PDF backlog, dealt with. Minutes to an 80% improvement

Automation identifies PDFs across your estate, converts them automatically, improves compliance in minutes, and removes 95% of the manual cost while supporting users consistently at scale.

PDFs often sit on websites for years and require manual work to locate, update, or improve. When the volume grows, this becomes difficult to manage without automation. Files accumulate, older versions remain online, and the work required to keep them compliant increases. Manual cycles become lengthy, unpredictable, and hard to resource.

Automation provides a faster and more controlled approach, reducing the time, effort, and cost involved in managing PDFs across a website.

The real challenges of managing PDFs on a website

PDFs create challenges on several levels. These issues overlap, and without automation, they accumulate into a recurring backlog.

1. Knowing what PDFs exist and where they are

Most organisations do not have a complete or current picture of the PDFs across their estate. Documents sit in different folders, legacy systems, and older content areas. Manual discovery means reviewing directories, checking links, examining content structures, and validating file paths. As estates grow, this becomes hard to maintain.

Automation identifies PDFs across the estate and keeps the inventory up to date.

2. Creating accessible, useful, and compliant versions

Once PDFs are identified, the next challenge is improving them so they are more accessible and more useful.

This includes:

• ensuring structure and tagging support assistive technology

• improving titles, metadata, and naming for SEO

• preparing content so it is suitable for GEO, where AI systems rely on structured, well-presented information

Doing this manually is slow and expensive. Automation lifts the baseline level of compliance quickly and consistently.

3. Supporting all visitors without compromising their experience

Different visitors need different forms of support. Some require accessible versions, some prefer the original PDF, and some depend on assistive technology. The challenge is not simply offering alternatives. It is providing them smoothly, without disrupting the visitor’s journey.

Manual methods struggle with:

• knowing which version to present

• avoiding unnecessary pop-ups, choices, or extra steps

• ensuring visitors do not need to guess or try multiple versions

• keeping the process simple and predictable

The automated approach solves this at scale.

When a visitor indicates that they need assistance, the system provides the improved version automatically, without altering the original PDF or requiring CMS changes. Visitors do not need to choose between formats. The correct version is delivered based on their needs. This delivers support without adding friction or complexity to the experience.

4. Maintaining oversight as the estate changes

New PDFs appear continuously. Older documents remain online unless actively replaced. Without automation, the backlog comes back quickly.

Organisations need ongoing oversight:

• keeping the inventory current

• identifying newly added PDFs

• ensuring new files are converted

• preventing drift between versions

• maintaining compliance over time

Automation removes the manual work involved in this ongoing upkeep and keeps the process consistent.

Why automation changes the model

Automation replaces periodic, labour-intensive PDF projects with a continuous process. Identification, assessment, and conversion run automatically. Instead of working through large backlogs, teams only focus on a smaller number of documents that require human attention.

What happens when scale increases

As estates expand, PDFs accumulate across new sections and content areas. Older documents are rarely removed unless teams track them manually. Automation monitors PDFs as they are added, identifies issues quickly, and keeps the wider estate stable and manageable even as volumes grow.

Scale and cost implications

Manual PDF improvement carries significant cost. Fixing a PDF page typically averages around GBP53 or about USD70, and commonly ranges between £40 and £80. For an estate of 5,000 pages, this equates to roughly GBP265,000 (USD348,000) before project management and quality assurance are included.

Manual programmes for estates of this size often require about 0.75 of a full-time equivalent for around 20 months. During this period, new PDFs continue to appear, extending the workload.

Automation changes this profile. Automated identification and conversion can improve compliance by around 85% in minutes. Time and resource requirements reduce by more than 95%, with teams only needing to review a small number of priority items instead of handling the full backlog manually.

The solution

The PDF automation service is designed to remove the backlog, lift compliance, and support users directly, without adding work for internal teams. It is available in two forms, depending on how much of the process you want to automate.

Fully automated PDF management

This option provides a fully automated capability. The system handles the locating, cataloguing, and conversion of PDFs into more accessible documents online. It also decides when to serve the original PDF to a website visitor and when to serve the improved version, with this routing handled automatically. A typical visitor journey is simple and consistent. A visitor who needs assistance confirms this once. From that point on, any PDF they access is delivered in its improved form without manual conversion, file replacement, or CMS updates by your team. The original PDF can remain in place. Automation handles the visitor-side delivery.

Inventory and automated conversion

This option is for organisations that want automation to identify PDFs, maintain the inventory, and convert documents, while retaining control over how improved versions are used within their CMS.

The service:

• identifies and inventories PDFs

• creates improved versions automatically

Your team decides how and where to reference the improved files.

Video

It shows the welcome panel, the confirmation step, and the automatic delivery of more accessible documents without changing the underlying PDF or page structure.

https://youtu.be/ZFOzqMUAMGM (opens in a new window)