Forms Processing

Creating your form in Excel, InfoPath, Adobe Acrobat or other such tools is really only the beginning of forms processing. Still, many people will not automate that data they have received. They may spend the time to create a fancy form in Excel to have it emailed, but then all the processing from that form will be completed manually. The power of an electronic form is its ability to automate workflow. An electronic form can push data to a database or web page. One simple example would be the ability to complete a form on your desktop then when you strike a submit button, it will publish that information to your online account. There is another aspect of forms processing, however. That is the ability to remove pre-printed forms and dot-matrix printers from your office. I used to sell pre-printed forms. My minimum markup was 100%... and the company I bought them from made a large profit, too. The paper, ink and maintenance of dot-matrix printers is very expensive. Moving to a plain paper laser printer can significantly reduce your costs. So, how can you rid yourself of pre-printed forms? There are a number of different vendors out there that provide software that can remove the need for pre-printed forms. Just to name three: ObjectIf Lune, Kofax, and Abbyy. There are many out there, but those three are the big players. How do you do it? You first have to realize your strategy. You have forms that you print all the time (invoices, statements, pick tickets, etc). You can do a lot with the form to redesign the way you do business and increase your efficiencies. You can put advertising automatically on your invoices... personalized, one-to-one advertising. You can remove pre-printed forms altogether by introducing a color printing device on your network. The sky is the limit. Second, when you talk to a prospective vendor, make sure they take your data and create a sample of what your form might look like. You want to make sure that you know what you are going to buy before you buy. Make sure the forms work the way you want them to. I bet you even save money by buying one of the software packages. Take a look at ways that you can streamline your workflow and you might be surprised what turns up. Drop me a line if you want some free advice when choosing your vendor.

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Corey Smith is a co-founder of Resumango where you can build a better resume for free.