterprise

The move comes in response to rapid proliferation of RPA and ML in their enterprise customer base.

This week Adobe unveiled two new cloud services for building robotic process automation (RPA) workflows and applications that require the ability to process documents. The new services will help Adobe leverage the accelerating deployment of RPA and machine learning (ML) among its enterprise customers. 

As part of their digital transformation plans, enterprises are investing in automating repetitive business tasks. This means that many of the processes firms automate are tedious tasks that involve processing documents. Examples include preparing contracts and copying data from invoices to a company’s accounting database. These are the types of chores that Adobe is seeking to automate with its new products.

The new products are Adobe PDF Extract API and Adobe Document Generation API. Both solutions focus on automating tasks that involve documents created in the PDF format.

Adobe seeks to help developers become more “innovative”

Vibhor Kapoor, Senior Director of Marketing in Adobe’s Document Cloud business, detailed the new products in a blog post. “We’ve been putting our nearly three decades of PDF expertise and leadership to work by building and growing Adobe Document Services, our cloud-based APIs and SDKs designed for developers to seamlessly build new and innovative document solutions,” he writes.

“What sets PDF Extract API apart is that it can extract all PDF elements, unlike many other extraction technologies that are limited to one type, such as a table.”

Organizations can use PDF Extract API to quickly and accurately extract data for use in machine learning models, analysis, indexing or storage. This will help to automate downstream processes using technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). They will also help republish PDF content across different media, Kapoor says.

With Adobe Document Generation API, Kapoor says developers can quickly design custom Microsoft Word templates. They can also generate Word and PDF documents injected with dynamic data. The Document Generation API includes an out-of-the-box integration with Adobe Sign, so that documents are ready for e-signatures.

He also announced that Adobe PDF Services API is now available in the AWS Marketplace. “With your AWS account, you can now try our APIs and purchase our services in a pay as you go model, all in a few clicks,” he said.