Just Start It!

As the New Year starts, many of us set unrealistic resolutions that can doom us to fail. “Lose 50lbs”, for example, and then get discouraged when it doesn’t happen quickly; whereas if we set a more realistic goal of “Start eating healthy”, we have a better chance of success.

The same thought process prevents many organizations from beginning the eForms automation process. They believe they need to take on complex business process first. These large, complex processes can certainly make the greatest impact, but they also frequently take substantial time, resources, and budget to just get the project started.

When tackling complex processes, consensus has to be built with stakeholders and the user community, sponsors need to be obtained, and budget approval can be difficult. So is there a way to get started simply? Yes, there is!!

In most organizations, there is a large library of simple forms that can become eForms. These can be developed simply and efficiently with a small budget and produce results quickly. With a few of these under your belt, and some measurable results, you can more easily obtain the capital to move forward with more ambitious eForms projects.

What would be a simple form that you could start with? What about a form that only needs a signature validation? Example: One of our clients has a series of forms where the Employee simply needs to acknowledge a policy. These types of forms are easy to automate and quickly streamline processes for the employees.

Or how about a form that has only a few fields that need to be completed with little or no validation? Example: An employee form to request a parking pass that only requires the employee name and parking location.

Consider these criteria for identifying simple forms:

1. Defined business process
2. Similar data collected for all users (This limits the amount of logic that needs to be included in the form)
3. Simple approval routing
4. Simple or no updates to the system

Some advantages to starting simply include:

1. Deliver real results fast.
2. Minimize the project cost.
3. Quickly demonstrate the benefits of eForms (e.g. faster turnaround, reduced errors, greater efficiency, etc.)

So instead of trying to automate your biggest business process, consider starting with the easy ones, building momentum (and political capital) for eForms automation. Then you’ll be ready to tackle the big ones!