If you’re looking for an easy way to improve your business processes, look no further than electronic forms, also known as e-forms. Instead of printing, scanning, and storing paper forms in your office, e-forms help you collect, manage, and distribute information more efficiently. Specifically, they can save your administrative staff time, improve records accuracy and open up new possibilities to streamline processes like data sharing with other enterprise software. Using e-forms can also be a major step to initiate automated workflows and save even more time. 
Built-in logic ensures a user fills out all fields before submitting the document, reducing the time it takes to understand choppy handwriting or track down missing information. Imagine onboarding new hires with the ability to track their progress, send updates and reminders, and store their information into your CRM system without lifting a finger. The array of features integrated in modern e-forms ensures your operations run without the typical administrative headaches, making them a key component of any document management strategy.
Whether you’re constantly onboarding new employees or processing insurance quotes, there are many reasons to replace manual paper processes and difficult to manage PDFs with e-forms. In this blog, we’ll look at five specific industry-related examples to understand how e-forms can help your business thrive and streamline workflows.
1. Manufacturing: Onboarding
1. Manufacturing: OnboardingOnboarding new employees takes time and drains money. Especially using traditional onboarding methods, where paper forms are filled out and passed around to different department heads. E-forms ensure the onboarding process is faster, more accurate, and much easier to manage.
Picture this: Your new employee fills out a single online e-form, and the data populates their W-2, benefits enrollment, IT requests, and other onboarding forms. The onboarding process includes industry-related training that must be completed in the first four weeks of employment. Each week your employee receives a form with the necessary links to online courses and other new employee info for that week. They complete the course, take a test, and their score is recorded on a web form. HR then automatically receives notification when the assignment is complete so they can follow up as needed.
2. Insurance: Underwriting and Quoting
Some of the most complex forms for the end-user to manage are insurance applications. Previous application forms included a single multi-page paper outlining coverage plans for employment practices, liability, fiduciary liability, miscellaneous professional liability and network security. Rather than asking the applicants to answer every question, e-forms use built-in logic so only the questions that apply to the coverage being quoted are shown on the e-form. Depending on how they answer initially, applicants may need to respond to 20 questions or as few as five. Their information is stored electronically for accessible records and company-side data is no longer necessary. Now, not only is the application process more efficient, but it’s more cohesive and personalized to the end user.
3. Healthcare: Medical Billing
For medical practices that manage revenue and billing for multiple healthcare providers, charges denied by an insurer are taken seriously. It could be a simple fix, like an address change or an incorrect date of service, but traditional methods of billing can bring account management teams to a halt.
With e-forms, account managers can make adjustments to the document quickly, whether it’s a change of patient information or billing code. The change will be automatically recorded in the billing system, generating a record of adjustment and instantly submitting the new invoice. Even if a charge needs to be written off, your team can use an additional e-form to properly document the change.
4. K-12 Education: Parent and Student Portals
With technology playing a greater role in education, many schools have implemented secure online portals where parents and students can stay involved and informed. Through an online portal, students from grades 6 through 12, and their parents, can access grades, attendance records, schedules, and other crucial information. E-forms can make communication through these portals even easier.
For example, parents can request meetings with their child’s teacher, submit permission slips, or update their own contact information. Teachers or administrators can send documents that need a parent signature, and parents can sign digitally without having to print or scan. E-forms are a powerful tool for everyone involved in school communications, ensuring information is delivered smoothly and documented well.
5. Leasing: Onboarding a New Customer
Traditional sales offices would manually process customer paperwork, taking days or weeks to close a deal. New technology has allowed most sales teams to leverage tablets and e-forms when meeting with a customer. They’re able to enter customer information, input lease terms, and track products ordered. Plus, customers can sign any paperwork directly into the e-form while on site, automatically alerting the warehouse of product orders and updating your customer relationship management (CRM) records. With a simple e-form, the sales team is no longer shuttling paper back and forth to the office. Instead, the turnaround time from order to delivery is reduced from several weeks to only a few days, improving customer satisfaction and closing sales deals faster than ever.
E-forms are an invaluable tool that can help improve workflows, resolve information challenges, reduce human data entry errors, and automate processes. Businesses in any industry will no
longer waste time searching for and delivering paper documents.
Why User Experience Matters
If a part of your form is hard to navigate, it’s likely to be discarded entirely by 67% of users. – Zuko
Electronic forms are not only essential for business operations, they simplify the application process for its end user. Ensuring users understand how to navigate and submit the form easily requires integrated functionality and a well thought out user experience (UX) design. The way your e-form guides users is also a direct reflection of your businesses operational efficiency. So, poor UX can not only hurt your reputation, but it can lead to form abandonment, inaccurate data, and more incoming requests for support.
If you want to ensure users complete the e-form and input correct data, you must follow these best practices for great user experience:
- Structure: E-forms should have a logical flow where related fields are umbrellaed under general categories.
- Responsiveness: Users should have the option to use desktop, tablet, or mobile devices without limiting their functionality.
- Smart fields: Features like real-time validation, quick tips, and dynamic fields help users navigate forms without confusion and speeds up the completion process.
- Progress marks: Indicating how many pages or questions are left helps avoid form abandonment by giving users peace of mind.
Investing in the design of your e-forms is crucial to optimize the user experience and achieve the value that e-forms are intended to provide. When they’re easier to use, you’ll receive complete and correct information from users, so your team can work quickly and efficiently.
Shifting Towards Integrated Technology
E-forms are the ultimate solution to costly and draining manual business processes. And, new technology has helped e-forms evolve from simple online PDFs to a smart, secure, and flexible communications tool. Automation capabilities help fulfill strategic workflows, such as updating a CRM, notifying a supervisor, or starting follow-up tasks. By eliminating delays in your workflow, e-form automation ensures information is received quickly and securely. E-forms have also adapted to end-user devices such as mobile phones and tablets with a responsive design that ensures each form functions smoothly. Plus, with data security at top-of-mind for most businesses, e-forms are well equipped with features like encryption, access controls, and secure data storage to protect confidential information from ending up in the wrong hands.
These innovations are far from subtle and offer businesses a chance to improve their day-to-day operations while dramatically shifting the customer experience. By leveraging a small tool like e-forms, your business can start saving more time, operational costs, and transform your reputation for a brighter future.
What’s Next?
E-forms are more than just digital versions of your file cabinet, they’re strategic tools used to automate, protect, and speed up business operations. Follow-up tasks and alerts can be deployed the second e-forms have been submitted. Customers can sign important documents electronically, substantially cutting the time it takes to close deals. And, education administrators can send parents important reminders and documents directly, shifting accountability from the student to more reliable sources.
Workflow customization abilities make e-forms a useful tool for almost any business in any industry. From onboarding new hires and processing sales quotes to changing billing information and communicating with parents, e-forms can ease the manual workload that these tasks would typically require. If you’re ready to save on operations costs and boost productivity with e-forms, contact the team at Atlantic. We’re ready to help you develop a clear operations roadmap and focus more on what you do best.
About Atlantic, Tomorrow’s Office
Atlantic is an award-winning office technology and IT solutions company providing Imaging Products, IT Support, Document Management, Cybersecurity and Managed Services to small and large companies in the New York City metropolitan area, and the Greater Philadelphia and Delaware Valley.For the latest industry trends and technology insights visit ATO’s main Blog page.
