Would you like to save time, save money and increase productivity at your small business? Making the switch from paper forms to mobile forms could be the answer. Digitizing your forms is one of the most obvious ways to increase productivity and to lower operational costs. In this post, we will analyze how digitization and mobile forms can help your business to improve data collection and communication with workers and customers alike whilst saving money and resources.
In spite of the popularity of mobile apps, many organizations are still using paper forms. This practice could have a negative impact on productivity and finances. Now it is the right time for businesses to consider replacing paper processes with mobile form applications. In doing that, companies will not only contribute to sustainability, but will also benefit in many ways.
Benefits of using mobile forms
Money saving
According to the statistics on paper costs, companies can save from 10% to 30% on switching to digital. Many companies do not even track printing costs and they are not aware of potential savings that could benefit them. On buying paper and printing consumables, there are all sorts of hidden costs. You do not just have to print the forms, you also need to process all the data and that task requires time. If you don’t do it by yourself, you have pay workers to upload and process all the information. You might also require on site workers to collect all necessary data and to manually upload it into the database.
Going mobile will save you time and money thanks to faster processing, less man-hours, and improved data accuracy. You also save the money spent on paper processing (carrying, managing, storing and collecting pieces of paper) and printing costs. All these savings can have an impact on small companies’ bottom line.
Increased productivity & revenue
With mobile forms, the whole company works more productively at all levels. Inspectors no longer need to spend time on manually filling out the forms anymore. They do not need been connected to Wi-Fi to collect all types of data and can add comments to the data that could be helpful in the subsequent analysis. Digital forms will be uploaded on the cloud where would be available for the part of the team in charge of evaluation and analysis. This, combined with other factors, will help them to focus on more tasks during the working day.
Compiling and searching for reports is now extremely easy. If other employees need access to a specific form, they can do it in a couple of clicks. Mobile forms also facilitate managers’ jobs, which can easily monitor their employees and look into any specific form if they need any particular information. Managers can check at the end the day what have be done by each member of the team.
Accurate data
Digital forms can auto-populate fields based on data entered and enable field-level validation. Digital data collection is highly accurate and reduce or eliminate data entry errors and data loss. Additionally, information can be tracked by username, geo-location and time & date.
Digital forms facilitate data collection and allow you to plan each day from start to finish. In this way, you will obtain better results in less time. Replacing paper forms with mobile forms also means that your employees will do more work in any given day. Processes will be faster, systematic and productive, and employees could communicate with their office counterparts and field teams using mobile forms’ advanced features. Other benefits include faster cash flow; a more productive workforce, smaller infrastructure and lower carbon footprints.
Easy accessibility
If you have been running a business for some years, it’s likely that you have compiled a number of paper files over time, detailed information operations, strategies and more. Having to deal with tones of papers can be very time-consuming. Capturing data on mobile forms is easier and faster and reduce administrative burdens. It also facilitates accessibility. You and the rest of the team can see in real time images; videos; signatures; barcodes attaching files and all the information captured by field workers. After all data is uploaded to a server or to the cloud, workers can easily access to that without spending a lot of time.
Forget all the stress
Many times, paper forms are filled with chicken-scratch handwriting, have many inaccuracies and the occasional coffee spill. You do not need that level of the stress. Creating streamlined, smart, mobile forms is an easy way to safeguard your data against unprofessional form damages and mistakes. Mobile forms providers offer a variety of features to help your team avoid human errors- Some these features are Auto Calculations, and Pre-Populated information. Some have even used conditional logic to build forms, so they can reduce human error.
Save man-hours
Manually re-keying, entering and processing data is a dull time consuming practice. Companies that have made the switch to digital have saved valuable administrative hours with a more automated and streamlined approach. Mobile forms can replace hundreds of handwritten (often illegible or incorrect) forms with professional and clear digital ones. Eliminating the need to collect, review and correct handwritten forms has resulted in fewer inaccuracies and more time available to do other important duties.
Mobile forms make possible to collect data on mobile devices and instantly submit it via the push of a button. The old fashion model had workers trying manually filling forms, sending or taking forms to the office. All those tasks involved time wasted. Thanks to mobile forms, they could send information to a back office or to a digital storage location with the click of a button saving workers and companies plenty of time.
Make data-driven decisions
Data driven decision-making is a process that involves collecting data based on measurable goals or KPIs, analyzing facts and patterns from these insights, and using them to develop strategies and activities that benefit the business in many ways. To extract valuable insights, your data must be accurate and relevant to your goals. Data collected and extracted using digital forms is more accurate than data gathered on paper, therefore you can take decisions that are more appropriate. Mobile forms give you real-time visibility into your data, enabling you to see bottlenecks and other issues that can affect your project completion and your goals.
Improved security
Data loss can have serious consequences on business operations and revenue. If you lose customers’ data, your company would be exposed to all sorts of legal actions, fines, and lawsuits. That is why organizations invest in data loss prevention. By using mobile forms app, you minimize that risk. It the information is collected by mobile forms, stored in the cloud, where is accessible only by the authorized users, the chance of misplacing data significantly diminished.
Data synchronization
Data synchronization is the ongoing process of synchronizing data between two or more devices and updating changes automatically between them to maintain consistency within systems. Thanks to mobile forms, workforce can view; add; edit; update and delete the task details. Mobile forms make it simpler and easier to fill out details while executing a task, even in separate locations. It does not only save hours and reduce data collection errors; all data recorded on a mobile app could be automatically shared over the cloud. Therefore, as soon as the data is upload it into the app, it would be instantly accessible in other devices to other team members.
Remote area accessibility
Offline mobile forms make data collection possible in the most remote locations. This could be helpful for many industries. For example, government organizations conduct surveys for various reason in villages and other remote locations. Offline mobile forms apps can even collect data when internet is not available collecting and this is a huge advantage over manual forms.
Improved response times
If you replace paper forms with mobile forms and checklists, your business will be able to deal with different issues at the same time. You and your team will be able to react and respond quickly so you could tackle and being able to resolve issues before they escalate into a much bigger problem that can affect your relationship with customers or your company’s reputation. By using mobile forms, problems resolution can happen much quicker and you will be able to report and track any feedback and result.
Reduced waste
The shift from paper to digital would reduce significantly the quantity of waste. In fact, 45% of the total paper printed in the office goes to trash at the end of the day. This amount represent a huge waste in terms of money, time and efforts. By adopting mobile forms, you are making a big step on lowering your carbon footprint and on reducing wastage.
We have seen how expensive can be manual data entry. Besides that, on site workers that have the strain of carrying files when they get back to the office and all that information needs to be manually processed. Mobile forms can optimize data collection processes, improve data record management and help your company to save money. All these benefits can turn into more savings and increased profits for your business. That is why more and more business are adopting mobile forms to collect data.
DataScope is a data collection platform that help organizations to improve data collection, get access to critical data in real time and improve decision-making at every level providing you robust dashboard and automated reports. With DataScope you can create custom forms using a simple Form Builder that turn your paper documents into digital forms quickly and easily.
DataScope is a platform which allows various industries to streamline, organize and evaluate the work of their field staffs thanks to online forms which provide real time indicators 100% adaptable to any field.
