By D.P. Morrissey
John Plecki understands that change doesn’t always come easily. As the IT and business project manager for Stock Development, one of the biggest regional real estate development companies in Florida, his company was in search of new PDF software. Before he came into the office, workers were printing documents, marking up those documents with a pen and then scanning those documents back to themselves. He realized the process needed a major revamp, so Stock Development turned to Nitro.
“Before Nitro, we were using different versions of PDF readers and it was sometimes an issue. We have not had any compatibility issues with Nitro, and it’s been great to have everyone standardized on that to ensure PDF compatibility,” Plecki said.
Some of the features Plecki is impressed with include mark-up, editing and reviewing options. One division of Stock Development that works with contracts and other documents for land acquisitions utilizes the extractions and compile features to move pages in and out of contracts.
“And personally, the Nitro conversion feature to Excel has saved me a number of times,” Plecki said. “We can’t imagine a world without Nitro in our business—we wouldn’t be able to do any of the things we need to get done with PDF documents.”
Stock Development’s needs are similar to those of many of Nitro’s customers in the construction industry. The volume of documents needed to create, share, edit, approve and archive is substantial. Stock has standardized on using PDF to accelerate collaboration internally and externally, and also reduce the amount of paper-based processes involved.
Stock had to provide the right tools to work with PDF files without having to rely on others or on outside vendors, which would add time as well as cost.
“Some people have been reluctant to change, but once they tried it they embraced it. They started using Nitro and fell in love with it,” Plecki said.
D.P. Morrissey is a freelance writer who covers business and technology.