What Does Product-Agnostic Mean?

While shopping around for new technology solutions for your business, you may have heard the terms agnostic, product-agnostic, platform-agnostic or other variations.

This term is normally mentioned in the context of how software and devices interact with other tech solutions. Having a product that’s agnostic means having a tech solution that’s able to interact with any systems or any products in the same category.

For software, being product-agnostic means being able to interact with all file types or be able to exchange data with any other software. Platform-agnostic means your tech solution can run on any platform such as Windows, iOS and Linux. In hardware, where it’s sometimes called device-agnostic, the software needs to be able to run on any type of devices such as desktops, tablets and smartphones.

The most common examples of agnosticism in tech are cross-platform applications that are designed to work on Android and Apple phones.

As technology permeates into nearly everything we use, being agnostic is becoming more and more important. Not only can consumers get turned-off from a product if it’s incompatible with the other technology in their life, but the product can also get left behind as more applications and devices become interconnected. The internet of things is technology that’s making strides in the smart home and smart office fields, so it’s crucial that a product that wants to have a good user experience is designed with the intent of being agnostic and forward compatible.

Collaboration is also difficult when technology presents barriers rather than gateways. Applications that have an exclusive format of data they’re compatible with is usually a point against it in the eyes of the consumer. Excel spreadsheets are a form of agnostic data because it’s commonly accepted by database software and other types.

When a business decides to implement a tech solution that isn’t agnostic and biased toward certain products, platforms or devices, they may be locking themselves out of better solutions down the road because their compatibility is limited.

eFileCabinet is a document management solution that’s product-agnostic with software that produces documents. Any type of document can be uploaded to the system directly from the application that creates it. Any application that has a printing function can “print to” eFileCabinet, much like saving a PDF. This means that the application doesn’t need plugins or add-ons in order to efficiently get certain file types, because it’s designed around a universal function of these applications.

The document is converted to a PDF and processed with Zonal OCR for automatic filing. It’s like printing a document and it instantly appearing in the filing cabinet, filed in the right drawer and folder. You can instantly retrieve it by searching for a few keywords within the content of the document. To learn all about eFileCabinet’s potential for your business, consider viewing a free demo.