Case studies are an essential part of decision making in both large and small enterprise. They let you see what other organisations have done when faced with similar challenges and how they fared as a result. As a way of informing decision making they are near essential, and the current best way of representing this information is as a PDF.
Much like the invention of HTML, which let academics exchange complex documents with diagrams and illustrations in the correct position on the page, PDF documents let executives share structured information in a format that will not change, regardless of the device on which it is viewed. A PDF is by nature, print-ready, a perfect presentation document format. A PDF can be as visual as it textually rich, making it useful to designers of all stripes as well as those creating simple layouts for text documents. This is valuable for a number of reasons.
First of all, the information looks the same for everyone. That means PDFs can be used to set out arguments or show procedures with the precision necessary to underpin multi-million dollar purchases. It also means that whether they are printed, seen on a computer monitor or viewed on a tablet, the data is presented in the same way, giving an equal impression of viability or otherwise, to all recipients. This is of the utmost important in an era where people are using their tablets and smartphones as mobile office devices, making important decisions based on the format of presentations as displayed on a tiny screen.
Secondly, once created they cannot be edited, preventing tampering or accidental deletion of key data when passed amongst multiple staff members. That makes PDFs a trusted medium and one that can be relied upon to say the same thing every time they are distributed, forwarded and opened. This consistency is vital to business, and communication between producers and clients.
Finally, PDFs can be made and viewed using freely distributed software, making them truly egalitarian in their availability. Equally useful to one-man consultancies and multi-national corporations, the information contained on a PDF can be seen by anyone with a computer or a printer. Teaching someone to create a PDF takes a matter of minutes and most word processing and imaging programs have easy ‘save as’ options to make PDF conversion extremely quick and easy.
Case studies help make business run, and the very easiest way of showing your case studies to others, as well as gathering useful ones for your own organisation, is in PDF format.
Frank Vitetta writes for openpdfs.com. With millions of perfectly captured PDF documents for the world’s most popular platforms and ERP systems.
