From Paper to PDF to HTML

Paper forms have been around for as long as paper has been mass-produced and used in business transactions. A paper form is often viewed as the most cost-effective to produce and easiest to use. As computers became commonplace in businesses the desire to automate paper-based processes became a clear initiative for most companies. While it may appear that we use more paper today than we did decades ago, computer automation has eliminated much of the old paper that was used (do you remember the green accounting general ledgers or carbon paper pads?). What computer automation has really done is helped paperwork evolve to a point where it becomes more necessary and more cost-effective to automate all variations of paper forms.

PDF, the Portable Document Format, was invented by the Adobe corporation in the 1990’s as a way to ensure a document could be transported, viewed and printed across all devices. Today PDF is an industry standard adopted by countless software products and users to facilitate sharing documents and forms. While many different technologies were developed to make it possible to fill out forms on a computer, the PDF forms tools had the largest impact on the computing world and is the de-facto standard for sharing forms.

HTML, the language of web browsers, changed everything. With the advent of the internet, consumers of all types benefited from filling out forms in web browsers. Where PDF took the paper version and made it work online, HTML took any form that no longer had to look like paper and eliminated the paper altogether.

The challenge that Quik! solves, and it’s reason for existing, is to make it possible to automate forms in ways that neither paper, PDF nor HTML can accomplish. Quik! takes existing forms (e.g. a PDF form) and makes it interactive, fillable, secure and signable within any web browser by converting the form to HTML, all while retaining the exact look and feel of the original form. As a service, Quik! provides the infrastructure, technology, methodology and service personnel to make forms automation accessible to virtually any user. In essence, Quik! helps forms evolve from paper, PDF and HTML to do more with less effort and cost.