LOOKING FOR CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK AND PRODUCT SUGGESTIONS FOR ISSUE(S) SUMMARIZED BELOW:
I will prefice that I am by no stretch of the imagination, "technology/digitally" savvy. But like many users of technology/software, my business reilies heavily on certain tools/software, one of those being a powerful PDF solution.
Before going further, I want to make clear that like many others, my issue(s) with Adobe has nothing to do with the performance of their products compared to their competitors (for what it's intended to do, Adobe is superior to its competitors...IMO). Rather, it centers around the confusing, convulated, and not straightforward way in which Adobe markets their products and specifically, the features/tools within each subscription level. At this current stage, I will not go as far as saying Adobe is doing this with intent, but I must admit, I'm getting closer to that threshold
BRIEF BACKGROUND
I own a small retail insurance agency. Currently, I have 1 employee, so we have 2 lincenses. Current subscription is "Adobe for Teams" (Adobe Acrobat Pro DC). I believe Adobe also refers to this subscription level as their Adobe Acrobat for "small business". Most laypersons, after reading the overview/features that come along with Pro DC, would conclude that Adobe's e-sign solutions are part of the subscription "stack"...with a catch that is.
In addition to Adobe, my company uses Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise 5, or "E5". One of the primary features of the O365 stack is SharePoint. Again, not an IT expert by any means, but SharePoint is the tool that allows users/companies to share all files, docs, communications, etc. across the cloud. As a business owner for the first time, one of my responsibilites is to create an environment that not only creates efficiences and increased performance internally, but also (and most importantly), results in the best possible experience for the end user, which in my case, are my clients, who purchsae insurance policies.
Knowing all of this, it only made sense to see what intergrations are possible between the two most important pieces of software for my business, O365 and Adobe. Adobe Acrobat Pro DC integrates with Microsoft Outlook...check, Pro DC intergrates with Microsoft Teams...check, with Microsoft Word...check, with SharePoint...kind of, but not really.
This leads me to the crux of the matter. Adobe Sign (which anyone who hasn't written a case study on Adobe products, would easily conclude "comes with", or is "part of" Pro DC) and SharePoint integration. The short of it, is Microsoft and Adobe have formally partnered with eachother across both of their suite of services in many ways, which makes sense. As I already mentioned above how important it is for a small business to streamline ops and workflows across their most important pieces of software. One of the ways the two companies have integrated their softwares, is the "Adobe e-sign for SharePoint" integration. This was going to be a game changer for my business. What may seem like a small feature on the surface, is really a way to take the next step in seamless integration. This feature allows you to perform, send, create, document, save, and track a document througout the stages of getting a document e-signed, all without ever leaving SharePoint.
So I go to the SharePoint app store, download the Adobe e-sign app., and I'm off to the races. I go into my documents page inside my SharePoint site, select the "send for signature" feature directly out of SharePoint, when I get a message error.
"Adobe Sign login has expired. Please contact your Adobe Sign account admin to login again".
Of course the first thing I do is make sure i'm signed into adobe, which i was. I continue to play around, make sure i performed the integration steps correctly, until I called Adobe support. I was on the phone with Adobe support (while also sharing a screen and letting them take control of PC) for an hour...no fix. The Adobe support employee said he was out of ideas and that he suggested a scheduled call the following day with an "Adobe expert". Fast forward 24 hours, and the "expert" is out of solutions as well. Finally, it took me googling and searching in detail (mind you, I was on the phone with the Adobe expert during this time) to find out that the Adobe Sign/SharPoint integration requires an Adobe "Enterprise" level subscription.
My thoughts and suggestions:
-why on earth would Adobe and Microsoft formally partner on e-sign integration where the "Adobe Small Business" level subscription allows for all O365 integration (Teams, Outlook, Word, etc.), except for one platform within the O365 stack (that being SharePoint)?
-Is anyone else taken back by the lack of clarity between what you get and the differences between "Adobe Sign" and "Adobe Acrobat Pro DC"? If your a Pro DC subscriber and go to your admin page and click on "My Plans" and click on "Included applications and Services", what do you know, Adobe Sign pops up. If you're like me, I'm not sure how you'd conclude anyting differently than...I have Adobe Sign. And some might respond - well Adobe Sign and its capabilities are slightly different across the various subscription levels. Which, as I found out the hard way, is true. But this is what really gets me, which maybe stems from me being a small business owner. Point being, either give me the app, or don't. The different apps, tools, features, etc. in Adobe are inherently already confusing enough as to when you should use what. Making these apps, tools, features, and the way you can use them across each subscription level slightly different, simply adds to the confusion. I hear people complain about how expensive Adobe is, which that's a whole other arguement and one I may very well agree with. But when it comes to pricing, no ones forcing me to purchase the product and if at the end of the day, I purchase the product anyways, I obviously justified the cost to do so, so listening to complaints about pricing, is really not something I agree with (mind you - taking the stance that something is too expensive is different then complaining about something you think is too expensive, but purchased it anyways...which i've never understood and the part i disagree with). So it's not even the money, it's the complete lack of transparency. Again, make me buy Adobe Sign from the get go if i want to take advantage of all its features. But please don't tell me "it comes with" Pro DC, and put an asterik on some random sub-page of the Adobe site with font 5 print with an asterik at the bottom of some random page, where it states the slight differences between e-sign as part of Pro DC VS Adobe Sign. Especially don't list Adobe Sign with the EXACT same logo as the stand alone Adobe Sign product, listing it as "one of the services that come with my Pro DC subscription". To that I say - STOP MAKING THINGS MORE CONFUSING AND COMPLEX THEN THEY NEED TO BE.
-If you're reading this - learn from my boneheaded mistakes, which now seem very apparent, but may not be so apparent at first glance.
1. Adobe Sign for Small Business is $35 per seat/per month, whereas Acrobat Pro DC is roughly $15 per seat/per month. No company is going to sell you a subscription that allegedly includes all the features of a different stand alone subscription, for less than the stand alone subscription (but again, I never got that far because it's plastered all over the place, worded in different "generalities", that full e-sign capabilities come with Pro DC").
2. Nowhere in Pro DC does the Adobe Sign logo appear (except under the admin page as i mentioned above..but the "tool" itself is nowwhere to be found), which should throw an immediate red flag. I thought this was strange when I first started using Pro DC but brushed it off due to the fact that I was sending and collecting digital signatures just fine. Before all of this transpired, I even had a phone call with Adobe support as it relates to this, and they said without blinking an eye that Adobe Sign comes with Pro DC, but that their most recent Pro DC software upgrade, resulted in Adobe "tucking" Adobe Sign under "Send for Signature" and "Fill & Sign" tools, which is just flat out not true.
3. When you get on the phone with an Adobe "expert", and even they are workign on helping you fix a problem that come to find out, is not even a problem (i.e. a software glitch, bug, etc.). This is the proof in the pudding which should tell you everything you need to know. The product lines and subscription levels are so confusing, Adobe Customer Care experts aren't even aware of the differences. The first thing customer care does when you get on the phone with them (and this is by no means an attack on the individuals on the cusomter care team at Adobe..quite the opposite), is confirm your identification and your subscription level, so it's not as if the "expert" wasn't aware from the get go that i was a Pro DC subscriber, at which point, had they known what I know now, about their own product, it would have been a 30 second call because the expert would have simply stated "sir, you need a Enterprise level Adobe Sign subscription for this integration feature within SharePoint". When your companies own employees can't appreciate the differences of product lines and are sitting on the phone with you trying to figure out whey your Adobe e-sign is not workign within SharePoint, as a company, that's when you know it's time to re-evaluate how you market, summarize, and pacakge your suite of services. I'M TALKING TO YOU MR. HEAD OF ADOBE PRODUCT MARKETING TEAM. Oftentimes, less is more. Most of your current clientele and potential new clientele are what I define as "power users" of your product. By that I mean, their business or what they do inherently requires they have such a product and those companies (Adobe, docusign, etc.) that simplify the product evaluation process that biz owners and admin employees go through before purchasing such a software, are going to have more users.
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