How Electronic Forms Make the Paperless Office Possible
Posted: Wednesday, January 13, 2010
by Mitch Taube
Digiscribe
If your company is typical, paper forms are creating a bottleneck as they are time consuming and inefficient. They can also wreak havoc when they're misdirected, misplaced or buried on someone's desk. With the adoption of electronic forms, paperwork bottlenecks disappear and the paperless office becomes your new reality.
Electronic Forms The Basics
The e-forms can also be exported into a document management system for automated indexing, storage and retrieval. With the advent of legally-binding electronic signatures, even legal documents can now be created and modified within a paperless system. From point-of-entry to client approval, allowing e-forms to support the underlying structure of your business is a necessity in today's business environment.
How E-Forms Transform the Workplace
Consider the efficiencies that can be realized in your own organization when, rather than writing client information onto individual paper forms when transactions take place, customers or employees access e-forms, enter information once or download stored client information to complete orders, contracts or applications in a fraction of the time.
By pushing that initiated form through every stage of your key business processes via a workflow automation application, no paper form is ever printed to be lost, damaged or otherwise an impediment to workplace efficiency.
Whether they are human resource forms, transactional documentation or legal contracts, e-forms improve efficiency, enhance security and eliminate the need for space to store paper-based documentation.
Electronic Forms Equal Customer Satisfaction
One more very important consideration is the increase in customer satisfaction gained when client interaction is documented with electronic forms. The roadblocks to great customer service associated with a traditional paper flow include lost paperwork, slower response times and miscommunication.
What could be more maddening, after all, than waiting for someone to write point-of-sale information onto a paper form? This also applies to standardized contracts and other transactional documents created electronically but printed, signed and stored as a paper record.
E-Forms The New Standard in Security
As we're discussing records safekeeping measures, few business owners would argue that paper forms stored in locked file cabinets present the potential for compromised security. Fire, theft and employee misuse are only three of the events that threaten the security of your firm's proprietary and client information.
Electronic forms, on the other hand, create a wall of security around information that must be kept confidential. Strong user authentication, file access tracking and 128-bit data encryption are built into today's web-based e-form software. Combined with legally valid electronic signatures, the electronic forms utilized for both client interface and internal processes represent a higher standard in document security.
The success of workplace automation, built upon a truly paperless environment, is well-documented across many industries. Companies hoping to leverage e-form technology to increase employee efficiency, reduce costs, improve client satisfaction and enhance document security should first look to their document management specialists for an integrated electronic forms and workplace automation solution. By combining a customized e-forms application with automated document scanning processes, the bottlenecks associated with traditional paper forms can finally be eliminated.
Mitch Taube is the principal founder and CEO of Digiscribe, which was formed in 2002 to provide companies of all sizes with cost-effective paperless office solutions. With over 20 years of experience in the information services industry, Mitch brings a wealth of expertise to the company. He is a CompTIA Certified Document Imaging Architect (CDIA+), speaks at various events and served as chair and committee member of the AIIM Service Bureau Executive Forum.
http://www.digiscribe.info/ document_management_services/ electronic_forms.shtml www.digiscribe.info
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