PwC Specialists Go Paperless with ABBYY Mobile Application
PwC operates in 158 countries around the world. The company employs 250,000 people. PwC experts provide consultancy services to large banks, oil and gas, metallurgy, telecommunications, electricity and other companies and help them conduct an independent assessment of the financial situation of their business (audit), improve the accuracy of strategic decisions and build customer confidence. The audit results are used not only by shareholders and owners of firms, but also by government organizations, suppliers of goods and services, business partners and many others.
PwC specialists normally conduct audit checks by making arrangements to visit the clients’ offices to collect information on their companies’ financial activities. The consultants analyze and evaluate the necessary documents, such as invoices, contracts and checks. PwC experts then draw conclusions based on the audit evidence gathered, and also provide recommendations to the clients on diverse issues including which financial indicators to pay attention to, how to increase business transparency, and what development strategy to choose, etc
The existing best practice among firms requires that auditors retain all audit documentation provided by the client. PwC employees scan originals at the client’s office and send them to secure electronic storage. In order to solve this problem, a mobile application based on ABBYY intelligent technologies was specifically developed.
Challenge
- Reduce the time required to process internal and client documents
- Facilitate access to and retrieval of information
- Ensure secure data transfer
Solution
ABBYY FineScanner mobile application (in April 2021, ABBYY FineScanner was renamed to ABBYY FineReader PDF for Mobile) and ABBYY FineReader Server document recognition and digitization solution
Results
- Experts able to scan documents in just a few seconds using a smartphone
- Documents transferred directly to the corporate cloud storage
- The solution is integrated with the MobileIron platform for better data protection
Fast Data Processing with Smartphone
PwC employees use corporate smartphones with a pre-installed, secure mobile application based on ABBYY FineScanner. This allows PwC employees to scan charters, acts, or any document of importance by simply using their smartphone camera to take pictures of documents. ABBYY FineScanner automatically improves the image quality by defining the borders of the document in the photo, cropping the background, and aligning the document. If needed, the employee can perform further tasks such as lightening the image, reducing noise, or eliminating blur in the photo, etc.
Once the image is preprocessed, the employee sends the scan for digitization to ABBYY FineReader Server – a server-based document recognition solution. The Server converts the images to PDF in a few seconds with full-text search capability, after which the document is sent to the corporate cloud storage either on Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive platforms. The application made for PwC specialists is integrated with the MobileIron mobile device management platform – part of the mobile Device Management (MDM) solution that can be configured to protect corporate information from unauthorized access and distribution, and prevent third-party applications from accessing information stored on the mobile device. For example, if an employee wants to take a screenshot of a confidential document, the system will prompt him/her to enter a password to check his/her right to access the important document.
The application allows you to take a picture of the document, crop the background, apply filters, add tags to the document, send text for recognition, and much more.
The mobile application is being used by all employees in PwC’s network of firms in Central and Eastern Europe
With the help of the secure mobile scanner, powered by ABBYY’s intelligent technology, PwC experts can quickly take a picture of any documents required by clients using a smartphone and convert them to PDF with a text layer. In the future, the application will include a feature allowing documents to be saved in the .doc format.
The solution is available only on PwC corporate smartphones and is integrated with the MobileIron mobile device management platform, which provides secure transmission and access to information from mobile devices.
PwC specialists initially used the mobile application for audit and business consulting in the clients’ offices, but the solution has since been used by specialists from other departments of the company for working with internal documents.
“The PwC mobile application has greatly simplified our specialists’ work with the clients. Now they can digitize any document in a couple of seconds and, if necessary, easily find the required data in the corporate repository. At the same time, confidential information of customers and partners is reliably protected using modern technologies.”
Alexei Okishev,Partner, Risk Assurance Leader at PwC
About the customer
PwC is a network of firms providing audit, tax consulting, and other legal services to businesses in multiple industries.