Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Behind the 8-Ball (Again)!

There was an interesting article in one of the trade magazines I was researching that brought up a good point.* A reader had posed a question about the best way to archive reports and still retain the ability to print these reports years from now.  Good question!

This same issue becomes very important with the archaic financial systems that we have today.  Until the use of “Buckets” and the automatic deletion of detail information are changed, reports need to be generated while the data is still present and somehow preserved electronically.  It’s impractical to keep these reports on paper for any extended period of time, as it usually requires special archival paper and ink, plus a great deal of storage space. 

You need to be thinking of the best way to store reports electronically in a format that would still be supported for at least 10 years from now or longer.  The author of the column discussed that Text File Format (“txt”) has been around for over 20 years, but its available fonts and formatting are extremely limited.  Rich Text (“rtf”) was discussed and discarded because of larger file sizes and frequent changes to format structure that require conversion in order to be printed.

One format that surfaced for consideration was Adobe’s Portable Document Format (“pdf”).  It has become the de facto standard for Government forms, and because Government is not noted for changing standards very often, the article surmised that “pdf” files would be around (and usable) for several more decades.

So, my question to you is: “Is your antiquated financial system able to produce/convert reports to Adobe’s Portable Document Format?” If not, you’re really behind the 8-ball!  Get with it!

* Acknowledgement to: 

Breen, Christopher. “Mac 911,” MACWORLD, January 2008, p.102-104.