To Err is Human, Put Forms Online is Good Business – Part 1
Whenever business is conducted, you can be sure that somewhere in the process, there will be forms. After all, businesses rely on forms to keep their products and services moving efficiently and effectively. Application forms. Order forms. Employment forms. Tax forms. Registration forms. Medical forms. Inventory forms. All waiting to be downloaded, filled, submitted, checked, revised, approved, and archived.
Each form typically passes through the hands of at least five participants during its lifespan. This includes the author, the manager, the user (form-filler), the data processor and the auditor. Each person involved is either interacting with the form or with the form data. And each time an interaction happens, the probability of introducing an error increases. Human error is a given, in life or in business, and it has been our companion since the first form was typed, mimeographed and sent via Inter-Office envelope.
Today many businesses use Adobe Acrobat to create PDF versions of their forms. This now ubiquitous format allows you to create a form document, save it as a PDF and upload to an internal server or your web site. This reduces the possibility for errors between the author of the form and the distribution channel, because a well-meaning person in your organization cannot revise the form. The form is now easily accessible for a user to download, print, complete and fax or mail in the completed form. The form is now received and possibly auto-scanned into a document management system – or not. Many businesses rely on an employee or service to type the form information into another computer – introducing the possibility of an error. If you have a document management system, you might be able to compare the original and the entered data, but that requires an additional step and increased time – in both manpower and processing. Time that is better spent managing the information from the form.
The way to avoid these time-consuming tasks and reduce the amount of errors is to put the form online. There are several cost-effective ways to accomplish this that will provide improved service to the form user, as well as improve productivity within your business. These are:
- Adding interactive fields to a PDF form
- Making smart online forms
- Building an application to create and manage online forms
In the next three posts, we will examine the solutions above in detail, and discuss when and where these are best used. We will also review examples in which Technotribe has assisted our clients as they moved a form-based business process online.
Next: Interactive PDF forms
Tags: online forms
