Item: Kofax Power PDF
Rating: 9
Author: Donald Howard

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Kofax Power PDF in several ways. First, it is our default PDF reader application. I find it so much more intuitive and easier for our users, who span various levels of application knowledge, to be able to navigate the basic PDF creation and usage aspects. Secondly, we use it to convert PDF documents into fillable forms. It does this with just a few mouse clicks and requires almost no to extraordinarily little tweaking once the conversion is done. The third reason is the conversion of PDF files into Microsoft Office documents. This is done quite often, and is a real time saver.

Pros and Cons

Value - Less than 1/2 the cost of Adobe Acrobat.
Speed - Works fast and is extremely accurate in its conversion, transcription, and form creation.
Ease of use - I have employees and clients that are not as adept with apps outside of the Microsoft Office suite. However, this was one of the few apps that they mastered quite quickly.
Compatibility - Integrates into most office suites and windows applications.

I would love better voice command integration (i.e. Dragon Naturally Speaking).
A mobile companion app would be great. We do a lot in Android tablets and iPads.
When the app searches for updates or Kofax news, it opens the link in Internet Explorer. Change that over to Edge or Chrome.

Return on Investment

It has saved us over $150 per user over Adobe Acrobat.
I would estimate it saves us over 15 man-hours per month in completed our PDF workflow over Adobe Acrobat.
My client has saved over $2500 a month in being able to print quickly and only what they want or need.

Ease-of-Use

We create many PDF forms, documents and contracts for our prospects and clients. We convert MS Word documents into Fillable Form PDF documents that we can send off for completion and signature. This has saved us a great deal in time and error correcting when sending clients documents and contract.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, Foxit PDF SDK and Soda PDF

None of these software packages worked as well or offered the value that Kofax Power PDF Advanced offered. Though a few may cost less, the value for what you get, time spent on the project, and the dollar investment, quickly stack the deck towards Kofax. In my opinion, Kofax is the industry leader for PDF applications.

Support Rating

We have not had to use Kofax's customer support. We have used Nuance's support several years ago, and they were wonderful. We had an issue where one PC had its hard drive die and we bought a new drive and reimaged the PC. However, this triggered a license issue with the Nuance verification server. We spoke with a customer support rep, and she cleared the problem up for use within about 10 minutes of us calling into their support.

Key Insights

Do you think Kofax Power PDF delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Kofax Power PDF's feature set?

Yes

Did Kofax Power PDF live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Kofax Power PDF go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Kofax Power PDF again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), AnyDesk, Splashtop Business Access

Features

We use the form creation tool on almost a daily basis. It is used for creating all of our contracts and customer facing documents. We also use it to convert incoming PDF documents into editable MS Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents. Kofax Power PDF Advanced is a real time saver for our overall workflow. And as we all know, time is money!

Likelihood to Recommend

We have a client in the construction industry that receives literally 50-75 emails a day that contain PDF attachments. They were using Adobe Acrobat and were having issues with how long it took for it to spool and print the blue prints. It didn't matter if it they wanted only 1 page, it spooled the whole document, and then printed that one page. I showed them how fast Power PDF Advanced could do the job, and the owner had us order it for every employee at the firm.

Users and Roles

4 - We use it to create contracts and forms that we can send to our clients that can be filled in and emailed back to us. The ability to do this saves us several hours of time each week. That translates to hundreds of dollars a week in increased productivity.

We also convert PDF documents that are created by several of our monitoring and reporting platforms to Microsoft Word and Excel documents. These Excel and Word documents can then be integrated into monthly and quarterly reports that we provide to our clients. This also saves us hundreds of dollars every week.

Support Headcount Required

If you know how to use most of the Microsoft 365 apps, you can use Kofax Power PDF. It is fairly intuitive and even the advanced tools in the application are easy to learn and master. We have had new users up and running on how to create forms and convert documents in less than 1 hour.

Business Processes Supported

Fillable form creation
Document conversion
Document creation (multiple PDF files combined into one document)

Innovative Uses

Document creation (combining files)
Document editing (removing pages in the PDF)
Fillable forms

Future Planned Uses

Redacting documents
Text Searchable PDF

Likelihood to Renew

We love services that Kofax Power PDF offers our firm. The solutions that Kofax offers for about 1/2 the cost of Adobe Acrobat Pro. We used to only have 1 license of Acrobat in the office, and all of the work had to be done by one person. We can now have it installed on 5 user's PC and at about the same cost as on two Acrobat licenses. We upgrade about every other year when the new features make sense to add to our software.

Best desktop PDF application on the market

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Kofax Power PDF (formerly Nuance)