Seeking a Fast Efficiency Lift? Find the Clipboards

Every business seems to have a variety of paper forms in use, often attached to a clipboard. This has always been the traditional way of capturing data or documenting things. Forms are used for a wide range of purposes – QC, shipping paperwork, signature capture, just to name a few. While paper forms are easy to implement, and quickly become embedded in your business, we suggest that this is often not an ideal approach in our fast-moving modern business environment. Going paperless can bring major benefits.

Paper forms have shortcomings

Simple to implement, but problematic in practice. Here are several of the typical issues companies encounter with paper forms, often unwittingly:

• Slow – Manual form data entry can be slow, particularly if much handwriting is required. Workers must take care to correctly enter information.
• Error-prone – In any case where manual entry is allowed, errors will result. This can occur both when data is entered as well as when paper records are re-entered into a spreadsheet by a different person. Further, correct information may not be entered, or may not follow the desired format.
• Poor data visibility – Paper form data is invisible to the rest of your organization until the paper document is ultimately transcribed to a spreadsheet. This may mean that hours, days, or even weeks pass in which information is unavailable to those who might need it.

Benefits of Electronic Forms

By contrast, digital forms address the shortcomings of paper, providing better info on a more timely basis to more people.

• Fast – No need to transcribe part numbers or locations – capture data via barcode. Also, drop-downs can eliminate the need to manually enter common data.
• Accurate – Minimize manual entry errors, and eliminate the need to re-key data from paper (removing an activity waste as well as a source of error). Further, it is possible to apply logic tests to input form data to ensure it meets expected formats.
• Data immediately accessible to the organization – In a fast-moving business environment it’s perhaps most important to note the speed of electronic forms. Data can immediately be made available to key stakeholders, and can be searched for later access. An electronic signature can quickly be captured, or a photo documented. This can accelerate your business operations and customer service, and save you time and money.

Electronic Forms Are An Attainable Digital Transformation

The good news is that CSSI is fluent with a number of electronic form development tools which can streamline and accelerate the form development process to eliminate paper processes. This means that we can provide a solution for you faster and at lower cost. Solutions may be provided as an online form or as locally hosted electronic documents depending on your needs.

Much depends upon the complexity of your electronic form and the digital workflow needs for the data captured. But our team’s experience with this process translates into quality responsive electronic forms which will immediately begin to benefit your team.

Digital forms projects tend to provide quick-hitting benefits. Fast to scope, design, and implement, you can start to get ROI much quicker by eliminating paper forms than through most other technology projects. This is low-hanging fruit for productivity enhancement and cost reduction.

How To Get Started Converting Your Paper Forms To Electronic

Eliminate your paper forms by engaging with CSSI. Our team will work with you to assess your current paperless form needs, and will propose a solution which takes into account the ways in which your digital form data is used. Contact CSSI to get started with digital transformation of your critical paper forms.