The adoption of electronic document exchange in Thailand is growing rapidly, influenced by the greater speed and capacity of wireless broadband coinciding with the proliferation of mobile devices and broad adoption of cloud-based services, says a global software company.
The surge in e-documents in the private sector can also be attributed to government policies to develop the digital economy and the national e-payment system.
"We expect to see greater adoption of e-documents globally, especially in emerging countries like Thailand where the majority of people access the internet via mobile devices," said Chandra Sinnathamby, head of document cloud solutions for Asia-Pacific at Adobe Systems, the creator of the PDF format.
IDC Thailand said at least half of Thai enterprises will start to adopt digital transformation strategies by 2017.
The operating unit of the global IT research firm estimated that 50 million Thais, or 73% of the population, will connect to the internet by 2018.
Organisations of all sizes are increasingly adopting digital transformation strategies, with paper documents brought into the digital workflow.
Mr Sinnathamby cited another study suggesting that e-documents can help companies reduce costs, improve productivity, accelerate revenue and streamline document systems.
Up to 80% of organisations worldwide still rely on paper-based systems, he said.
The Adobe Document Cloud has been designed to create digital document workflows in the systems in use every day.
The system includes Acrobat DC, Adobe Sign and mobile apps.
It combines dynamic forms with legal e-signatures to create a fast, easy enrolment process that can be completed on any device.
"More than 6 billion digital and electronic signature transactions are processed through Document Cloud per year," Mr Sinnathamby said.
He said Adobe is continuing to invest in cloud computing data centres in countries that require e-documents to be stored in the country in compliance with data sovereignty laws.
Data sovereignty is the concept that information which has been converted into binary digital form and stored in binary digital form is subject to the laws of the country in which it is located.
Adobe has data centres in Europe, with a plan to open new data centres in Asia-Pacific countries by the year-end, Mr Sinnathamby said.